Beta Testing or beta-teasing

While the importance of Beta Testing phase cannot be denied, but it seems to me these days this phase is also serving as another marketing tool. To be successful in the competitive space most of the software companies make their roadmaps public. Whenever a new product is ready, a beta period has to precede it. This beta is highly advertised. Cases in point – Google’s Gmail, and Microsoft’s Longhorn, SAP’s Netweaver, and MoveableType’s 3.0. By making the product available to select few a group of haves and have-nots is created. There by creating an anxiety in the tech community. This serves the software vendors very well as an effective brand awareness and marketing tool. Om Malik also pointed about this in relation to Steve Jobs.

Keeping all this in mind I believe this beta testing phase could very well be called beta-teasing. So next time someone tells you their product is in beta, think they might be pulling a beta-tease on you 😀

On a separate note I might be the first one to use this term – beta-teasing.