uTest has reaised $1.7m for it’s croud-sourced QA service, which is expected to launch in early 2008. It’s very oDesk’y, and if they pull it off, with the right testers, I can see it becoming popular within it’s niche market, which will likely mostly be web and software firms.

QA is something that is better done by people other than the team who built the application or website, and because in most cases there are little privacy/legal issues with outsourcing this element of a development project, it’s a popular option.

I’d still like to play with it before deciding whether I like it, especially how it covers the different levels of QA. E.g. I kinda doubt they’ll have a group of novice web users to test usability issues, I feel it’ll more be the Elance or oDesk crowd. But if they can do the former, great. Pricing will also be interesting to see. I’d like to see different depths of testing, say for 500 “general surfers” or one or two in-depth pro reports e.t.c.

Thanks to Roi Carthy @ TechCrunch