uTest was formed in August 2008 and employs 30 people in their Southboro, Mass. headquarters
If you’ve ever worked in or around a web startup, you know one of the biggest tasks in creating anything new for the web involves finding “bugs” — problems in functionality and coding — and “squashing” them. Even if you have no idea what that entails, you can understand that making sure everything works properly on a website or mobile application is important.
The truth is, a lot of web startups and major companies alike simply don’t have the resources to make sure everything is working before they must go to market. That’s where uTest comes in, and they have 24,000 professional squashers in 163 countries who they pay for these special skills.
Every fiscal quarter, uTest hosts a special “Bug Battle,” where they sick their best testers on major web properties — from e-retailers to search engines — to see what they can find. This quarter’s Bug Battle involved the web properties of NBC, CBS, ABC, and FOX. According to a statement released yesterday, approximately 500 of their pros found 908 bugs in a week’s time, and earned a total of $4,000 in prize money from uTest for this work, which was not solicited by the networks.
“We were really taking a look at all their online properties — their websites, applications, video players, message boards, rating systems, and phone applications. So it was a look at their entire digital presence,” said Matt Johnston, vice president of marketing and communication at uTest in a phonecall today. “This was our sixth Bug Battle.”
uTest is careful to make sure their Bug Battles focus on big, established companies so they’re not picking on the little guys. You might think businesses like these would be upset to have their problems exposed by a company like uTest, but according to Johnston, that’s not usually the case.
“The response has been refreshingly open-minded. By that, I mean that typically two-thirds of the companies [involuntarily squashed in the Bug Battles] have reached out to us after the fact. We make no secret of the fact that we’re willing to share the quality bugs free of charge,” he said. “We’re really not trying to burn anyone. This is something fun for our [testing] community. We view this as a community engagement, not a marketing project.
“I won’t name names, but some of them have actually gone on to become customers of uTest.”
uTest uncovered some serious bugs in this Bug Battle, but don’t worry if you use the properties these TV networks operate. None of the bugs were security- or privacy-related.
The company has three levels of security for customers to choose from to ensure that nothing their testers go through will ever be revealed to the competition, and perhaps the coolest thing about these paid squashers is that uTest can find bugs on any operating system, in any language, and on any browser or phone since their testing community is so large. Companies simply tell uTest what kind of parameters they want for the test and uTest does the rest in virtually no time at all. Their top testers make as much as $3,000 per month in their spare time squashing bugs for uTest.
If you’re a pro tester, uTest is definitely something worth checking out. However, even if you’re not a pro, but you consider yourself web savvy, you might want to contact them. According to Johnston, simply having the right model Android or iPhone might qualify you to make some money checking out unreleased stuff for uTest.
So who will be uTest’s next set of victims — eh hem — Bug Battle targets?
“We’re always on the lookout for suggestions. It’s wide open at this point. We don’t actually decide what the Q2 Bug Battle will be until the end of April. If your readers have any ideas, you can send them to marketing [at] utest [dot] com.”
To learn more about this Bug Battle, you can view the full PDF report released yesterday, which includes rankings for which of these major four networks ranked highest in a myriad of categories. For more on becoming a tester for uTest, be sure to check out their website, utest.com. You can also follow them on Twitter @uTest.
Tags: ABC, CBS, Company News, Company Profiles, Edu, FOX, NBC, uTest
