I’ve been feeling lately like maybe I wasn’t being beta enough.

Having made a job change, I’ve been focusing on remembering old technologies (like the wires) and having very little time for new ones (like Google+).

Was I slipping? About to lose my early adopter cred, I wondered?

Then, a project we launched at work (my employer, Dell) this week showed me I’ve still got it.

You see, we’re partnering with Microsoft and Mastercard on a contest to find “America’s Favorite Small Business.” The contest involves submitting a video through YouTube to enter. Nothing really new there. User-generated content (UGC) contests have been around for several years now.

But, the day the contest launched I went to our YouTube channel to check it out and didn’t see it. There were some of our videos related to the contest, but none of the interface that explained it and allowed contestants to upload their entries.

At first I thought I was just looking too early. Usually when you launch something, there are a few bugs to be worked out. But, it was the same the next day and everyone else was saying it looked good.

What was I missing?

Then, I remembered … it was a panda.

You see, a while back I opted in to YouTube’s Cosmic Panda – a beta test of a new design – and evidently, custom iFrame implementation is not supported in Cosmic Panda.

This caused some concern when I raised the issue with the project team and there was a bit of alarm for a day or so when we thought that 10 percent of YouTube visitors were on Cosmic Panda.

But YouTube came back to assure us (bringing visions of my illustration here) that:

“The new YouTube brand channel designs are being tested less than 1 percent of users who can revert to the classic channels whenever they choose.”

Whew! Most people really will see all that hard work that went into building out the contest.

And, whew! I’m part of a group that is less than 1 percent of users. I’ve still go it! <wink>