Celebrating Beta Labs 1-year birthday
Today, we are celebrating* the 1-year birthday of Nokia Beta Labs. Go us!!!
Looking back at my email archives from April 2007, I found this humble email from the founder of Beta Labs, announcing the launch of it to a couple of Nokia insiders:
“As planned, this is a soft launch. No press releases, not OPK giving announcements to Reuters. But yes: please spread the word internally and externally to friendly bloggers and influencers.”
Darn right we did. Looking at digital archives, I was apparently the lucky one to break the news first (I didn’t work for Beta Labs then), followed by Stephen Johnston and Janne Jalkanen. And the story started spreading among the bloggers, including the usual suspects like Darla and rising stars like Stefan Constantinescu. Despite the whole concept being quite simple, people inside and outside Nokia seemed to just love it. And the rest is history. Or at least the beginning of a history…
So what have we achieved so far? Let’s see:
- 4+18 application launches
- huge usage growth: ~1M page views, ~200k downloads, and thousands of comments / month already
- vibrant user community: experimenting with new apps, sharing thoughts, and helping each other
- early signs of a massive culture change inside Nokia, towards co-creation and beta culture
Due to this early success, we have also had some challenges:
- Our current systems don’t scale. There’s pressing need to a major overhaul to the Beta Labs website and feedback systems.
- A single Mr.Beta doesn’t scale. I’m not an omniscient expert on all Beta Labs apps, and I can’t answer to most of your questions (see: Getting rid of the last middleman). Also, as Nokia is taking beta trials and co-creation increasingly seriously, my personal working bandwidth is going increasingly into work “behind the curtains”.
But these are good problems to have. And we have some good news: the operative Beta Labs personnel has now been doubled*. Our new Master’s Thesis worker Ilkka Peltola just introduced himself. Let’s make him feel welcome: go and drop him a comment!!
* = this invitation comes a bit late, I know, but does anybody want to go and have an after-work beer (at Helsinki Finland) to celebrate the birthday?
** = Beta Labs is a virtual organization, consisting of me and Ilkka as the operational team, and dozens of people in various support roles. Together, we do our best to help Nokia R&D teams (hundreds or thousands of people) and the beloved user community (~100k people and counting) to shape the future together.
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday dear Beta Labs
Happy Birthday to you…
Here’s to another year of a Bigger / Better Beta labs
Comment by Solitaire — April 16, 2008 @ 3:50 pm
Happy Birthday…Beta is the base of innovations in Nokia
Comment by Nomee — April 16, 2008 @ 4:42 pm
Great! Happy birthday Beta Labs! Wish you nothing but success in projects to come
Comment by Bogdan Galiceanu — April 16, 2008 @ 4:54 pm
Paljon onnea vaan…
Comment by krisse — April 16, 2008 @ 4:59 pm
Happy Birthday! May the next year be even better than the last!
You want to reduce your role and scale? Turn the Beta Labs Blog into the Beta Labs Blog Network! Think of Microsoft’s MSDN Network or Sun’s Blogger Network where they have individual employees blogging.
Let the people developing the beta applications start their own blog and let them handle their beta testers directly, but contain all the blogs into a single blog network.
I think we’re going to need another meeting, you still owe me that beer!
Comment by Stefan Constantinescu — April 16, 2008 @ 5:01 pm
Thanks everyone!
> Let the people developing the beta applications start their own blog
You know, Stefan, we just might try this
Comment by Tommi Vilkamo — April 16, 2008 @ 5:06 pm
[…] http://betalabs.nokia.com/blog/2008/04/16/celebrating-beta-labs-1-year-birthday/ […]
Pingback by Nokia Beta Labs is 1 TODAY « nokiAAddict.com — April 16, 2008 @ 5:54 pm
Happy Birthday!
Comment by Adam Dempsey — April 16, 2008 @ 7:01 pm
Happy birthday!
In March 2007 I discovered S60 with a N73. Some time after (1,5 month) I discovered Beta Labs. Now (with an E90, E50, N73 and waiting for a N95 8Gb and something like an E71) I became a Nokia admirer.
Now I advise everyone to by Nokia and visit regularly Beta Labs. Nokia is having a great moment and Beta Labs shows it pretty well.
Thank you for your work!
Comment by Jorge Dinis — April 16, 2008 @ 7:56 pm
Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear Nokia Beta Labs, Happy Birthday to YOU!…
I take it nothing will be released from Nokia Beta Labs today then?
A big thanks goes out to the Nokia Beta Labs team for some great FREE applications over the last year, especially my all time favourite app of 1997 which was the Nokia Internet Radio Player, but also very close behind are Share Online, Conversation, Nokia Audiobooks and the fat buster app Nokia Sports Tracker.
Its been an impressive year, so hopefully you can surpass it this year and bring out some even better applications, mmm is that possible????
Comment by gerrymoth — April 16, 2008 @ 8:00 pm
@ Stefan
Love the bloging idea, Don’t think every project needs a separate blog but a post from a programmer, designer or (day I say it!) someone from P.R./Marketing, once a product graduates would be nice. But that’s a job for Tommi to work out
Comment by Solitaire — April 16, 2008 @ 9:02 pm
Happy Birthday!!!
Congratulations Tommi and good luck to Ilkka
Comment by nbelousov — April 16, 2008 @ 9:33 pm
This is your birthday song, it isn’t very long. *clap clap clap*
Comment by Fernando — April 16, 2008 @ 10:30 pm
I would like to know one thing. In one year, quite all of us installed and commented many good or bad apps from NBL. What app do you still use, I’m curious to know. For me Internet Radio is still working and working everyday. A poll maybe?
Comment by horia — April 16, 2008 @ 10:52 pm
Wa-hey! Congratulations
Comment by Janne Jalkanen — April 16, 2008 @ 11:40 pm
[…] http://betalabs.nokia.com/blog/2008/04/16/celebrating-beta-labs-1-year-birthday/ […]
Pingback by Happy Birthday Nokia Beta Labs « New Service Creation — April 17, 2008 @ 5:54 am
This is the best site Nokia has to offer, for me anyway. Your apps are great.
Congrats on one year.
Cheers.
Comment by Don — April 17, 2008 @ 10:09 am
Happy Birthday! And keep up the good work !
Comment by Jfkcro — April 18, 2008 @ 1:12 am
Cheers! Not exactly an active poster, but I am a frequent visiter of the site, and really love it! Happy Birthday!
Comment by Chris — April 18, 2008 @ 7:48 am
Wishing you many more happy returns of the day….Keep Going. Best years are ahead of you
Comment by Senthil — April 18, 2008 @ 8:32 am
Hooray!
Comment by charlie — April 18, 2008 @ 10:37 am
congratulations for the great job during the first year. I love your applications. Go on.
Comment by marcos — April 20, 2008 @ 2:54 am
[…] LINK UFFICIALE!!! […]
Pingback by Novita' Symbian: News Super aggiornate ogni giorno,Temi freeware solo su SymbianPlanet! » TANTI AUGURI NOKIA BETALABS!!! — April 21, 2008 @ 11:14 am
Thanks for All Guys!!!
Happy Birthday!!!
Comment by Mauikek — April 21, 2008 @ 11:17 am
Happy Birthday!!
Comment by Freedom — April 21, 2008 @ 12:19 pm
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