Microsoft has ended its Windows Live Butterfly program, which provided a forum for IT pros to play with the betas of the newest Microsoft products before their public release. For those users, Microsoft is offering a number of new options, including MVP program membership and access to future beta testing.
Microsoft is officially ending its Windows Live Butterfly program, which let a select
group of testers poke and prod at the newest Microsoft products in beta before
public release. The company announced the shutdown of the program, previously
known as MSN Butterfly, on July 1.
"Rather than continue the program as something only focused
on beta testing, were offering the group a variety of options to
engage in the
broader Windows Live community," said an accompanying Microsoft
statement, "including the opportunity to join the MVP [most valuable
professional] program
and continued and future access to beta testing opportunities."
Windows Live Butterfly structured itself as more of
a community, with beta testers not only able to submit feedback on
upcoming
Windows Live products, but also comment and vote on others
assessments. Termed "Butterflies" by Microsoft, the testers would
evaluate a program as it moved
back and forth between beta and release, offering new opinions each
time.
Being a Butterfly came with perks, most notably the access to
any Windows Live beta, as well as a private newsgroup not to mention the
occasional "thank you" message from Microsoft itself.
However, former Butterflies discussed what they saw as issues
with the program.
"There were some systemic problems with having non-IT pros as
beta testers," Kip Kniskern, a former Butterfly, wrote in a July 2 posting on LiveSide.net,
which follows Microsoft Live and Bing news. "While the feedback we provided (and
some of it was loud and long) ultimately made the products we tested better,
turns out we couldnt really write a bug report to save our
lives."
In June 2006, according to Kniskern, Microsoft initiated a
purge of sorts, in which the company "dumped testers who werent filing bug
reports (including, ahem, me), and pared down the program by (guessing) 75
percent or so."
It would take another three years, however, before Microsoft
decided to kill the program altogether.