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]
>>>if you’re not a big brand but can enable them, this is a good time for you, too
Carlo,
Do you have any suggestions on how one would get the attention of the brands that are interested in being enabled?
I’m a one-man-show and I’ve developed what I call MediaServer System, which generates both a Web and Mobile portal/service.
See it in action here: http://www.ArtistServer.com - hit it on your phone to see the mobile site (in beta).
Last November, Time Magazine listed my site as one of the “Top 20 Music Sites” on the Web: http://www.time.com/time/2005/onlinemusic/4.html
In 60 days, I could launch a site/service similar to ArtistServer and put any corporation online with something that allows them to compete against MySpace.
I’m just now finishing the photo sharing system - which adds on Flickr like functionality, and after that, I begin a mobile service/tool that isn’t being offered yet, and bands are going to love it.
Thanks for your time and for any suggestions you may have,
Gideon Marken
Get a biz dev/marketing person
In all seriousness, I think there are readers out there that could offer you far better advice than I could — I’m thinking of smaller companies that have scored pretty big deals (moblogUK comes to mind, for instance). I know we’ve got plenty of people from startups and small companies and agencies that read this site — without divulging your trade secrets, what advice can you offer Gideon?
But the bottom line is you’ve got to make yourself known. Get online to relevant blogs (such as this one) and start posting. Not just spamming comments about your products, but start contributing to the community in comments, or even with a blog of your own. Get to relevant events and get a demo of your product in front of people.
>>Get a biz dev/marketing person
Yes, indeed, locating the right people to work with is a priority… but oh so difficult to do.
>>But the bottom line is you’ve got to make yourself known.
>> Get to relevant events and get a demo of your product in front of people.
Are you suggesting going to trade shows? I’d love to, but it cost more to attend most trade shows, than it costs for me to run ArtistServer.com for a year! I responded to a post on Moconews.net about this very subject, which they in turn quoted: http://www.moconews.net/?p=3533
Thanks for the reply Carlo,
And if you know a excellenct biz dev/marketing person who wants to have fun with a starup… I’m here!
Agreed on ridiculous conference pricing, but be on the lookout for events on the periphery as well — the Mobilists and blogger gatherings in Barcelona around 3GSM, for instance. Get to stuff like MocoNews mixers, or similar events from other sites, local networking groups like Mobile Monday. I don’t know where you’re located, but it may be worth your while to make the effort and expend the money to get to some of these things that don’t carry such a staggering price tag.
yep, we have a staggering price tag for our MocoNews mixers: free
[...] Carlo wrote last week about how News Corp’s plans to launch some text alerts and mobile wallpaper under the Mobizzo label was greeted gushingly by the NYT as if Murdoch was some kind of revolutionary. [...]
a5eb847469…
Finally I found you friend.a5eb847469fa…