It’s been just over a hundred days since sgBEAT launched into public Beta, and over this time we’ve witnessed a substantial growth of our user base. I’m personally delighted that so many Singaporeans have found the service useful, as this has always been my motivation working on this project.
While watching this increase in users has obviously been satisfying, the rise in the adoption rate has also presented new challenges. I must admit I’m thankful I’m not involved in the technical scaling of the service, but I feel that we’ve coped pretty well with this continuous influx of users. I don’t claim that our users are dependent on the service, but as more and more people sign up for it, a rare technical glitch or temporary downtime has far broader effects than before. Dealing with this has been one of the challenges for me, and the message that I always hope to get across is that while we strive to be perfect, we are still prone to errors like anyone else.
As always, the team has been working hard to reduce the possibility of any downtime, and we’ve even introduced a second gateway as an alternative for our users. Most users have been understanding whenever we face problems, although some can be pretty harsh with their remarks. Nonetheless, valid criticisms are also a source of motivation for us to improve.
Regarding aspects I’m closer to, the layout of sgBEAT has undergone a redesign in two major areas. Firstly, slide-out tabs are now used in the user’s dashboard, which hopefully will simplify the layout through the reduction of the number of panels. The front page also now has a new look, with the removal of the previous slideshow and a greater emphasis on our features and brand. I definitely don’t believe this is the end of the design iterations, and as more features are implemented we’ll be making sure that the design scales accordingly.
Speaking of features, these past 3 months have seen a range of exclusive functionalities being implemented in the service, such as a reverse Twitter bridge, MMS, maps and polls. I won’t go into detail about each of them, but I’m glad to say that more cool features are already in the pipeline.
These last 100 days or so has been an exciting, trying and sometimes frustrating period of time, but it’s an experience I’m really happy I got to go through. What the next 100 days will bring, of course, can only be speculated at this point in time, but it’s something I’m honestly looking forward to.
