13 posts tagged “mobile 2.0”

Check this post out on my new SocializeMobilize blog.

Today is an exciting day for my client, ShoZu, who closed $12 Million in Series C funding in a round led by SEB Venture Capital in London. ShoZu makes uploading/downloading content to/from your favorite social networking sites very easy, and usership is growing rapidly amont those downloading the app from their mobile browsers (m.shozu.com). Plus, ShoZu is being pre-loaded on over 50 million mobile phones in 2008!  Here's a copy of the release:

ShoZu Raises $12 Million in Series C Funding;

Round Led by New Investor SEB Venture Capital, London

Mobile Social Media Company Now Attracting Over 100,000 New Users Monthly  

LONDON – January 28, 2008 – ShoZu Inc., the leading provider of mobile social media services for exchanging content between mobile phones and Web-based social media sites, today announced the closing of a $12 million Series C round of financing led by new investor SEB Venture Capital, London, the UK-based venture capital arm of Swedish financial services firm Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken.  Previous investors Atlas Venture, Crescendo Ventures and TTP Ventures also participated.   

The new cash commitment reflects ShoZu’s growing market traction in the highly competitive mobile social media sector.  The ShoZu application will ship pre-installed on more than 50 million mobile phones in 2008.  In addition, the number of users downloading the ShoZu client to non-preloaded handsets is more than doubling every quarter, with more than 100,000 users currently registering every month.   

“ShoZu is the only mobile social media company that has secured global pre-installation agreements with multiple handset manufacturers.  That fact alone positions the firm for substantial growth,” said Frank Kelcz, an investment manager with SEB Venture Capital’s London office who has joined ShoZu’s board of directors.  “Demand for Mobile-to-Web enabling technology is being driven by a variety of factors, including the need to stay connected with online social media like Flickr and Facebook on the go, and ShoZu has the opportunity as well as the initial market presence to dominate the space.”    

“The industry is still grappling with solving the usability problems of the mobile Web, from navigation to dropped connections,” said ShoZu CEO Mark Bole. “ShoZu is addressing many of these challenges with its approach to simplifying the user experience, exchanging content in the background, and providing an open gateway that offers a shortcut to key destinations.  Strategies like these may be the answer to mobilising social media in the short term and also help define the shape of the mobile Internet moving forward.”   

Over the past year, ShoZu logged a series of successes in establishing its service as the industry standard in mobile social media connectivity.  Achievements in 2007 included securing global pre-installation agreements with Motorola and Samsung, creating the first unlimited-use ShoZu access package through a carrier partnership, expanding its Web 2.0 partner ecosystem to a market-leading 30 sites, and introducing the market’s first two-way multimedia social media capability with a service that will send friends’ latest Flickr photos directly to the handset on request. 

Also in 2007, the company added to its collection of major industry awards with the top 3GSM award for Most Innovative Mobile Application, a 2007 MEFFY Award from the Mobile Entertainment Forum for best handset application, and a 2007 Ultimate Innovator Award from the Interactive Advertising Bureau for its mobile advertising platform. 

These developments coincide with growing consumer demand for mobile connectivity to social networks and other online communities.  A recent Juniper Research report predicted that the number of users accessing social networking sites by mobile will skyrocket from 14 million in 2007 to nearly 600 million by 2012, helping to push mobile operator revenues from user-generated content from $576 million to $5.74 billion.   

ShoZu’s Share-It service enables mobile users to maintain contact with their Web-based social networks, personal blogs, photo/video sharing sites and other social media with a few clicks.  Users can publish photos and video clips up to 10 minutes in length from their phones to favorite Web 2.0 sites without complex navigation, transmit photos at full or blog-quality resolution, exchange comments with friends, and sign up to receive friends’ photos and other multimedia files on their handsets automatically with no manual intervention.  These and other capabilities are unique to ShoZu.  

The ShoZu application is currently available on 317 handset models with users in over 100 countries.  

About ShoZu

ShoZu is the leading provider of mobile social media services that connect mobile consumers with their online social networks, personal blogs, photo storage sites and other Web 2.0 properties from the handset.  The company’s patented technology provides fast, easy, one-click uploads of photos and video clips from the mobile to the Web, full-resolution photo and video delivery without compression, an emerging suite of services that push content to the phone, the ability to work in the background even if a connection is dropped, and other unique features that simplify and enhance the user experience, plus a mobile advertising service that provides non-intrusive and behaviorally targeted ad delivery.  The company was founded in 2000 and has formed partnerships with some of the leading players in the mobile ecosystem, including Motorola and Samsung.  For more information, visit www.ShoZu.com/AboutUs. 

About SEB Venture Capital 
SEB VC is the venture capital arm of SEB, a leading Nordic financial institution. SEB VC has 280 M€ under management in an evergreen fund structure, focusing on early stage and expansion investments in life science, media and technology, and industrial growth. The firm’s 22 seasoned professionals have made more than 70 investments and 34 exits since the fund’s inception in 1995. Offices are located in Stockholm, London, Vilnius, Gothenburg and Malmö. 

Treemo is a social networking site that's all about digital expression - "sharing digital media, empowering self-expression, and transforming creativity into action" by creating and sharing video, audio, photography, words, and visual art.  I like Treemo because there is an emphasis not only on creativity but also on mobile

Yesterday, Treemo launched the "Alicia Keys - As I Am" contest, benefiting the charity, "Keep a Child Alive."

Keep a Child Alive is an urgent response to the AIDS pandemic ravaging Africa. With more than 28 million dead and 15 million orphaned, the disease continues, wiping out whole societies, threatening economic infrastructure and creating tragic family devastation. Keep a Child Alive provides life-saving medication, support, and orphan care, to keep these children and families alive. Keep a Child Alive gives 100% of public donations to it’s cause.

For every contest entry, Treemo will donate $1 (up to $10,000) to Keep a Child Alive.  To enter, upload a photo, video, image or text message to the site that explains why you or one of your friends is a "Superworman."  If you're a Treemo user, go to the registration page, or text an explanation to: 873366.  Click here to sign up for a Treemo account.

The grand prize winner will receive a VIP All Access Trip for 2 to an Alicia Keys concert.  And, one finalist will receive an iPod Touch, an Autographed "As I Am" Alicia Keys album, and a Alicia Keys poster.

My client, ShoZu, has been nominated in the Crunchies Award as Best Mobile Start-up.  

This award is co-produced by TechCrunch, Read/Write Web, VentureBeat and GigaOm.  Major sponsors include: Adobe, Microsoft, Sun and a few venture funds.

Please head to the voting link, http://vote.crunchies.techcrunch.com/ scroll to the mobile category and vote for ShoZu.  You can vote once and day, so please take the time to vote as many times as you can!

Voting ends January 10. The awards will be announced January 18.

Today, Nokia announced its acquisition of a small social media and media sharing platform company called Twango, which was founded by former Microsofters.  While expensive (sources report the cost of nearly $100 Million), the acquisition has the potential to be a monumental game changer for Nokia. Regardless, it is a step in the right direction for the mobile industry.

Twango lets users seamlessly and easily share media across devices and software platforms.  Twango provides a good explanation on its website:

Imagine sending a photo to Twango, then having it appear on your blog or Web site in moments and notifying your viewers—automatically. Imagine a group of friends traveling together and creating a shared media experience for those back home with nothing more than their camera phones. We also imagined that, and now those are features on our site. But this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Multimedia, Nokia sees the acquisition as furthering Nokia's mission of connecting people:

The Twango acquisition is a concrete step towards our Internet services vision of providing seamless access to information, entertainment, and social networks - at anytime, anywhere, from any connected device, in any way that you choose. We have the most complete suite of connected multimedia experiences including music, navigation, games, and - with the Twango acquisition - photos, videos, and a variety of document types.  When you combine a Nokia Nseries multimedia computer that is always on, always connected, and always with you together with a rich media sharing destination like Twango, people will have exciting new ways to create and enjoy rich media experiences in real time.

Mobile OEMs are looking for innovative ways to integrate mobile handheld and PC experiences, leverage web technologies on the handset, increase wireless data consumption, and improve connections between mobile users.  With 2.5 G and early 3G phones, email was one of the most effective ways to do all of these things, but today, email on mobile phones is ubiquitous, and tech-savvy consumers are and will continue looking for more.  Seamless sharing of media and social networking on phones and PCs is the next frontier. 

I suspect that just like the key OEM acquisitions of email technologies earlier this year and in late 2006 (i.e. Nokia's acquisition of Intellisync, Motorola's acquisition of Good), there it won't be long before we see more acquisitions in this space.  By way of example, Sharpcast seems like one of the next likely acquisition targets.  It lacks a social networking facility, but with all of the other mobile and PC-based social networking options out there, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Polaris Venture Partners general partner Simeon Simeonov is the latest to suggest that Google is working on a mobile Phone. In his blog, Simeonov divulges that Andy Rubin (who founded Danger and later, Asteroid, which was ultimately sold to Google) is working with a team of about 100 people on a Google phone.   He also sites other Google acquisitions as evidence of a forthcoming Google Phone: mobile applications company, Reqwireless and Skia, who makes a portable graphics engine. 

Simenov's blog is definitely worth a read. It is not the only evidence that a "gPhone" (as I've now taken to calling it) is in the works.  Back in December, UK paper, The Observer, reported that Google was in talks with Orange:

[Google's] plans centre on a branded Google phone, which would probably also carry Orange's logo. The device would not be revolutionary: manufactured by HTC, a Taiwanese firm specialising in smart phones and Personal Data Assistants (PDAs), it might have a screen similar to a video iPod. But it would have built-in Google software which would dramatically improve on the slow and cumbersome experience of surfing the web from a mobile handset.

In the last year (plus), Google has proven that it wants to be a key player in mobile by innovating in the mobile applications marketplace and making key acquisitions (including Dodgeball, which Simeonov didn't mention in his blog).  It is easy to see the business reasons why Google is making an investment in mobile.  The mobile marketplace presents an opportunity for Google to expand its search and advertising empire.  According to Ovum Ltd., mobile advertising will become a $1.26 billion market by 2009 (a big jump from the $45 million market it was in 2005).  With the social media markets exploding and the lines between social media and targeted advertising becoming increasingly blury, I'm particularly interested in seeing what sort of social media featuers the gPhone incorporates. I'd love to see Google put out a mobile phone with built in GPS and suped-up Dodgeball built-in.  If that happens, it would likely shake-up the mobile industry by encouraging innovation and possibly spelling the death of comanies like Helio and Amp'd. 

Even if as the Observer suggests, the gPhone hardware isn't "revolutionary," my hope is that the software will be extraordinary.  Having worked for 18 months as a full-time consultant on Palm Inc.'s Business Development/ Developer Relations team, I can tell you that a phone (hardware) is only as good as the software that runs on it.  Palm's Treo is popular in large part because of the 3rd party software applications available for the device.  Palm isn't the only company that appreciates the value that software brings to mobile hardware.  Motorola and Nokia both have impressive 3rd party alliance programs (MotoDev and Forum Nokia).  If Google puts out a phone, I suspect that it's strategic advantage will be in the availability of as yet, unreleased, proprietary social and productivity-related software.  I hope that that the gPhone comes fully loaded with social features that help advance the mobile ecosystem and that any on-phone advertising is both tasteful and non-invasive.

If you're into Twitter, try Nowthen.  Nowthen is the newest brainchild from the folks at Blinkx.  It's everywhere messaging like Twitter, but besides written updates/broadcasts, you can also send pictures from your mobile phone using MMS.  You can set up privacy features to use it with specific groups of friends or with the world.  You can also get it to send you notifications via SMS/ MMS on your mobile phone (if you've got an unlimited messaging plan) or your Nowthen mailbox. I'm curious to know what Twitter fans think.  If you try it, post a comment and let me know what you think.

One thing I think is particularly cool is that they're already starting to think globally.  There are separate numbers you can MMS your NowThen photos to depending on whether you're in the US or UK.

The World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos Switzerland took place between January 25-29th.  Today, I discovered some great footage from that meeting on YouTube, which dovetails nicely into my blog from Friday, in which I made several predictions for mobile in 2008. In the video, Chad Hurley, Co-Founder of YouTube, talks about some of the exciting things that lay ahead for YouTube:

Yesterday, inCode Telecom Group Inc. announced its "Top 10 Global Wireless Predictions for 2007".  Topping the list as the number one trend for wireless operators in 1007 is Social Networking:

"Social Networking Gets Mobilized. Mobility is added to existing Internet business models, services and behaviors, driving traffic for wireless operators. Teens and twenties accustomed to constant connectivity and habit-forming Web sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, lead a wave of membership in mobile social networks. Location social networking including friend and event finder services gain popularity, even in the professional and over-50 segments. Google, Yahoo and Skype are more compelling for users than wireless brands, which are hard-pressed to compete. As customer appetites for social data and video services spike, wireless operators offer more “all you can eat” pricing for high-end data packages. Social networking applications initially are preloaded on many mobile devices sold and later become downloadable."

On the handset side, inCode predicts that in 2007, "Multi-Function Devices [will] Become Cheaper and More Versatile".  This includes the introduction of video-capable devices to the masses.  They also predict that location-based services (LBS) and GPS will become mainstream.  According to the article:

"GPS is the location technology of choice for the wireless industry. Handset manufacturers continue to push GPS-enabled handsets as the technology evolves from popular in-car satellite navigation systems like TomTom to a broadly accepted feature in wireless phones. With Nokia having launched its first GPS-enabled handsets in early 2007 and bandwidth available to support new multimedia services, location-based service providers build critical mass. Since there are 10 to 20 times more mobile phones sold than any other consumer electronics device, wireless is a huge driver for GPS adoption. That’s great for users and handset vendors, but the benefit to operators isn’t clear."

Another of inCode's predictions is that "Mobile Advertising Breaks Loose:"

"Major brands shift from basic SMS marketing to more sophisticated multimedia advertising. RBC Capital Markets expects mobile marketing revenues to balloon from $45 million in 2005 to $1.5 billion by 2010. With the technological ability to target and measure the effectiveness of mobile advertising, brands are more strategic in their approach. Operators under increasing price pressure set limits on current handset subsidization. Brands take up the slack, subsidize handsets and services for target demographics and take direct ownership of marketing channels. Rich 3G content and video services and accuracy advancements in GPS-based location services deliver further value to brands targeting existing and potential customers in innovative ways."

This prediction, is already starting to come true, with MVNOs like Virgin Mobile USA and Amp'd Mobile planning to offer discounts to customers for viewing advertisements on their mobile phones.  Cingular Wireless, Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel have also said they're going to test the concept of mobile advertising.  And, according to CNET, mobile advertising services company, Millennial Media, which was founded by Paul Palmieri, a former Verizon executive recently received $6.3 million in Series A funding.

inCode is on the money with their predictions for 2007.  Tying together the above predictions for 2007 and thinking about the future, I predict that in 2008, mobile operators will further realize the power of social media - extending beyond simply social networking to all forms of social media.  If all goes as I predict, in 2008, Mobile Operators, MVNOs, OEMs, and ISVs will harness the power of social networking, GPS (LBS), and multi-function handsets and incorporate the power of social media, adding applications and web-based services to handsets that add value to consumers.  Services/ applications like Helio's Buddy Beacon, Dodgeball, etc. will increase.  I predict that large mobile operators and OEMs will begin to pre-load devices with social networking-focused applications that incorporate GPS.  I also believe that mobile advertising will increase and that the value of GPS to mobile operators will be realized in the ability to either charge for LBS social networking services and/or offer interactive mobile advertising via these LBS-enabled social networking applications.

Collaborative and community-based entertainment like YouTube on the go will evolve and continue to be popular.  I also expect that sites that monetize video footage (of, say, news events) that users take on their mobile phones will become increasingly popular....Think sites like: ScoopLive.com, Scoopt.com, and SpyMedia.com.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media Optimisation (SMO) will also play a big role in mobile social networking AND mobile advertising in 2008.  Though, I expect to see real advances in and popularization of this area happening towards the end of the year and into 2009, once mobile GPS and mobile advertising are better established.  I see this happening in several ways:

• When users search for friends, that mobile advertising will be well integrated so that suitable meeting locations and activities will be suggested (e.g. restaurants, coffee shops, stuff to do, sites to see, etc.)
• Based upon users mobile searches, social networking behavior, and text written in the emails they send via mobile phones, mobile LBS and mobile ads will generate new advertising content.

These are my initial thoughts for 2008, and all of them are predicated on inCode's predictions for 2008 coming true.  If you've got any additional predictions for 2008 and beyond, post a comment!

I've just launched a new VOX group called Social Media.  If you're interested in joining, click here!  I've linked all my blogs to this group, and I hope that others who are interested in Social Media, Social Networking, Marketing, Web 2.0, Mobile 2.0 and other colliding topics will add their relevant blogs too!