Whilst browsing my favorite design/standards based sites, I noticed a post about an up and coming site. I’m not going to name names, but this particular site just happened to have a “Beta” styled launch page. It was no different from any other coming soon page I’ve seen in the last little while, containing the name of the site, purpose of the site, and a little input for your email so you may be notified of it’s launch. On any other day I wouldn’t have cared, I mean there are beta pages everywhere now a days, but today I noticed that some very good designers in contraversy over the news.

The issue started when one designer (remember, I’m not naming names here) called this comming soon deelie a fad, that everyone’s doing them when they’re not neccessary. To be honest I kind of agree with him, not because I respect him so much, but because one shouldn’t be launching a product with out any product to sell. This is where I started to trip over myself, I thought “this is entirely hypocritical, I put up ‘coming soon’ pages all the time” so fad or not I’m as guilty of the charge as any web two point hoe start up. I constantly change my mind and destroy sites, but I can’t greet new comers with nothing, they have to know that something’s going on here, that they haven’t reached the end of the internet.

I then began to wonder why does anyone put up a “beta” page? Then it hit me like a ton of bricks, to create hype about the property. Now for the post in question, and the controversy surrounding it, I had to look at it again. This person didn’t post the site to show off his skills, or to make anyone angry, they did it to create interest in the brand. We as humans have a horrible weakness called curiosity, we just can’t keep on our side of the fence, we need to know what’s on the other side. This has been capitalized on by every web start up since I can remember, and in short, it works. How many people waited and drooled over Google Analytics? Or Newsvine? I know that I was so very anxious while waiting for a service to go live, and I can’t be the only one.

These coming soon pages can’t be called a fad then, as they’ve been around forever (that and Ryan Sims would be one of the biggest fad-followers as of recent), but one can conclude that the use of the term “beta” is. I mean Google’s cool right? And most of their services are probably not even destined to leave beta. In fact I think there’s something about the word that makes people light up, as if there’s some promise of good at the end of the road.

So, if you want to be original and not a fad-follower, refrain from the use of the word “beta”, even though it’s possible to still be cool after using it, take for example Jared Christensen (beautiful site by the way). Maybe it’d be better if we all just stayed away from all the buzzwords and other fad related stuff, cause that makes us cooler than everyone that follows the norm. Hopefully not everyone will take my advice, otherwise I’ll have to go back to using the old fads, as using none of them will soon become a fad, what a paradox.

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