The future is in beta—and now, so are you

“The future is in beta,” a wise man once told me. For the Daily Dot, the forward-looking publication that we’re building, the future is now. Our beta test has begun.

If you’ve made your way to this page, you’re one of the few trusted souls to whom we’ve granted access. Either you’ve subscribed to our newsletter, emailed me or a colleague to express your enthusiasm for our project, or won the trust of the Daily Dot’s startup team. However you got here, we’re glad you made it and are looking forward to hearing your brutally honest feedback and suggestions.

For those of you who are new around these parts, the Daily Dot is the hometown newspaper of the World Wide Web. What does that mean? We cover what happens in online communities such as Facebook and Reddit just the way a traditional newspaper covered the town you grew up in. We’re not local or hyperlocal in the sense of a physical space—but we believe the principles that guided local community publications will serve us well in the Internet’s new geographies of the mind.

Read more about us, learn a little more about the founding team, or just ask us if you’re still curious.

One thing I’d like your feedback on is our categories. I’m frankly skeptical about most websites’ tradition-bound organization by categories. But we needed some as a starting point, and we picked some of the Web communities we cover, including Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Etsy, YouTube, and Tumblr, as ways to view our reportage. What do you think of that concept, and what communities should we expand to next?

As you read stories, feel free to comment on stories and share them. While you won’t be able to share full access to the site with friends yet, you’ll be able to share links that anyone can view, even without a beta invite. (We’ve been using that one-off sharing to circulate our reporting for a couple of weeks: You may have seen a link to a story on Facebook or Twitter.)

A key new feature we’re launching with this beta are our leaderboards. Working in partnership with Ravel, a data consultancy, we’re analyzing the users of our communities on a range of metrics. By examining their activity, we’re trying to identify the most active and influential members and draw other insights. (Yes, Tumblr users like pretty pictures—but what does that mean?) I view this effort to understand online communities through the data they throw off as the next generation of shoe-leather reporting: It’s the hard work that leads to story ideas you can’t get any other way.

We’ve started with Reddit and Tumblr. Feel free to explore the data—and if you’re an active user on either of those sites, you might want to see if you’ve made the cut.

As our CEO and cofounder, Nick White, recently wrote, product development shouldn’t happen in private. So we’re really psyched to have gotten the site to a point where we can share it with you. Now comes your part in helping shape the Daily Dot’s future.

We’ll gradually open up the site to others—you’ll be getting invites to share with friends soon—but for now, consider this beta your playground. Explore, read our stories, and tell us what you think. And definitely tell us if something’s wrong. We welcome your feedback at betafeedback@dailydot.com.

p.s. Many of you likely already subscribe to Dot Dot Dot, our weekly email newsletter. If you do, don’t worry—it’s not going anywhere. If you haven’t, subscribe now.

Photo by Darren Johnson