If you’re a big brand looking to get in to mobile content, the time is now. The opportunity really hasn’t changed much over the last year or two (even with the advent of 3G), but perceptions have. Just look at CBS and News Corp., which today announced some mobile-content initiatives. CBS, on the one hand, is developing some multimedia alert services that could be somewhat interesting. On the other, News Corp. is selling some wallpapers and ringtones and games, and gets heralded as some sort of revolutionary.
Just for the NYT’s benefit, there have been plenty of people that have been doing this stuff for quite some time, and doing it better than News Corp. ever will. But I digress. My point being that, especially in the US, if you’ve been thinking about getting into mobile content, or even if you just are renewing a push, do it now and strike while the iron’s hot. You can count on a lazy press to provide you with plenty of hype, even if you’ve got little substance.
I’ve got two related points. First, if you are one of those people that’s been doing mobile content for longer/better than these big new entrants, doubly so if you’re not a big brand but can enable them, this is a good time for you, too — better than ever. The money’s flowing, but clearly, when ringtones and graphics is the best a company the size of News Corp. can come up with, the ideas aren’t. So get in there.
Second, News’ new mobile unit is called “Mobizzo”. It’s strangely reminiscent of Vizzavi, which some readers will remember was the name of the spectactularly failed venture between Vodafone and Vivendi to take the former’s mobile expertise and apply it to the latter’s portfolio of media holdings. After checking out the Mobizzo site, I’m not sure I see why it should be much more successful than Vizzavi, so perhaps the name isn’t a coincidence.
[tags] mobile content, news corp, murdoch, mobizzo, vizzavi, cbs, viacom[/tags]
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