Betas are an important part of the product development process at MSN.  They help us take software we write and get it ready to run at enormous scale.  In order to do this, we absolutely need to get feedback from real customers using our services in real scenarios so we can figure out if it works right and if it works at scale.  At Microsoft, we love to wallow in our own internal techie developer mud pit, but that usually does not help us ship the kind of software we want to deliver to our consumers. 

That's why we're approaching things a bit differently with our web mail beta.

When we decided to start from scratch and build an entirely new service, we knew that we had to put real customers at the center of our development process, involve them very early, and often.  The team believes strongly that this is the only way we can build a product you will love -- because after the process we are hoping you told us what you wanted, and we delivered it.

This is a long journey and it means that early on we needed to put our work out there way before it was done.  By engaging a small set of customers early in the development process so we can tailor the new product to the needs of real mail users.  We understand that a consequence of this approach exposes some of the early “warts” – and we need them exposed so we can fix them -- but if we waited until all the work was done, what would we do with feedback?

So if we're not perfect right now, we're not surprised, the product is not yet done (and not all the features are in).  Please keep the feedback coming, we are loving it all.  The mail team gives a respectful tip of the hat to our great beta test team who has been helping us tune, tweak and polish the new product.  Your fingerprints will still be in the clay when we stick this thing in the fire.

Thanks,
The mail beta team

- posted by Reeves