Software Testing Blog

And by trophies, we mean nearly $4000 in cash prizes.

Yes, the results of the Battle of the Desktop Twitter Apps are final. The week-long QA competition – in which more than 600 testers  searched for bugs in five of the most popular Twitter apps – was a  success. As expected, we received hundreds (320 to be exact) of interesting GUI, technical and functional bugs, so selecting a handful of winners was obviously no easy task.

In fact, it was so difficult that we decided to expand our winners list. Also, be sure to download our free special report (PDF), detailing the results of the post-battle usability survey.

As you’ll see from the results page, the Battle of the Desktop Twitter Apps saw several repeat winners, along with some fresh, new uTest talent. Here’s a top-line list of the winners:

• Top Tester: Bernard Lelchuck (Israel)
• Top Novice: Tyler Ritchie (USA)
• Top US Tester: Joseph Ours

Tyler and Bernard also finished 1st and 2nd in the “Best Bug” category. Other winners for “Best Bug” included:

• Claire Pelayo (Philippines)
• Bryan Fisk (New Zealand)
• Aymen Chehaider (India)

As far as the apps were concerned, the uTest community ranked Tweet Deck #1 in terms of usability, feature set and overall quality. Coming in second (also in every category) was Seesmic Desktop, followed by Twirl, Tweetr and Twitteroo.

The results have already been featured in a Mashable story yesterday, ase well as a bunch of other news outlets, and of course, hundreds of individual tweets.

Once again, congratulations to all of the Bug Battle winners, and thanks to all those from our community who participated. If you’re aleady looking forward to our next competition – and we know you are – be sure to send us your ideas. We can be reached at marketing@utest.com, and of course, on Twitter.

The bug hunting portion of our Q2 Bug Battle is now history. Although testers are no longer looking for bugs in the top 6 Twitter applications – like they were for the last seven days -  they can still win prize money for submitting valuable feedback.

So if you were one of the hundreds of testers who participated in our now famous bug hunting competition, be sure to visit the uTest Forums and complete the brief survey. If you’re looking for tips on leaving valuable feedback, you can find that in the forums as well. NOTE: You have until midnight (EST) on Saturday, June 6 to complete the survey.

We’ll be announcing the official results shortly, so be sure to check back in regularly for more details. We’ve got to keep quiet for now (top-secret stuff, you know) but from what we’ve seen so far, the results have been predictably twitterific – err – terrific.

Once more, great job to all those from our community who participated. We’re looking forward to reading your survey responses. Good luck!

Quick update after 1 1/2 days of action from our 2nd quarter Bug Battle that’s comparing and evaluating the top six Twitter desktop apps:

1.    Tweet Deck 0.25
2.    Seesmic DESKTOP
3.    Twhirl 0.9.2
4.    Tweetr 3.4
5.    Twitterific 3.2 (mac only)
6.    Twitteroo 1.5 (pc only)

We’ve already had more than 400 testers participate and 150+ bugs, including a few verrrrry interesting defects.  The bar has been raised, but we’re looking forward to seeing what this weekend produces.

Want updated Bug Battle results? Check out the uTest on LinkedIn, our Facebook group, follow uTest on Twitter, or hit our testers-only forums.

Remember, the Bug Battle ends Wednesday, June 3rd and there’s more than $3,000 in prize money at stake.  Happy weekend and happy (bug) hunting!

After web browsers and social media sites, you were probably wondering how we’d top ourselves for the next uTest Bug Battle. Well, after months of debate and deliberation, uTesters will compete to find bugs in six of the top Twitter desktop apps!

Unless you’ve been asleep, in a coma, or camping in the wilderness for the past two years, you’re likely aware that the Twitterverse is expanding at a mind boggling rate (thanks, Ashton and Oprah). And since hundreds of apps have been created around the popular micro-blogging site, we figured they’d make a perfect subject for our now famous Bug Battle. Here are the Twitter apps we’ll be testing, in no particular order:

1.    Tweet Deck 0.25
2.    Seesmic DESKTOP
3.    Twhirl 0.9.2
4.    Tweetr 3.4
5.    Twitterific 3.2 (mac only)
6.    Twitteroo 1.5 (pc only)

The contest kicks off RIGHT NOW (12:01am ET on Thursday) and will run through 11:59pm ET next Wednesday, June 3rd.

During that time, members of our QA community will be searching for the most serious, compelling bugs they can find, including technical, functional and GUI bugs. uTesters can focus their efforts on as many or as few of these as they choose.  We will be awarding more than $3,000 in prize money for:

* Top overall tester (based on quality of bugs and feedback)
* Top novice tester (same criteria)
* Top US-based tester (same)
* Top five individual bugs (severity and complexity)
* Best feedback (post-contest survey about the feature set, functionality and usability)

You can get more info on the Twitter Bug Battle. To find out how you – yes you! – can win the money finding bugs in these Twitter applications, be sure to check out the Bug Battle thread in our testers-only forums.

Have questions or ideas for future Bug Battles? Drop us a comment. Want to keep up with the Bug Battle action while it’s going on?  We’ll be sharing real-time updates throughout the weeklong Twitter contest on (where else?) Twitter.

Apologies for the alliteration, but things have been ultra-busy around the halls of uTest this week.  The reason our phones have been ringing off the hook is because we announced the results of our 1st Quarter Bug Battle on Tuesday.

In case you missed it, we’ve received some fantastic media coverage in the past few days.  Who knew the world would be so interested in the results of 1,000+ QA professionals from 64 countries simultaneously testing the world’s three most popular networking sites?  Ok, well we had a pretty good idea they’d care, but we’re glad it captured their attention.  Here are a few of the noteworthy articles:

- TechCrunch: uTest Bug Battle: Which Social Network Is The Buggiest?
- Dr. Dobbs: Bugs In Social Networking Software? You’re Kidding, Right?
- eWeek:  Facebook Triumphs LinkedIn, MySpace in uTest’s Bug Battle

Our community’s ability to mobilize quickly and provide real-world testing coverage is making a strong impression on a growing number of companies.  These firms are looking for ways to do more with less — and the uTest community is primed to help them meet their QA needs.  Keep up the good work!

After a great deal of scrutiny and some lively internal debates, we’re excited to announce the results of our latest Bug Battle!

A quick recap: Over the course of a week, 1,119 testers from 64 countries competed to find bugs in the three leading social networking platforms: Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. In all, our testing community found a total of 718 bugs, with 84 of those deemed as “showstopper” issues (i.e. bugs warranting immediate action).

Here’s a breakdown of the final numbers from the Bug Battle report (PDF):

Facebook:  416 uTesters found 243 bugs (.58 bugs/tester), including 14.40% that were deemed showstoppers by the tester
LinkedIn:  399 uTesters found 250 bugs (.63 bugs/tester), including 9.78% that were deemed  showstoppers by the tester.
MySpace:  304 uTesters found 225 bugs (.74 bugs/tester), including 10.80% that were deemed showstoppers by the tester

Here are the key findings from our Bug Battle survey:

Testers’ choice for best overall quality:
1.LinkedIn (45%)
2.Facebook (37%)
3.MySpace (17%)

Testers’ choice for best usability:
1.Facebook (39%)
2.LinkedIn (38%)
3.MySpace (17%)

Testers’ choice for best feature set:
1.Facebook (46%)
2.LinkedIn (36%)
3.MySpace (18%)

Once again, congratulations to the Bug Battle winners, and thanks to the uTest community for your participation and enthusiasm.  Your software testing prowess always impresses us and we can’t wait to see what bugs you uncover next.  Speaking of which…

We’ve got a few ideas for our 2nd quarter Bug Battle, but we’d love to hear your suggestions.  To get the ball rolling, here are a few ideas we’ve been kicking around:

• Instant messenger tools
• Web mail programs
• Top Facebook apps
• Top iPhone apps

Tomorrow we’re going to announce some very interesting findings and discoveries from the social networking Bug Battle, but today we want to highlight the winners.

Top Tester ($1,000) – Ranchhod Prajapati
Top Novice ($750) – Evan Dinsmore
Top USA Tester ($500) - Supraja Addala Prasad

LinkedIn:

Best Bug ($200) – Ranchhod Prajapati
Best Feedback ($200) – Suriyaprabha Jeevagan

MySpace:

Best Bug ($200) – Jegan Surya
Best Feedback ($200) – Supraja Addala Prasad

Facebook:

Best Bug ($200) – Evan Dinsmore
Best Feedback ($200) – Lucia Maldonado (repeat winner!)

The uTest community submitted some really great bugs and feedback for this competition and picking winners from such a great list of submissions was incredibly difficult. Our community really knows their stuff, and we were all amazed at the incredible quality and quantity of bugs that were submitted.

I want to congratulate all of the testers who participated and we hope to see you in the next Bug Battle. Until then, happy testing!

Last November, more than 500 of you tested Firefox 3.1 beta as part of our first Bug Battle, finding over 200 bugs in the process (24% of which you deemed showstoppers). Well, in case you missed it, Mozilla recently announced the upcoming release of Firefox 3.5, saying they were scrapping the 3.1 version on account of – you guessed it – the number of bugs in this app. Here’s an excerpt from the story on TG Daily:

…Beta 4 is due for release on April 14, but that date is more of a guideline than a deadline given the number of remaining bugs — nearly 100 were found so far, at least three of which are still “Priority 1 Blockers” (serious bugs).

Fixing is “On Track” for the largest bugs, according to Mozilla and is focused on upgrade compatibility, performance and better controls for video.

Beta 3 is mostly a bug-fix release. However, according to the Mozilla Developer Center pages, Firefox 3.1 will be renamed to Firefox 3.5 after the Beta 3 release. The reason: Pure marketing on one side, and the substantial number of improvements as well as the large number of new features such as private browsing and the Tracemonkey JavaScript engine, on the other.

uTesters gave Firefox 3.1 beta great reviews after the last Bug Battle, and so I suspect 3.5 will have even more enthusiasts this time around. Can’t wait for the launch to think about testing the new version? Then be sure to check out Mozilla‘s QA page.

Our Bug Battle of the Social Networks is now open and running.  Starting on Wed, Feb 11th, uTesters can test the quality, features and usability of MySpace, LinkedIn, and Facebook.  The top testers will receive prizes ranging from $200 to $1,000 for showing us the best bugs and feedback — more than $3,500 in total prize money!

Visit our Bug Battle homepage for more details.  Also, make sure you read our Tips to Win the Bug Battle.

So if you’re a uTester, get started today.  And if you’re not yet a uTester, join our community and take part in the fun.  Good luck!