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November 2006: Mobile Content World - September 19th to 21st 2006 - A report.
This year's MCW show was held at the Olympia Conference Centre in London, as per usual, and ETO visited on Wednesday the 20th to see what was new and exciting in the field of mobile services and products.
Vemotion's Neil Marshal had this to say, "The show's been very good and today's been very consistent. What we do is build applications that let content owners add interactivity. While someone is watching a video stream on their phone, our technology allows them to vote with their keypad, swap camera angles… buy the t-shirt! The way the Adult industry use this is to let users control and direct the action. It also takes inbound, self-generated content, so they can record a clip -perhaps describing their favourite fantasy- which can go into a competition, with the winner after a quarter being invited to have their fantasy filmed. The voting's all through the service, keeping users connected, and that means more revenue for the content owner. We also support Wi-Fi devices using hotspots, as well as 2.5G and 3G, encode video, billing, build applications with a toolbox to fit the needs of our clients... We're part of the Teleware group and our .com is the place for more info."
One of the outstanding things I saw was TLMH's 'Put Yourself In The Picture' system, which will automatically combine a camera-phone picture of you with the Hollywood A-lister of your choice in a 'look who I met' style, and MMS it back to you. Impressive, and with lots of possibilities for the adult market, yet not as impressive nor as heavy with potential as their other product in this field, which was demo'd for me. Remember the scene from Mr and Mrs Smith, where Angelina Jolie wears fishnets and PVC? Of course you do. 'Put Yourself In The Video' adds your face to the scene, following the motion of the actor's head, right up to the moment Angelina snaps your neck. A violent end, but what a way to go. Watching the cleverly augmented video was made all the more surreal as the face of the firm's MD added to the scene looked just like Ricky Gervais. Then I was shown a 'Ricky' face pasted into a scene from South Park, where it sang along with an animated mouth… Needless to say, if there were an adult version of this face-recognition/integration service made available, there would be no shortage of spotty youths lining up to shag Jenna or Cathy then show their mates.
Activefone had another exciting proposition on their never less than packed stand; Momo. I spoke to Operations Director Mark Watts between his meetings and he enthused about Momo, how an end-to-end, cross-network, global user-content service could -and would- revolutionise everything from vlogs and vlogging to adult sites, via video dating and social networking. The key is uploaders can take a cut of the profits, encouraging them to generate quality as well as volume, which draws more viewers, who generate more revenue, which spurs uploaders on… and on. Give them a call about it on 08702 248080 now! They deserve this plug not only for having a really interesting and dynamic product, but also because I won their prize draw for a new Motorola PEBL phone, to replace my comedy-ridden Nokia 3310. The comedy came from its battery's inability to power a conversation over 45 seconds in length. Anyway, big thanks to Activefone for the 'flippin' good' phone and bluetooth headset.
Jasper Duncombe, CEO of Relish was paying the show a visit when I grabbed him by the stand(!) "Momo has huge potential for people to send short, naughty, user-generated clips and I think that's something people will always like to see. People have been dreaming for some time about an adult version of YouTube and one you can see on the move- on the train. I think Activefone will do it very well and it's certainly a product we're interested in. We hope to sign a deal soon."
Julia Dimambro, founder and MD of Cherry Sauce: "Being based in Barcelona, it's lovely to come back to London to catch up with everybody and get a real buzz about what's going on in the industry. For the last couple of months that's been mobile communities, user-generated, video-blogging stuff, as well as mobile marketing and advertising; Very interesting areas we've been talking to people at the show about. There aren't so many content partners here- there were more Adult people here last year. The fact we won the award for the Best Adult Services Company at the Mobile Entertainment Awards here last night has made it a really good show though! The way the adult awards are kept integrated into the wider industry is a feature I really like. It reflects that adult is less a niche now, it's viewed as a business proposition and more a part of the mainstream. The conversations I'm having on this trip are different from last year's, when it was about content aggregation, licensing, content types for different channels - This year it's shifted to looking at perhaps larger PLCs with age-verified consumer databases, and asking what's an appropriate adult offering to make them. As we've been in the thick of the market for three years we're now able to bring platform developers, billing providers, market experts, content… With our D2C and B2B experience we can put it all together, workout how it's updated and managed- almost as if we were external account managers. That's what the market is demanding as it matures, so that's the role we're developing."
Tom Reader, Pocket Portal's MD has a background in marketing and promotion, making him particularly strong on the third side of the Content, Telecoms and Marketing triangle. Making a little money on the side with adult mobile services while waiting for the alcohol industry to wake up to mobile has exploded beyond his wildest expectations, and six months down the line it's made him consider not waiting for the drink and hospitality giants to pull their fingers out. Cutting a long story short, he's a rising star of the industry, introduced to me by Julia of Cherry Sauce, and he's ideally placed to strike a profit-share deal with studios to take their content, prepare it for mobile use, make it available and promote it. He's particularly keen to take 'content with character', so if you can offer something more distinctive than bronzed Californians bonking by the pool, you can contact him via tomreader@probrand.com.
Stuart Wharrier, head of development was on his Mobile Media Production stand when I stopped by for a Gummi Bear and a chat. "The show's gone remarkably well for us. Yesterday was extraordinarily busy, and today's been a little quieter, but that's just because it's the middle day I think. Talks been general market stuff today, but yesterday it was people looking for end-to-end solutions, because they want to build a mobile presence. We've a large stock of pre-formatted adult content and the tools to let them create their own WAP site. We can also help with advice and practical help on driving business to them. Our showcase customer, Tom Reader, is a star. He's gone from barely knowing what a mobile phone is to making outstanding progress in just a few months."
WAAT Media and Twistbox's MD Adi McAbian was on their stand when I spoke to him, "The show's been very interesting as a networking opportunity to talk to movers and shakers. Most of the predominant players in the adult industry are here- perhaps not on the stands but they've been around, making meetings. We recently signed Penthouse so we've been pushing that and our '07 propositions, around MobileTV, Video Chat and games - more sophisticated, interactive content. Streaming video, wallpaper downloads and subscription photo galleries are going to be more integrated with brands -maybe publications, events- and around the talent itself."
Bango's Marketing Communications VP, Sarah Keefe had been busy so it took a while to grab three minutes with her. "We've been pleased with the numbers and quality of visitors. Here we've met people who've got content and are looking for ways to bring it to market- we always find that about this particular show. It's great for that, and us. We've seen a lot of firms with both adult and non-adult content, and it's not unusual for the Bango system to carry a broad spectrum of content for them. Activefone's Momo platform is in the process of being packaged to work with our web services so it can be accessed through APIs. Mobile communities, where users can capture and upload life experiences to a server and then monetize that content, is great for Bango as we've a lot of experience of dealing with thousands of content providers already. We're simply in the process of scaling things up to handle millions instead of thousands. That's what the expectation for this market is, based on PC users' reaction to MySpace, and because Bango is global, those millions of users can be coming from anywhere in the world. Additionally, we signed a global marketing deal with Yahoo last week to connect content buyers and sellers. It'll roll out to the UK and US by the end of October and part of the reason why we were chosen is the way our service allows advertisers to track the success of their campaign. As Bango can identify unique users, we can see who's responded to advertising and bought content, giving a return on investment."
So a few gems to be found amongst the 3G videoconference software and location-based services stands, and the conference stage. For more information, or details on the 2007 event, visit MobileContentWorld.biz.