Kiwis as guinea pigs

IN MEDICINE, trials are conducted on guinea pigs, rats, mice and rabbits. In digital businesses, tests are performed on New Zealanders. Their country is proving the perfect location for software firms, social networks and app developers discreetly to try out and refine their products. Take Microsoft, which last year made New Zealand its first test market for Sway, a new app that helps users create websites, and which has since been released into other markets. Other big technology firms, including Facebook and Yahoo, also use New Zealand as a development lab, as do games companies and small startups.

Firms preparing to launch new products need to discover and fix any bugs before releasing them, and to see whether their servers can support lots of users at the same time. It could prove fatal to a young firm if problems emerge only after the products are up for sale on the Apple and Google app stores. Developers could concentrate their testing on, say, one American state or city, but customers for digital products are so prone to sharing things among their social-media contacts that it would be hard to keep the trial under wraps for long, says Ivan Kirigin, a software entrepreneur.