beta culture 1.0

Beta culture. When I hear the word "culture", I no longer think of tradition and heritage - I think of the flasks and vats of E. coli and the smell of LB. "Beta"'s just a part of nomenclature, like DNA pol β or beta-galactosidase. Put the words together, and you get a phrase that defines one of the most influential companies in the world - Google.

Forget "don't be evil", that's more of a guideline or rule telling the company what not to do. When it comes to actually doing things, Google approaches problems with its "beta culture", unveiling a service or function to the public well before it is polished. This method is a huge contrast from Apple, which tends to fine tune their product to exact qualifications, before launching the next glorified iThing to endless lines wrapping around the Apple Store. Each philosophy has its pros and cons of course, and varied success.

A good example of Google's "beta culture" is Android, the company's mobile operating system. When Android debuted two and a half years ago, it was slow and buggy with few adopters. Few people want a phone that sometimes struggles with even basic tasks with an unpolished finish, but the early adopters were rewarded with a rapidly improving Android environment that would respond to user demand - engineers would look at both stats and feedback to determine the problems that needed to be fixed, and the features most desired. It's like raw denim - the software, though rough at first, eventually adapts to fit the user and more and more. Android is now the top mobile operating systems worldwide, and is expected to have a smartphone market share of nearly 50% by sometime next year.

When Google tries to optimize its search result page, they test it out first with small subsets of their users. This system includes using dozens of slight variants of blue on their results, or offering more than 10 results for certain users. They keep track of time spent on each page and advertisements clicked, and try to reduce the amount of time it takes to find a result while attempting to maximize ad revenue. The "beta culture" reminds me of natural selection: create multiple variations of a product (or a rapidly variable product) and see which ones are most successful over time.

Several of Google's major product debuts start out by invitation only, like Gmail, Google Wave, and the newly released Google+. These allow a smaller circle of users to give feedback and an opportunity for engineers to iron out the bugs before opening up their services to the general public.

Google also allows its users to test up and coming features through "Labs", available for services like Gmail and Google Maps. The most popular and successful labs are often incorporated as standard features, such as its forgotten attachment notifier. Use Google Chrome? Type in "about:flags" and see what interesting features you can enable.

"Beta culture" takes some getting used to - it's not always easy using beta-products all the time. I once had the formatting on an assignment (with lots of graphics) completely ruined when testing out Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office with a lousy internet connection. The media often calls Google products "half-baked", and well, it's true. But when cooking, I like to taste test along the way (assuming it's safe to eat) so I can customize the food to my tastes.

Perhaps it's the cool and not-yet-public features that keep me embraced with the beta track. I'm currently typing away on my Chromebook on the draft version of Blogger, listening to the Beatles via Music Beta, and occasionally checking Google+. I'll give each of these products (and a few more) a quick run down in part two of this post, and instructions on how you can test them out yourself!