Mary Beth Christie, online product management director, Financial Times, spends 2 hours each week on the phone answering queries from companies and journalists eager to pick their brains on their experiences with bringing the FT Web app to market. That’s on top of the time she and her colleagues spend on conference stages sharing their knowledge.

So why are they happy to do this? Well, according to MB Christie it is all about growing the ecosystem. The more companies that develop HTML5-based Web apps, the more shared knowledge, documentation, development and testing tools will become available.

The FT isn’t the only high profile company with a Web-app, but it is the only one that is sharing their experiences publicly. We’d all benefit from other companies embracing the FT’s openness and joining them on the conference rostrum.

If you want to know more about why the Financial Times chose to develop a Web app rather than native apps for each smartphone platform, you should read:

• What you can learn from the FT Web app: interview with Steve Pinches.

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