Dave’s comments about Mobifusion, “With no secret sauce, expensive licensing fees, and limited audience, it was unclear what value Mobifusion would bring to the market.” missed the point about Mobifusion’s technology and market potential for premium content. Premium content in the marketplace is proprietary and the consumption of content in the mobile space isn’t going to be any different. If it isn’t true, content created by my cousin should be as valuable and consumable as the Da Vinci Code. Once rights are acquired, it acts as a natural barrier to entry. Adaptation of branded content for a mobile screen is not a trivial task and making it available on widest range of phones in various modes (SMS, MMS, Audio, Multimedia, Text) requires a very robust platform. Mobifusion is investing heavily into the development of this platform so that the entire adaptation process is very efficient making it possible for Mobifusion to deliver large number of popular premium content to mobile consumers. But don’t take my word for it. Read what Oliver Starr (one of the judges at the conference) has to say about Mobifusion.

http://tinyurl.com/sox8s

I take objection to Dave Smiddy’s comment, “WINKsite suffered when it became clear that several of its mobile communities were adult-oriented and being displayed on the projection screens to the audience.”

Let’s make a few things clear…

1. Winksite projected a screen showing the screen names of people entering various mobile communities in real-time across various metro locations worldwide – a few minutes of the 250K people that pass through our communities monthly. I think it unfair to portray a few random screen names as an indication of the our overall community or the audience’s reaction to same. The fact is 20K publishers have built communities at Winksite – many of them A-list bloggers, entertainment companies, media organizations and political rights groups. Sure we also have several “adult-oriented” communities – EVERY publishing platform that serves the public DOES as well. (Anyone care to list the top Google or Yahoo search words/phrases?)

2. We were pitching a largely mobile carrier-friendly crowd, and our pitch excludes the carriers in favor of being an Internet play that happens to be mobile. (Note: Winksite is operating in 150 countries with NO carrier deals.) As such, I did not expect to win over the panel or audience – as it were the panel was fair and the audience receptive – that is if the quality of people that approached us afterwards is an any indication. In fact, the moderator of the panel Rafe Needleman of CNET had this to say in his review of the session, “My vote for the best of the bunch for mobile content today is Winksite.” (http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9663702-2.html?tag=blog)

3. A community-powered mobile publishing platform like Winksite that’s made freely available to individuals and brands worldwide directly impacts the closed market Mr Smiddy’s company has up until now operated in.

David Harper
Founder, Winksite

Under the Radar: Mobility! is a conference sponsored by IBD Network. The purpose of the conference is to provide a platform for early-stage companies to present their business and offerings to an audience of industry experts, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs.

The conference was held at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus and about 300 people attended.

The conference had eight categories of mobile companies, with four companies in each category for a total of 32 companies. The categories were:
* Marketing/Advertising
* Imaging
* Media Sharing
* Voice Messaging
* Social Messaging (SMS Apps)
* Video
* Mobilize
* Transactions (Payments)

Each company had six minutes to present to the audience and a panel of judges. Following the presentation, judges and audience members would ask questions. Finally, an SMS system was set-up for audience members to vote for the company they thought had the best offering, solution, and business model.

General Impressions
Key Point #1: Mobile in Silicon Valley is hot! There is a ton of interest in mobile and requisite innovation. Unfortunately, with interest there are short-sighted efforts. These shortcomings can be classified into four areas: no sustainable advantage, not solving a problem (the classic technology looking for a market), relying solely on first-mover advantage, and lacking an understanding of consumer behavior.

To be fair, these are early-stage companies that are putting in lots of time and effort to bring their initial services to market. So, lacking an understanding of consumer behavior is acceptable when the market is developing, and the company is investing in its first version. It seems more and more companies release a first version and call it “beta.” Competition is so hot these days that getting out the door first is a big deal, even if it’s not feature complete.

Key Point #2: The “carrier dilemma” is still a dilemma. There is an ethos in the Valley that is based on more than a hundred years of U.S. domestic policy. Basically, communications systems are public resources and equal access and delivery is provided to all, regardless of content or originating source. There’s a saying that “information wants to be free” and that access to information should be, if not free, at least equal for all consumers and publishers.

This ethos was the basis for the explosion of the telegraph, the radio, the telephone, and the Internet. Thus, it’s not surprising when a group of smart innovative folks get frustrated when their benign and useful services are blocked from being carried on a mobile network. Those in the Valley who can set aside their ideologies and find a way to work with the carriers will be more successful than those who don’t. Unless, of course, you have a bullet-proof means of circumventing the carrier or have billions of dollars and plan on building a nationwide, open network that can deliver services to open devices.

I attended four sessions: Video, Advertising, Mobilize, and Imaging.

Notes from Video
Companies presenting for video were: ComVu, Juice Wireless, Nexage, and Veeker.

These companies presented a mix of video community (ComVu Juice and Veeker) and basic platform services (Nexage). ComVu provided a demo of “1-click” video capture and sharing. Nexage’s presentation fell on deaf ears. It seemed that the company had very little understanding of demand, need, or who its customers are. Vanilla video platform services are a dead-end. A unique application, approach, or service that uses these streaming services is required.

The video community providers were questioned–repeatedly–on their understanding of consumer behavior and the benefits of creating their mobile communities. Of course it’s early, but companies that have laser-like accuracy in their identification of need and deliver a solution that meets these needs will be much better off when they pursue distribution deals with the carriers. For every good idea, the carriers get ten proposals for that good idea. The carriers hate it when companies bring in proposals for services that are already live on their network and have no awareness of these existing services.

A big challenge for video providers is to address the relatively small population of 3G users who are fragmented across multiple carriers. Yes, a large audience can be acquired, but it requires global distribution, and global distribution requires a globally focused sales force. Alternatively, providers can stay focused on a niche or geography and ride the growth curve.

ComVu was the winner of this category.

Notes from Advertising
Companies presenting were: Admob, CascadaMobile, GreyStripe, and Mobileplay.

All these companies provide off-deck advertising services. Of these the most compelling was GreyStripe. GreyStripe’s advertising platform matches advertisers with game publishers. All games are fully subsidized by advertising. GreyStripe was the judge and audience winner for the category and for the entire conference. It had a solid approach, clear value proposition, and demonstrable results. Their off-deck game distribution portal, www.gamejump.com, supports the long tail of mobile gaming, supporting lesser or unknown games and publishers. Although GreyStripe did not have a carrier relationship, it was clear that it has traction and has stitched together the needs of gamers, publishers, and advertisers elegantly.

Admob presented well and claims to be at 450 million pages view per month. It provides a simple system for advertisers to get on a broad network with browser-based content. Ads are sold at auction, and performance is based on click-through.

Notes from Mobilize
Companies presenting were: 4info, MobiFusion, Plusmo, and WINKsite.

Mobilize companies provide a simple way for individuals and companies to get their services into the mobile ecosystem or get access to mobile people, communities, and information.

4info aggregates content feeds (news, sports scores, movie times, weather, and so on) and provides an SMS interface for users to send a message and get a quick, limited text answer. At the conference, I tried requesting the weather for Palo Alto, showtimes for the movie Babel in San Francisco, and the NBA schedule for that day. Results were quick and accurate. Formatting of the text answer needs help, as no spaces were used. The 160-character limit has forced 4info to remove spaces to maximize their space. I voted for 4info, as I thought it created a simple, easy-to-use service that could be accessed by nearly all the 2 billion cell phones on the planet. Unfortunately, 4info doesn’t own its content, and the cards are heavily stacked against it in the face of Google. And, it wasn’t clear what differentiation the company offers over other search mechanisms, including calling 411.

4info provided a means for content providers and users to add RSS feeds to the 4info platform. Touted as being simple to use, anyone could take an RSS URL and syndicate it to 4info. When Plusmo presented its exact same feature, it became clear that Plusmo had a much better use case. Anyone can just enter a URL, and Plusmo will automagically seek out the RSS feeds and syndicate them into its platform. 4info requires the user know the actual XML feed URL.

Mobifusion bombed with a terrible use case about a clueless young man using Mobifusion to learn how to attract the woman of his dreams. Mobifusion licenses content and brings it to mobile devices. With no secret sauce, expensive licensing fees, and limited audience, it was unclear what value Mobifusion would bring to the market.

WINKsite suffered when it became clear that several of its mobile communities were adult-oriented and being displayed on the projection screens to the audience.

Plusmo won this category.

Notes from Imaging
Companies in this category were: Daem Interactive, MotionDSP, Ontela, and ScanR.

The key takeaway from this session is that each company thinks there is a huge opportunity for unique applications and services to be created because there will be more than 1 billion camera phones in the market by 2008 that have a 1-megapixel or higher camera sensor. However, the carriers want to own this experience and have no interest giving up the imaging space to the likes of Kodak, Flickr, and Shutterfly, to name a few.

Case in point: Ontela presented a solution that lets users capture and upload photos to their preferred online imaging provider. Carriers make lots of money from MMS of images and are happy to keep making money that way. The presentation was solid and the experience looked good. On the panel, T-mobile and Verizon both discouraged the company from pursuing this model, as they make good money from MMS today and don’t see a compelling reason to change that.

Daem Interactive presented an image recognition system for advertisers. An elegant solution that is robust lets users take a picture of an advertisement to receive additional information about the product, enter a contest, download digital content, or any other call to action. Daem was received warmly, but this space is a bit crowded, and it wasn’t clear why Daem was better positioned then its competitors. Traction has been obtained in Spain, their home country, and Daem will be rolling out services in other European countries.

MotionDSP has a technology to enhance image quality that removes many artifacts and creates a “clearer” image than the source file. Their product can enhance a single one-minute mobile video clip in 20 seconds on a dual-CPU system. While the results were good, it doesn’t seem like a scalable solution for high-volume providers who need to transcode hundreds of files simultaneously. If the company can move off the software-based solution to a hardware solution or license its IP to a DSP manufacturer, it would be better off.

MotionDSP won this category.

Dave Smiddy is a Director at Thin Multimedia.