January marked the inception of the Arab Spring. We were thrilled to be one of the services of choice for observers that wanted to broadcast real-time information to the world. The usage rewarded us with mentions in media outlets such as New York Times, Financial Times, BBC, and Wall Street Journal.
Our team enabled broadcasting using hardware accelerated video on many devices, providing a dramatically improved broadcasting and viewing experience.
In April our website and mobile apps began receiving a visual overhaul, with a brand new design created together with our friends at Identity Works. We will continue deployment of the new look in 2012, so stay tuned!
During the summer we rolled out a beta version of a mobile-friendly embed code. Since then we have improved many parts of it and continue to extend it, to eventually replace our old-fashioned Flash-only embed codes entirely.
We saw the dawn of Kaivuriskaba on Bambuser, freely translated to "Mini excavator challenge". Six mini excavators were placed at various malls around Finland and populated by six Finns. The rules were simple: Last man sitting wins the excavator! It was a bit like American Idol, but without the singing and judging.
In late summer our Executive chairman Hans Eriksson headed for a 24-hour live-streamed trip around London, guided only by viewers who tuned in to watch and chat with him. He called it a social media experiment and was so overwhelmed with the result that he set out for a sequel in New York a few weeks later. When summarizing the New York trip Hans said: "It was absolutely the most fantastic travel experience of my life!".
October offered many great updates from our team. We made our developer API public, allowing anyone to creatively integrate Bambuser content. Finding broadcasts by location became more intuitive with the new Map page. The Bambuser app for the Nokia N9 was released already when the phone launched and it delivers stunning quality!
The world experienced a global explosion of a local phenomenon - the Occupy Wall Street Movement. As traditional media often tried to mute the cry for change, activists turned to online broadcasting services such as Bambuser. We were pleased to see many activists and citizen journalists swap from competing services to Bambuser when they realized the differences in mobile live streaming quality and support we provide.
In November our team brought another great feature to all our Android and iOS users: recording video offline. This may not be the same level of innovation as live video broadcasting, but it is an important add-on and quite useful for anyone that is out of network coverage or simply don't want to broadcast live, yet want all video stored on the same service. We've recently added this feature also to our Maemo and Meego apps.
December was all but a slow month. With fantastic efforts from everyone in the development team, we released a major update to our Android and iOS apps in the form of an integrated mobile dashboard. This allows users to manage their account, as well as their broadcasts, within the app.
We saw the uptake of Bambuser among activists and citizen journalists soar. It has been amazing to see how people use Bambuser to let the world know what's happening anywhere, anytime.
Just in time for Christmas we were mentioned by Wired UK as one of the #1 Big Ideas for 2012. Shortly after, The Next Web appointed Bambuser as the #1 Media App of The Year!
It has truly been a fantastic year at Bambuser and I can't describe how proud I am to be a part of the Bambuser team. I couldn't think of a better way to wrap up this year than with the awards above, that I entirely dedicate to our team, users, fans and investors. I'm honored and grateful for your devoted support and I look forward to an even bigger and more exciting year in 2012!
Happy new Year!
Jonas Vig
CEO
