What is beta?

Wikipedia sums it up pretty nicely: "Beta" is a nickname for software which has passed the alpha testing stage of development and has been released to users for software testing before its official release.

Why?

I think I've done a pretty good job of finding a lot of bugs over the development of the site. Me and a few other monkeys have typed furiously at our keyboards and we're pretty proud of ourselves. So far in fact that we think the site does not have any major flaws. The beta is there to cover my ass just in case you do find an error. It is my hidden agenda that when you find that bug, my server will tell me about it, and I will swoop in and fix it so it will no longer occur. Yep, that's why they (wait that's me) pay me the big bucks (I'm paying myself!).

Oh, and Google did it on some of their websites for more than 10 years. So not only is my virtual behind saved, I also look really "with it" and hip to the other websites on the net. My site wants to be cool too, mKay? Just think, you can say stuff like, "Yeah, well I was around in the beta days. Crap was crazy man." And the other person will say, "Wasn't that like last week?"