An exciting and exceptional year has come to end. Let’s recap what has happened during the past 12 months…

From alpha to beta
One year ago, Wuala was still in invitation-only, closed alpha. While we invited just a few of our friends in the beginning, it has grown pretty quickly once we’ve given out invites to existing people. We’ve received tremendous feedback and we very happy that Wuala was being used by hundreds of people on a daily basis. We’ve worked hard on the core and also added many features that were requested by our users. In August we were finally ready to launch the public beta, which was open to everyone. This has been a huge success and marks our biggest milestone so far. Tens of thousands of users have joined Wuala within a few weeks and use it very actively. For instance, after around 6 weeks, the number of files has doubled: 18 mio. files compared to 9 mio. when we launched. Today, we’re storing over 32 mio. files, and it’s growing quickly (see our file counter). Our latest feature we’ve added has also been very successful: web integration! Click here for an example

Team
Back in December 2007, our core team consisted just of us five (whereby Gregor was not even an employee, but finishing up his Master thesis on Wuala). One year later, we’re a team of 10 great people (8 full-time, 2 part-time), and in January, our eleventh team member will join…

Compliments and awards
2008 was a very good year and we were lucky to receive many compliments. We’ve won and were finalist in many awards. Some examples? 2008 Webware 100 Award Finalist, Red Herring 100 Europe 2008 Finalist, 2008 Plugg Start-up Rally Finalist, Lift 08 Venture Night Winner, 2008 Red Herring Global 200 Finalist. The German computer magazine PC Praxis rated us best (PC Praxis Testsieger 11/ 08) compared to other online storage services, while Read Write Web selected Wuala as one of their
Top 10 International Products of 2008. Similar to this, Wuala has just been chosen as a finalist in the Crunchies 2008 (award category “Best International”): You can still vote for us until January 5

What the media said
Wuala was covered in many newspapers, blogs, and magazines. A comprehensive report can be found here or on our press page in English or in German. Some highlights include The Economist (EN), TechCrunch (EN), CenterNetworks (EN) or PC Magazine (EN), Neue Zürcher Zeitung (DE), Cash Daily (DE), Süddeutsche Zeutng (DE), Spiegel (DE), Netzwertig (DE), Der Standard (DE), PC TIPP (DE), PC Magazin (DE), PC PRAXIS (DE) or Computerworld.

Conferences and events
Dominik has been on the road and has presented Wuala at many conferences: Lift Conference in Geneva, Plugg Conference in Brussels, FOWA in London, ETRE in Stockholm and Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin (where Dominik also won the Pitch Camp x.0).One of the major events in Zurich was the TechCrunch Zurich Meet-Up, which we’ve co-organised together with our friends Doodle, Newscred, Sandbox, Jasper, Alfonso and Johannes. Here, Mike Butcher, editor of TechCrunch UK came to Zurich (and to our office) to meet the Swiss Web 2.0 crowd. Our major event this year, however, was of course our very own Public Beta Launch Party!

Last week we had our Christmas Dinner. This was our time to celebrate (and sing), and to have a look at next year. I can’t reveal anything yet, but what I can say is that there will be some major things coming up… And to be ready for this we’ve completely cleaned up our office today. Now, we’re off to some champagne, but before I forget: Happy New Year!