Hello again.
I was aiming to post an update sooner, but wow things have been so busy here ...
First up is Mobile World Congress. Thanks to all the people that came over to the Telefonica Stand at Mobile World Congress, or bumped into us at various other events during the week and said hi. You can read a diary of the week on my blog here: www.jamesparton.info
The week was incredibly successful in spreading the word about O2 Litmus, and already we are starting to see some of the benefits. We have had a number of new applications loaded onto the site, with the promise of more to come.
What was especially pleasing was we were able to get Fring on O2 Litmus within days of them winning the prestigious Mobile Monday Peer Awards in Barcelona. Getting award winning quality apps can only enhance the reputation of Litmus and attract more developers to join us.
Off the back of the press release we had a lot of interest from the media and analysts out there. When we sat down 1-2-1 with journalists and talked them through why O2 Litmus is not just another app store or developer community they really understood what we were trying to pull together.
I have linked to many of the key articles written about Litmus from my Delicious account, which you can view here: http://delicious.com/jamesparton
Clearly it is early days for us, and because we are trying to do something unique here it will take time for the message to spread. I want to thank both the Developers and O2 customers that have signed up for Litmus in these first few months.
I hope you see the green shoots of a great concept coming together. I'd ask you to get onto the forums and start adding to the growing sense of community that is building there, after all this is what O2 Litmus is intended to be all about; Making the connection between Developers and customers to produce better products.
Whilst we are in these early days it is kind of catch 22. Developer will come when they see a growing audience, and customers will come when they see a great selection of apps. As I said above we are now starting to see the apps come through but be patient with us, O2 Litmus will only be as good as the contribution its members make!
To reinforce this, in the next few days we will be adding an "invite a friend" feature which will enable existing members to spread the word and invite friends to join O2 Litmus.
Other things we have coming up in the next few months:
There are two Webinar's coming up, hosted by Oracle and Navteq, and you can find details of how to sign up in the Forum.
Don't forget we have a pretty unique competition running to get your company inside Telefonica O2 to demo and network with the entire senior management team. This closes soon, so be sure to enter. See the previous blog post or the Forum for more info on that.
Along with the "invite a friend" feature the next release will also correct a bug with uploading Blackberry and Flash apps. I'll post full info in the forums when that is live.
Of course, as per the press release, we also have the launch of the Mob4Hire service which we are all really excited about. I will keep the powder dry a little longer but suffice to say that O2 Customers will now be able to earn money in return for testing apps inside O2 Litmus!
Finally are also running through the list of new API's we intend to release to the Developer community. I will post in the list in the forums, so be sure to comment and let us know what you are thinking.
So, an enormous amount of work going on behind the scenes. We will be out and about over the coming months to spread the word and meet as many of you as possible, so get uploading, get testing, get buying, and get collaborating! Most importantly have fun!
James
