Comments on: what is beta in the context of social software?

By: Made out of people

Made out of people — Mon, 03 May 2004 02:21:45 +0000

Everything is Beta

zephoria asks, what is beta in the context of social software? This isn’t a limitation only of social software, of course: the game world experiences the same phenomenon (as Christopher Allen points out). A few years ago, Gina Neff and…

By: trolls, obviously

trolls, obviously — Wed, 04 Feb 2004 21:15:56 +0000

“In my opinion, there are ethics to research. For starters, you never exploit your subjects, users. You never corrupt data to meet the findings that you (or your boss) want to see.

Unfortunately, the pressures in most company do not promote methodological, ethical research.”

This is exactly right. And google isn’t ethical.

By: Randy

Randy — Mon, 02 Feb 2004 09:32:46 +0000

The question i have is the password protection on Orkut intended to allow only a certain cadre of people onto the system. Is this a controlled public release, and once Orkut is rolled out the password invitation will be removed? I agree that a system of this size needs to have a sizeable population actively using it to locate the bugs, but beta should never be used to designate a profit model in my opinion.

By: Randy

Randy — Mon, 02 Feb 2004 09:32:02 +0000

The question i have is the password protection on Orkut intended to allow only a certain cadre of people onto the system. Is this a controlled public release, and once Orkut is rolled out the password invitation will be removed? I argee that a system of this size needs to have a sizeable population actively using it to locate the bugs, but beta should never be used to designate a proffit model in my oppinion.

By: Life With Alacrity

Life With Alacrity — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 16:24:19 +0000

Followup on Orkut

I’ve read of emails, Orkut messages, and blog postings since my post yesterday, so I thought I would share some with you….(pointers and commentary to several of Dahah Boyd’s blog entries, and other blogs and emails follow)

By: Life With Alacrity

Life With Alacrity — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 13:21:37 +0000

Followup on Orkut

By: Kevin Marks

Kevin Marks — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 11:06:41 +0000

The alpha/beta/golden master model comes from shrinkwrapped software, where you do have to decide at some point that it is done, and you can press 100,000 CDs of it.

With a dynamic website, this model can only loosely apply – Tim O’Reilly’s mechanical Turk analogy is very apt;

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/3190

By: Made out of people

Made out of people — Sat, 31 Jan 2004 22:21:24 +0000

Everything is Beta

By: Made out of people

Made out of people — Sat, 31 Jan 2004 22:16:54 +0000

Everything is Beta

By: zephoria

zephoria — Sat, 31 Jan 2004 16:57:35 +0000

Ross – from my perspective, research is the process of developing new bodies of theoretical knowledge that help fill in holes of the larger web of knowledge. To do so requires a systematic and methodologically sound approach.

Research also requires a clear awareness of one’s biases and a mechanism by which to account for one’s findings given one’s biases. Reflexivity in the social sciences. Strengths/weaknesses in general.

In my opinion, there are ethics to research. For starters, you never exploit your subjects, users. You never corrupt data to meet the findings that you (or your boss) want to see.

Unfortunately, the pressures in most company do not promote methodological, ethical research. The exceptions are almost consistently the groups that sit separate from the main body of a mega-corporation – MSR, Intel’s IAL, IBM Watson, etc. Of course, they have huge technology transfer problems because they are not so intimately intwined into the money-making prospect of their solid research.