“How’s your blog thing going, Tommi?”
“How’s your blog thing going” is a question I hear quite often nowadays. Last time I heard it in a workshop that we had yesterday with Steve Crescenzo and Jim Ylisela. Inspired by the workshop, I decided to write this recap of what has happened so far.
On November 9th 2005, we started small and launched our S60.com blogs with three blogs: See into S60, MRKTNGman, and mine. A little later, Jukka started his S60 Multimedia blog and the Idean Research team their S60 User Experience blog.
So far I have written 61 entries and received 296 comments. Big thanks for everybody, especially Darla, Antony Pranata, AkBoom, Steve Litchfield, Rafe Blandford, Jim Hughes, Erik Smartt, Hugo, Janne Jalkanen, Martin Sauter, Greg Taieb, Glenn Letham, Alexandre Silva, Marco Casario, and Nicolas Fogelholm. Sorry if I forgot someone. Anyway, the comments have been really insightful and valuable for our S60 development. Interestingly, I haven’t had to delete a single inappropriate comment. My apologies if your comment has been caught and forgotten in the spam filter.
Here are some reader statistics for my blog for the last month (not including RSS readers):
(click to enlarge the image)
Hmm… Seems that ordinary S60 users do not read my blog. But many of the most important online journalists, S60 influencers (inside and outside Nokia) and prosumers do.
My Technorati rank is currently 38,338 with 107 incoming links from 55 sites. And if you search for “S60 Applications”, this blog ranks #3 in Google, #1 in MSN, and #1 in Yahoo.
What has this required?
- 5-10 % of my time
- a little bit of spirit for experimentation and adventure
I have also tried to stretch carefully the corporate membrane by writing about controversial topics, such as Skype, outrageous data bills, and incompatibility problems between Nokia S60 devices. However, nobody has asked me to shut up or change the tone of voice. Not even Nokia’s legal or corporate communications people. None. Nada. This makes me feel Nokia is kind of cool company to work for. And it makes me feel that we should have had this conversation going all along.
Finally, I’d like to thank my bosses for supporting my blogging experiment, and letting me spend 5-10% of my time reading and writing blogs. Big thanks to Janne and Mika!!
No Tommi, thank you. Having a means for people to reach out and share comments, ideas and concerns regarding s60 is very important for the consumer and developing aspect. So a big thanks to you and the whole team!!
To me this blog is one of the most exiting things I found online this year. It is not a flattery, it just happened that you cover the topics that interest me in a nice to read manner
Does it really take just 5-10% of your work time? Some other 10-20% to switch to/from blogging?
I think Nokia is one of the few companies that sees the value of not only designing products but also of interacting with the users in innovative ways. It’s amazing how many books there are out there written by Nokia people. I talked to my publisher John Wiley and Sons during the 3GSMWC in Barcelona and I was told Nokia even encourages people to write books and even offers guidelines of how to go about that. So the attitude towards blogs is just in line with that. Great blog, thanks a lot and I am sure you also had something to do with me buying the third S60 phone within 12 months and giving that ‘old’ 6630 to my girlfriend now
Thanks for your kind comments!
> Does it really take just 5-10% of your work time?
Well, it depends on how you count. I spend a couple of hours a week writing blog entries, replying to blog comments and blog-related emails, and commenting other people’s blogs. In addition, I spend quite a many hours a week reading what is happening in S60 ecosystem, in mobile industry and in the converging digital industries. But that’s what I would do anyway as part of my job.
And thanks for mentioning me too Tommi.
You know, I can spend all day writing comments but sometimes I think of something to write then feel that readers may think this guy only moans about S60.
Yes; I have a lot of passion for the S60 platform. I have been working with it from the time of the 7650, from when it was being developed, it was a huge square board with an LCD
I guess Steve L. is the one who’s been dabbling with Symbian for the longest? That would be an interesting topic; from your readers, who goes back the longest with Symbian and/or S60.
akBoom
Hmm, where do I click to report a spam comment?
> Hmm, where do I click to report a spam comment?
You can’t, sorry. We are investigating solutions for the spam problem - I hope we’ll get this thing under control soon.
Now we have the security code plugin there, let’s see if that helps.