Know your ABG's

Adding a greek letter to your name is a prerequisite in the web 2.0 world.



It's so common that it has lost all meaning. 'Beta' used to mean you were testing something for a period of time before it went out to the public.



For a time, Flickr was correctly using 'Beta', when it was invite-only and actually being tested.



Somehow, since then, 'Beta' has come to mean that the site is still being developed. Or, more likely, it means that it has no source of funding or sustainable business model -- so they can go to the VCs and say "we need funding to get out of beta"



'Beta' should not be a badge of honor. It's confusing to anyone outside of the industry (and who knows what 'alpha' and 'gamma' mean).



If I were Riffs, I'd be worried that I did become successful, and everyone was calling me 'AlphaRiffs'



So -- stop it. The web is constantly under development by its very nature, either you're bug testing and shouldn't be open to the public, or you're live. Enough of the greek alphabet.