At the end of June Symphonical attended the Google I/O conference and got officially featured in Google+ Hangout.
Now the big question is how did we manage to get such an amazing opportunity?
How it all started
Early in 2012 we played with the idea of embedding a Symphonical wall inside a Hangout using just mock-ups and shared them on Google+..
A few weeks later we had a prototype working. It was really simple and composed of just a single iframe showing Symphonical inside a Hangout. It was only accessible as a developer preview version, as Google had not yet released the official Hangout App API to the public.
We followed Google blog posts vigilantly to catch the release of the official Hangout API and become one of the first Apps. One evening in late March we got the news: the official Hangout App API was out in the open. In just one hour we had it set up and Symphonical Hangout App was live!
From there on things went fast. The next day we had an article in the Norwegian technews Digi.no. (Link to article in Norwegian)
A few days later we managed to get in touch with +Amit Fulay, the product manager for Google+ Hangouts. In a Hangout-meeting (off course), he told us that we might make it to the featured list.
At the same time unofficial Hangout-listing-pages such as www.hangoutapps.com, added us to their list and we added Symphonical as an App on the Chrome Web Store. New users started signing in.
We worked with Google for several weeks improving the App. At one point, more than fifty Google employees tested it out at the same time, providing us invaluable feedback.
A few days before the I/O conference we got the positive news that we indeed were going to be featured as an App and also presented at the conference. In addition we were asked to be a part of the Sandbox Developers at the conference, meaning getting a stand where we could showcase the App.
Symphonical in San Francisco
Symphonical crew of +Bjørn Haugland, +Lasse Søberg, +Jørgen Blindheim and +Terje Torma flew from Oslo to San Francisco to attend the I/O conference.
We were met by +Kinnari Jhaveri and +Amit Fulay from Google who took good care of us.
Amit and +Jonathan Beri presented Symphonical as a featured Hangout App in their session “The Next Generation of Social is in a Hangout” on day-1.
This was our major breakthrough. The media immediately started writing about the new Hangout Apps presented. Symphonical was seen as the new enterprise App for Hangout and as such stood out from the others. Computer World Australia wrote an article about our App that quickly spread worldwide.
We immediately noticed an increased flow of users to our App which today is still going on today.
Now, back from a well deserved vacation, the Symphonical team is in the office, eager to follow up on all the feedback and new ideas generated over the past weeks. We still have a lot to prove and many great challenges ahead.
Lastly we want to warmly thank Google for their support and feedback they gave us. We are very grateful for the amazing opportunity they gave us.
