Since our last post we quietly launched the Globe and Mail’s iPhone application. I call this a quiet launch as the app currently does not include all the features we plan on rolling out to the mass public. We used a strong early adopter community on Twitter to test out the base application. This was done to ensure our core focus on creating a strong, best of breed, content application was satisfied. Since the initial launch we have garnered lots of fantastic user feedback both through the hashtag #globeapp on twitter and through our uservoice page. This feedback has led to a second release that includes offline reading as well as haptic feedback and has also paved the way for many more future product developments.

Thanks to our core group of early adopters, it is safe to say that the soft-launch of the Globe and Mail application was a huge success. The usage numbers are through the roof and we have already been featured on one of Canada’s most prominent technology blogs, Techvibes. Warren Frey, who contributes to Techvibes on the topic of game changing business models states that:

As an ardent news junkie, one thing I immediately noticed about the app is that it’s rock solid. Unlike the New York Times iphone app, Spreed’s app is robust and never freezes up and crashes …

It’s  not what’s under the hood that’s interesting about Spreed, though they’ve certainly done a good job of crafting a solid mobile news app. It’s their adaptation of print media to a new form in a smart way that’s most impressive.

We appreciate Warren’s understanding and excitement for our new business model and are very proud that he believes that our goal of creating a reliable and user friendly way of diseminating the news on mobile phones has been achieved.

I would like to thank Warren and all the members of our fantastic early adopter community. Without all of you this application would not have been such a great success and we look forward to working with everyone in the near future to help build a best of breed mobile newspaper platform.