In a post on the Nokia Beta Labs blog Nokia has announced that it is concluding the trial of Nokia Pulse beta and will be discontinuing all services related to the app on August 30th. Nokia Pulse is a location centric group messaging service that aims to make easier for friends and family to share plans and keep track of each other in the real world.

The app was built around the idea of automatically sharing location with every message sent, which was then used to provide rich contextual information drawn from HERE's location databases (maps, ratings & reviews, directions, and more). The concept was certainly sound, as has been demonstrated by other messaging services, but the utility of such a service is always going to be dependent on network effects.

Such network effeccts may have held Pulse back from enjoying greater success (limited to Nokia platforms and having a beta label limited the addressable audience), but the Pulse team note that the discontinuation of the services was also a decision "to help us focus on our location experiences around HERE".

It is possible that some of the ideas and concepts found in Nokia Pulse will contribute to the future feature set of other HERE apps. The idea of a message with contextual location information remains compelling and is something that it is noticeably absent from most standard communication messages (text, email, instant messaging).

Here's the full statement from the Nokia Pulse team:

We have made the decision to conclude the Nokia Pulse beta trial on August 30. After that date you will no longer be able to access your Pulse conversations and friends.

Concluding the Nokia Pulse trial was a decision to help us focus on our core location experiences around HERE. We truly appreciate the role the beta trial members have played in providing feedback on Nokia Pulse, enabling us to learn from it as our HERE experiences further evolve.

Thank you for using and contributing to Nokia Pulse. We are very grateful for your feedback, suggestions and insights.