Today's blog post is all about
“Perpetual Beta” the next pattern as defined by Tim O'Reilly at a
Web 2.0 conference all those years ago. The traditional approach to
software development is defined by the software development life cycle. Its a process that involves a number of steps to be taken
before any software updates are released to the user base, usually
its a long time between releases. A perpetual beta approach to Web
2.0 platforms involves continuously providing bug fixes and adding
features. This approach has a number of benefits:
- Faster time to market
- Increased responsiveness
- Reduced risk
- Closer relationship with the customers
- Access to real time data
I will compare Delicious a social
booking marking website, similar to StumbleUpon against this pattern.
After creating an account users can add websites to their account,
creating a list of favourite sites. Each site can be tagged, and a
descriptive note can be attached. Users share links making the site
community driven.
How does Delicious match the perpetual
beta pattern? Delicious is an ongoing service, providing fixes as
required. The users are the testers, by continued use on various
devices, users are actually testing the platform under varied
situations and environments. A task not possible via in-house
testing. It is critical for modern platforms to engage users in real
time testing, and to structure the service to reveal how people use
their service. This analysis of usage allows the platform to
perpetually update their website to meet the needs of their user
base. Information gathered is also used to make decisions about future directions for the platform.
Some of the recent updates to Delicious
showing their quick continuous release cycle:
On January 20, 2012, Delicious added more social features into its Stacks page, allowing users to collaborate on the same Stack, as a public Stack or a private Stack among a group of users.
On March 2, 2012, Delicious continued its effort to be more social, by providing a Twitter Connector that allows users to connect their Twitter accounts to their Delicious accounts. This new feature allows links tweeted on Twitter to be automatically saved into the Delicious account.
The frequent updating of the platform
creates a presence, users know developers are there, and are active
in adding new features, and fixing bugs. The future of Delicious is
looking bright, they are proactive in adding new features for their
users to enjoy and encouraging a social community environment.
References:
Hi Elizabeth,
ReplyDeleteNice post. After reading your post I decided to check out Delicious myself and it's definitely a good example of Perpetual beta, as are most networking platforms.
I did a bit of a background check on Delicious with regards to their uptime/downtime and it's evident they've kept the service up and running almost 24/7 - yet when researching videos on older versions of the service you can see some dramatic changes have been made!
Delicious in 2008:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uyw_wJr3zwQ
Small section of Delicious' up-time history:
http://social.downornot.com/9839/130725/del.icio.us
Thanks!
I think the new owners are keen to improve Delicious and extend the social networking features.
DeleteIt is interesting to see how more and more service are incorporating the Perpetual Beta pattern into their daily operations. I am sure that in a few years this will be the norm how all web based services will operate. Thanks for the interesting article.
ReplyDeleteI agree the quick to market features and bug fixes, make the perpetual beta philosophy the preferred method for the future.
DeleteHi Elizabeth. Great post on Delicious. It looks like a site that could really benefit from user input to better design it. Do you think Delicious will continue to undergo drastic changes for a long time? Or will they eventually find a design and layout that they will be able to stick to for longer periods of time?
ReplyDeleteHard to say really. A lot of the redesign is due to new owners last year, and they seem to have a clear direction. I can only guess, once they find a design that works, and allows better social media interaction, they will stick with it. I would think they would want to settle on a design, as UI is important, once its right, its best not to keep altering, otherwise their user-base will probably get sick of having to relearn.
DeleteInformative post Elizabeth! Always good to learn about new and interesting sites that offer these cool services. My question to you is why do you think some sites use perpetual beta, and why some don’t? What exactly are the advantages and disadvantages to this form of how they update their content?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment. As to why some use perpetual beta and some don't, I couldn't really answer that. Probably depends on company structure or beliefs. Some may try to emulate the old method, instead of embracing the new.
DeleteI think "perpetual beta" is really necessary for all sites. in the web 2.0, as the service supplier, they should provider 24hours service to user. "perpetual beta" make this mission possible. because there is still theory "What users do often tells you more than what they say
Delete", some site may use Shadow Applications collected users information and implement "perpetual beta" implicitly
Well as usual, nice post (im sure you get sick of hearing that :)), cant say i have ever used Delicious but it does sound like the sort of site that thrives of user input and testing. Creating a presence is definitely important in any web2.0 application nowadays, i certainly notice that developers are there when more frequent updates are released. I really do hate it when developers release a block of updates, i honestly cant be bothered a lot of the time and i will just run an older version of the software for longer than i probably should. Thanks for the nice read anyway, your blog deserves more comments!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the positive comment. I am the same, I don't update software on my laptop all the time, I usually wait until I get around to it, rather than checking every day for updates to apply.
Delete