MoMB

Don't be beta

What’s the matter with Google? Since the launch of Google Docs and Spreadsheets and the Custom Search Engine in October 2006, the only release in beta was Patent Search

In the meantime Amazon ( Askville / NowNow / UnSpun / Endless / ZonTube / amapedia ) and Yahoo! ( Yahoo! TV / Yahoo! You Witness / Yahoo! Go 2.0 / Yahoo! OurCity and of course pipes ) keep those betas coming, heck, even Microsoft is doing better than Google beta-wise recently ( Windows Live Barcode / Windows Live for mobile / Keyword Forecast / Live Search Books )

Weird.

Mixin Top 100 and Mixin Hot 100

Minor update: The Top 100 and Hot 100 lists now are accompanied by sibling lists which also include apps which are not in beta:

Mixin Top 100 and Mixin Hot 100 – if you are not exclusively into edgy betas check them out. All lists are updated each Saturday and based on the popularity of the sites at del.icio.us.

Sneak preview for those of you who read this in your feed reader:

Mixin Hot 33 (based on bookmarks at del.icio.us added within the last 7 days)

1. pipes (2349 recently) (new)
2. mux-video-transcoder (729 recently) (new)
3. imified (587 recently) (new)
4. all-the-code (577 recently) (new)
5. youtube (557 recently) (17732 overall)
6. tingelets (466 recently) (669 overall)
7. picnik (457 recently) (980 overall)
8. widgipedia (431 recently) (1389 overall)
9. finetune (425 recently) (2000 overall)
10. flickr (419 recently) (25309 overall)
11. pandora (417 recently) (27584 overall)
12. change (332 recently) (new)
13. writer (328 recently) (new)
14. stikkit (313 recently) (1825 overall)
15. useless-account (306 recently) (new)
16. mediamax (298 recently) (918 overall)
17. zamzar (298 recently) (9872 overall)
18. midomi (291 recently) (1081 overall)
19. soundflavor (288 recently) (new)
20. gmail (288 recently) (11117 overall)
21. netvibes (282 recently) (17927 overall)
22. typetester (277 recently) (10298 overall)
23. zlio (274 recently) (new)
24. lastfm (261 recently) (16095 overall)
25. myspace (250 recently) (7714 overall)
26. gizmocall (226 recently) (610 overall)
27. script.aculo.us (219 recently) (20322 overall)
28. digg (215 recently) (16360 overall)
29. delicious (214 recently) (11300 overall)
30. ajaxload (212 recently) (6274 overall)
31. google-code-search (197 recently) (4274 overall)
32. kuler (190 recently) (6903 overall)
33. facebook (175 recently) (4241 overall)

Mixin Top 33 (based on bookmarks at del.icio.us)

1. pandora (27584)
2. flickr (25309)
3. script.aculo.us (20322)
4. netvibes (17927)
5. youtube (17732)
6. digg (16360)
7. lastfm (16095)
8. technorati (12916)
9. delicious (11300)
10. gmail (11117)
11. popurls (10476)
12. typetester (10298)
13. zamzar (9872)
14. keepvid (8658)
15. bugmenot (8622)
16. yousendit (8283)
17. librarything (8096)
18. pocketmod (7804)
19. google-maps (7764)
20. myspace (7714)
21. 43things (7384)
22. google-web-toolkit (7361)
23. yotophoto (7235)
24. zillow (7036)
25. kuler (6903)
26. gliffy (6626)
27. flock (6528)
28. ning (6449)
29. wikipedia (6308)
30. ajaxload (6274)
31. browsershots (6250)
32. remember-the-milk (6163)
33. tiddlywiki (6103)

Betaview

I was recently interviewed by juxataviews (a great site, if you don’t know it check it out) – if you always wanted to know which betas I dream about or how I would kill Web 2.0 read it here

Betas of the Year 2006 [ann]

update 12/23/2006: due to a disk crash I won’t be able to compile the results ‘til early next year. Thanks to all who participated!

Seems like a good time in the year to compile our second annual Betas of the Year list. More than 1500 betas launched this year, the paradox of choice is overwhelming, so I want to keep things simple:

if you want to participate (I hope you do!) please send your favorite or most beloved or most heavily used or the most beautiful / interesting / disruptive betas (up to 5) which launched this year until Friday, December 22nd to betasoftheyear[at]gmail[dot]com

Bonus points if you add a short personal annotation to your picks – I’m going to use them as descriptions for the winners.

(if you need some inspiration take a look at the popular betas or the hot betas lists.)

Many thanks!

Beta Quotient: Hungary

Good news (from a betalogical point of view): about 45% (16 of 35) of Web 2.0-ish applications from Hungary are released in beta*:

• allas.ma (job search)
• blogsearch* (a blog search engine)
• book.mark.hu (a social bookmarking site)
• del.icio.hu* (a social bookmarking site)
• dolgomvan* (a todo list manager)
• freevlog* (a video sharing site)
• hirblokk* (a news aggregator)
• hirek* (a startpage like Netvibes)
• hirlapom* (an ajax based aggregator)
• ikep* (a photo sharing site)
• internetmedia (digg style news)
• iWiW* (Hungary’s largest social network)
• jo-hely (a google maps mashup)
• keresom (video search)
• klon (a startpage)
• linklist* (digg style news site)
• linkter* (digg style news site)
• miner (a blog search engine, specialized in Hungarian language content)
• mylink (a bookmarking site)
• myVIP (a social network)
• netpresszo (a startpage and aggregator)
• noid (a short url service)
• porkolt (a video sharing site/social network)
• potkave* (a portal for cultural news)
• phrazr (social sentences)
• retard* (a video sharing site)
• series of tubes (a video aggregator)
• stock.xchng (free stock photography)
• sztarvadasz (a google maps mashup)
• videa (a video sharing site)
• videobomb (a video sharing site)
• videogizmo (a video sharing site)
• videoplayer (a video sharing site)
• videopost* (a video sharing site)
• webcsatorna* (a video magazine)
• web.zin.hu* (an aggregator for web developers)

Many thanks to Andras Barthazi from Miner who kicked-off this list and provided a lot of info.

If you are interested also check out webkett? – a new blog which tracks Hungarian web apps, and R/WW’s Top Web Apps in Hungary

(see the beta quotient for Seth Godin’s Web 2.0 List (37%), DEMOfall 06 (27%), MoMB (37%), TechCrunch (38%), web 2.0 (1 – 25%), germany (60%), rails (5%), connected innovators (83%), apps inspired by flickr (43%) and apps inspired by digg (21%))

Scapegoat

37signals released their fantastic Getting Real (Das Kapital for the Rails Generation) also as free web version.

Somehow it makes me sad that they seem to stick to some old school notion of beta:

These days it feels like everything is in beta stage forever. That’s a cop out. An interminable beta stage tells customers you’re not really committed to rolling out a finished product. It says, “Use this, but if it’s not perfect, it’s not our fault.”

Beta passes the buck to your customers. If you’re not confident enough about your release then how can you expect the public to be? Private betas are fine, public betas are bullshit. If it’s not good enough for public consumption don’t give it to the public to consume.

Don’t wait for your product to reach perfection. It’s not gonna happen. Take responsibility for what you’re releasing. Put it out and call it a release. Otherwise, you’re just making excuses.

2001: A Beta Odyssey

The MoMB just crossed the 2000 betas mark (the 2001st app listed is the super sharp retrievr)

Birthday

A year ago the MoMB was born. Actually I just wanted to check out the blog publishing system Textpattern (I love it.) I wrote a quick script which grabbed all links tagged as beta from my bookmarks at del.icio.us and populated them as articles to get some data to play around with. But then I couldn’t stop and the betas just kept coming…

If you like statistics:

1888 sites have been added (average of 5.17 per day)

• 1432 in public beta
• 96 in alpha
• 360 in private beta, by invitation, or stealth mode

Of those only 24 (1.3%) went out of business and 76 (4%) went out of beta (I might have missed a few.)

It has been an interesting year, tons of apps I can’t imagine living without now – if you’ve been hanging in here for a while I hope you’ve been discovering some cool sites too. A big thanks to all who have contributed links, feedback, and suggestions.

It doesn’t seem like the beta-phenomenon is cooling down soon, so stay tuned.

Beta Quotient: Seth Godin's Web 2.0 List

Groovy 37% (346 out of 940) of the sites listed in Seth Godin’s Web 2.0 Traffic Watch List are in beta.

(please note that this figure isn’t entirely adequate; I’ve scripted the process of checking the beta status, the percentage should be about right though)

btw.: I’ve also updated the mixin section with Seth’s list.

(see the beta quotient for DEMOfall 06 (27%), MoMB (37%), TechCrunch (38%), web 2.0 (1 – 25%), germany (60%), rails (5%), connected innovators (83%), apps inspired by flickr (43%) and apps inspired by digg (21%))

Beta Quotient: DEMOfall 06

Bad news (from a betalogical point of view): only 27% (18 of 67) of products presented at the DEMOfall 06 are released in beta*:

3jam
4info
adaptiveblue
Add This *
Behere TotalView
BriteSoft
BuzzLogic *
Cascada Mobile
Cozi
Cuts *
Dash
DS3
Eluma
eSnips *
eyespot *
flurry
Fonpods *
Genius
GrandCentral *
headplay
HeyLetsGo
iBloks *
i-Lighter *
imaginestics
jajah
Koral
LeapTag *
Lirix
MindTouch
MobileSphere
Moixa Energy
MojoPac
Mvox
MyPW
nanoLearning *
Ncomputing
openBC
PhotoCrank *
Pinger *
PixSense *
Pluggd *
PostPath
PrefPass
Presto
Realeyes3D
retrevo *
scanR
Scrapblog
Serebrum Axon
Simple Star
SiteKreator
Solid State
SportStatz
System One
Tao
Teneros
ThinkFree *
Trend Micro
Tribeca
Trigence
uControl
Violet
VaporStream
W5 Networks
wallop *
Widgetbox
Zing

(This list is based on the (nicely annotated) list compiled by Alex Iskold at Read/WriteWeb)

4/17

Slightly off-topic, but I stumbled upon this while taking a look at how betas are ranked at Alexa

quite a few apps doubled, trepled, quadrupled, even quintupled their Daily Reach persistently from one day to the other in the mid of April, take a look:

even a few blogs have been affected:

but not all sites have been (actually most haven’t):

So what happened? Hysteric mass adoption of Web 2.0 technologies on a single day?? Puzzler.

Recently

A new micro-feature: recently displays the last 20 entries to the MoMB in full.

Beta Quotient: MoMB

hmm, out of currently 1503 people who bookmarked the MoMB at del.icio.us only 557 (37%) used the tag beta

(the most popular tag is web2.0 which is used 786 times (52%))

(see the beta quotient for TechCrunch (38%), web 2.0 (1 – 25%), germany (60%), rails (5%), connected innovators (83%), apps inspired by flickr (43%) and apps inspired by digg (21%))

Beta Quotient: TechCrunch

The most ambitious project in the beta-studies series so far:

The BetaCrunch Index: about 38% (265 out of 700) of sites profiled in TechCrunch are in beta.

(please note that this figure isn’t entirely adequate; I basically relied on the index of products and companies which misses quite a few of the sites mentioned on TechCrunch, I missed a few betas amongst them…)

I hope I can provide a few interesting stats soon, in the meantime check out the new section mixin which lists the 100 most popular sites (in and out of beta) based on apps listed here and/or at TechCrunch. No big surprises, actually, but 5 new sites in the top 7 and 45 new sites overall.

(see the beta quotient for web 2.0 (1 – 25%), germany (60%), rails (5%), connected innovators (83%), apps inspired by flickr (43%) and apps inspired by digg (21%))

Beta Quotient: Web 2.0

Mixed signals when it comes to the interpenetration between the beta system and Web 2.0:

37signals recently asked their customers to say what they think Web 2.0 means – out of 500 random answers only 4 (less than 1%) used the term beta (more than 100 used AJAX.)

Compare this to the beta density when Yay Hooray asked its users to perform a makeover of famous logos in web 2.0 format – here 38 out of 159 submissions (about 25%) used beta as a signifier for Web 2.0.

(see the beta quotient for germany (60%), rails (5%), connected innovators (83%), apps inspired by flickr (43%) and apps inspired by digg (21%))