Beta Labs blows out its first birthday candle

INTERNATIONAL – This week sees Nokia Beta Labs celebrate its first birthday. Headed up by Tommi Vilkamo and his small team, it’s kind of incredible to have witnessed how quickly Beta Labs has matured into such a dynamic site fuelled by an invaluably engaged community.

Sure, measuring success in terms of the number of application launches is fine, but the real triumph has got to be the level of constructive dialogue and open communication that’s been built up over the past year between the site and users. You can have all the technical brains, but without this shared passion and transparent interaction I’m certain we wouldn’t have seen the progressive software that’s come out the other side of Beta Labs.

Tommi posted about their birthday on the Beta Labs blog yesterday afternoon:

“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‚Ķ”

How important do you reckon a site such as Beta Labs is to pushing the boundaries of mobile applications?