Today’s topic will cover “Perpetual Beta“. Perpetual Beta, commonly speaking, is a piece of software that is in constant development – although complete features and lack of bugs may be found, new features and consolidated scripts are continually being added. In fact, some people believe that agile software development (a commonly used practice that development teams utilize) promotes perpetual beta as “new features are slipped in every iteration“. Perpetual beta just happens to be one of Tim O’Rielly’s core patterns to Web 2.0 applications. Because it relies on a sort of symbiotic relationship between user and developer, I would say that this pattern has an element of Harnessing Collective Experience, combined with Rich User Experience and a dash of Innovation in Assembly.
For the sake for my topic today, I am going to talk about a well-known software platform that almost all of us are using, Facebook. Facebook, a well known and popular website, in fact utilizes perpetual beta. If you use Facebook, you will notice how you are never prompted to update the software, and yet new features are constantly being added. Only recently Facebook updated the image view section of their website to Ajax. Then there is Facebook’s many and varied attempts to change its look and feel. Some of these have been brought about by responses from the user. One notable and recent example was all those changes to the privacy settings. I believe this is a fine example of how perpetual beta works, because for a large part the changes were user driven. Few months ago Facebook has released a new feature which is Timeline which will lead the user to provide information about their past before even Facebook existed.
Some of us more veteran Facebook users may remember those nasty bugs such as the; multi-status, the chat session that crashed the system, and the missing status updates. I’m sure there are more. I am constantly getting status updates from one friend or another whining how their favourite game or application is not working. For the most part theses thing do get fixed, usually after someone (or one thousand) has complained to Facebook Help.
Facebook is continuing to release new versions, revisions or updates of their products based on users’ feedback which gives the developers the chance to see the user experience to improve the application easily. Here is the question to answer, Do you think Facebook needs improvements or releases new services? If not do you think Facebook should not be a beta anymore?
Reference
Facebook Privacy (2012) http://www.facebook.com/privacy/explanation.php
O’Reilly T (2005) What is Web 2.0: Design patterns and Business model for next Generation of Software
Wikipedia (2012) Perpetual Beta
Jaroodi 
Great post. Facebook is definitely well known for constantly looking to improve and I for one am a fan of the new Timeline. It’s easy to see why Facebook has outlasted other similar social media sites…anyone remember MySpace? MySpace failed because it didn’t constantly evolve.
Your last question ‘Do you think Facebook should not be a beta anymore?’, Google’s Gmail was originally released invite only on April 2, 2004 and it wasn’t until five years and more than 100 million registered users later that Google felt it was time to remove the beta label! But even though it’s not ‘labelled’ as a beta, in today’s development environment, everything feels like it’s in the beta stage.
thanks for the comment. these days it seems that our life is in beta version and everything around us is continuing to improve or adding new features to the services provided to us. I agree with you about that all the software are in beta.
Good point about MySpace failing because it didn’t constantly evolve. It also died because other platforms become more attractive, like Facebook. I’d suggest another aspect of Perpetual Beta involves competition. Facebook recently changed the size of profile photos in response to Google+ changing the size of theirs. I suspect they have people monitoring every design change that their competition makes in order to adapt, or do it better. It makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective to mimic what gets the best results.
if any company thinks that the initial software they release will last for a long time, they would be mistaken because they have to update their software all the time and keep their customers satisfied. if they dont this, they will lose their customers.
Facebook is one of those social applications that you either hate it or love it. & Even though I get annoyed by each major update that they do, especially timeline. It still won’t stop me from using Facebook due to it’s popularity. As for your last question In the web today you can’t really change anything from beta to a final product as the Web is always evolving.
Thanks Tony for answering the question. as software are always evolving not because the software company wants to change, but our needs have change and they way people deal with software these days.
It’s the Network Effects that are hard to pull away from. Yes Tony, Facbook is uber popular and while updates can be annoying, we all deal with it together by compalining, but secretly knowing we won’t ever quit. Why? Because that would be tantamount to breaking up a relationship with all our friends and family. Who would want to do that?! 😀
Facebook is indeed an example of Perpetual Beta, but also perpetual irritation. sometimes major changes like timeline tend to throw off users who sometimes just had their pages look and feel set up right, now comes thins change!It is a prime exmaple of Web 2.0 however Facebook needs to be more proactive in dealing with users and executing changes.
we say change is always good. I agree with you about Facebook changing too fast but in order to compete with their competitors they should keep adding new features whether we like or now. in addition, personally I like the new Timeline features because it is like travelling through time.
But seriously, Andre how many users feel “perpetual irritation”? If it were that bad they’d quit. Like I told Tony Tran, the Network Effects of friends and family are just too strong. We feel irritated together and that’s a bonding experience. FB will NEVER alter it’s platform in a way that will cause a damaging number of users to quit.
It is interesting to see how the Perpetual Beta works in practice in the case of such a large website like Facebook. I’m wondering whether they are actually consulting their users’ opinion when making such extensive service to their service, though. Also, do you know how they measure the effectiveness or popularity of the changes and new features? (if they measure them at all)
hello, I think they respond to users’ needs such as fixing the games, applications. however, when they implement a new service such as Timeline, they let it available for some customers and see how they react. if they reaction is acceptable they will give the other customers the ability to choose the have the new services. yet, eventually they will enforce it.
here is the measure of facebook video. this is just a service was implemented about a year ago.
http://allfacebook.com/march-video-views_b87368
nice post!:) i really believe that “agile develop model” and “Perpetual Beta” can effective complement each other. agile ensure that web2.0 application can “release early and release often” and quick to market. “Perpetual Beta” can help develop team get new ideas or bug report as soon as possible, therefore they can improve in next iterate and reduce risks.
in my own opinion, even i cannot deny that facebook may be the best social network i have saw, because of the fast growing requirement of users, facebook cannot stop their improvement step. due to their service and improvement will not stop, the Beta will never stop eigther!
I agree with you about the beta will never stop. however, to me change is good but the question is how do they measure the effective of the new features,, what about if all the users hate it .. is there any plan for roll-out ?? thanks for the comment … Beta is a part of our internet life, and we can just provide ideas for development 🙂
Hey Jaroodi,
I think the thing about Facebook is not only the improvements of bugs and system processes, Facebook has become a huge network that are increasing its value by expanding its community. There are so many websites that connects with Facebook and sync with Facebook’s account system. I think the important thing for Facebook is to improve its system to handle the massive amount of data which are still growing by time to provide a fluent environment for its users. Also, the website policy should definitely be look at and edit very often, since new method of using Facebook are constantly being create by both developers and users. So Facebook definitely needs to continue on updating and improving its system.
hello Wei-Hsuan,
facebook has changed a lot in the last few years just to accomodate their customers’ needs and adding new features in facebook allowed them to compete with another similar services. the constant release is a good way to keep facebook running.
WOW, so may comments here, I just want to say. Facebook’s updates and new features releasing that will influence billion of people in the world ,so it must be under strict control the management to do beta and update. Good post ,Thanks
hey Bo, I think Facebook has a release management strategy to keep track of the updates and in order to keep customers satisfied Facebook should keep their services enjoyable to their customers. thanks!
Hi Jaroodi, nice blog! enjoyed reading it! Facebook is definitely a good example, I think they will always be changing and looking at ways to improve there services. great blog.
thanks… yeah if they stop releasing new features, people would leave their platform 🙂
Facebook has the biggest population in the online world and they need to keep up with thier customers demands and needs. therefore, that’s why every time you log into facebook a new feature appears out of nowhare which is excited and you want to use it now matter what.. great read mate