Nokia adapts Digg like voting system to help make S60 and future applications better

Nokia’s corporate slogan is “Connecting People” and with the launch of the second version of wishlists today they just proved that are indeed connecting we the people to the developers working on S60 and the developers building applications for the platform. I’ve long been a critic of the first version of the S60 application wishlist, so let us see if they addressed any of my gripes:

• Use Digg’s system of voting [YES]
• Make it a dedicated site, not buried in S60 [NO]
• Enable comments [YES]
• Improve the UI [YES]
• Give me an RSS feed to subscribe to [YES]
• Assign a moderator to remove duplicates [UNSURE]
• Don’t require registration [NO]
• Let users submit complaints [NO]

Today’s Wishlist 2.0 is certainly a fantastic upgrade, but it still has a few rough edges.

First of all there are now 2 wishlists, one for the operating system itself and the other for consumers to speak to developers about applications they would like to see created. Fragmentation is a bad thing and I don’t understand why there are now two places for people to tell Nokia (NYSE: NOK) what they want.

What makes a feature a feature and an application an application?

Nokia’s feature phones run an operating system called Series 40; they all have a stop watch, count down timer and will let you record your phone calls out of the box. These are features of the operating system, yet to enjoy the same thing on S60 you need to download separate applications. I would much rather see a single wishlist called “What do you want S60 to do?” rather than confuse people with “What should be in S60?” and “What applications do you want developed for S60?”

Desktop operating systems evolved in very much the same way. DOS didn’t do anything and you had to find applications for every little task you wanted to accomplish. Now look at Vista: it has a movie player, music player, video editor, mail client, calender client, CD burning application, scientific calculator, Internet Browser, etc. These are features of an OS, not applications you have to hunt down.

This fragmentation created by splitting the wishlists up reflects the E Series and N Series battle very well. The default list of installed applications for something like the E61i is radically different than the N95. This is done to make products stand out as doing certain tasks very well, but isn’t the point of an advanced operating system to encourage people to explore new features of their devices and if need be go hunting for applications that help them maximize their work flow? Enough bashing for now, what did they get right?

They adopted a Digg like voting system, popular ideas will float to the top and therefore be worked on first. The UI is much improved and actually has a pleasant color scheme that atracts your eyes and makes you want to look around. RSS is now built in, you can subscribe and get notified of new wishes. Comments are enabled so people can talk about wishes. Search is now present, but I don’t like how it is implemented; I don’t want to have to hit search, page refresh, enter in a search term, hit enter, page refresh. There should just be a text box where I can enter my query, hit enter and have the page refresh with my results. Tagging is also a new feature. Just check it out and let the Nokia people know what you think. Registration is still required so you can’t comment, vote or add an idea without first making an account. I don’t like that, but Digg works the same way.

Overall I’m very impressed and love that Nokia is paying attention to us. I’m a little baffled why they didn’t announce this in a press release, I feel this is a major step for a corporation that wants to rebrand itself as an internet company. Using social tools (call them Web 2.0 tools if you must) to connect directly to the end user isn’t just an evolution in consumer relations, it is a revolution.

[Via: S60 Blogs]

Update: You can only see the most popular wishes for the past 2 weeks, why is there such a time limit? Isn’t a 1 year old brilliant idea better than a  1 week old decent idea? I’m in Helsinki so if any of you S60 guys want to meet up and bounce back some ideas just shoot me a text: +358 46 847 79 59