In addition to showing snippets of information on the Facebook mobile page (m.facebook.com), application developers could use the API to add SMS interaction to their applications. SMS is great for allowing instant communication with the users wherever they are. However, it has also proved of being one of the most accessible and convenient ways to collect micropayments from users. There are several successstories of social networking sites in Europe, that have made fortunes using one or two simple premium SMS services neatly tied to the otherwise free website. For example, you can make your photo appear on the front page for some time, by sending premium SMS costing let’s say €1. This amount is then added to your phone bill and mobile operator is sharing the revenue with the website.
Mobile apps may be a good way to monetize, though, Shen [RockYou co-founder Jia Shen] tells us: “Lots of people are thinking about how to run micropayments through phone bills” as high schoolers don’t have access to credit cards for doing things like buying Facebook’s virtual gifts.
At its current version though, Facebook Mobile API does not seem to support premium priced SMS, nor do they share any revenue with application developers, but I’m sure they’re thinking about it. As contextual advertising does not work, I think that SMS could become one of the easiest ways to monetize Facebook apps.
Now all the people in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania can create sms based services without any subscription or monthly fee. At the moment it is possible to create four types of services SMS-info, SMS-campaign, SMS-chatbox, Premium SMS-connectivity. Month ago we reviled some information about new services that are coming really soon. But this is just a beginning.
Consumer magazines have been realizing that mobile Web might be quite useful. The New York Times just launched a mobile real estate page and Playboy recently began offering non-nude mobile photos, along with some other Playboy-branded mobile content.
Experts say that mobile web is almost as sensational a the Internet 10 years ago, it is the Internet in peoples’ pocket. Mobile Internet comes complete with all the ads that consumers see on their desktops. Mobile sites provide a new platform for magazine brands to sell ad space. Unlike the paper, mobile magazine sites provide ad space that can be targeted to exact locations, respond to user requests, providing a dynamic ad platform.
Since phones are portable and personal devices, mobile ads can reach consumers quicker and more intensely than ads in other media. The frequency of return visitors to mobile sites outstrips Internet sites clearly. At the same time the Mobile Marketing Association keeps strict guidelines on phones, protecting them from spam. Consumers just have made clear how much they value their phone privacy.
The idea is not taking magazines to mobile, it is taking brands to mobile by taking the core user of each brand and translating it to mobile. Magazines are not reproducing the content, they are looking at what customer needs on the go. It is an effective way for marketing the brand and bandage people even more with the magazine.
Today i found myself in Windows homepage, looking different demos to see what’s new in Windows world. Then i found really impressive demos describing different features and benefits that Windows Mobile enables. They are just great – friendly, interactive, easy and real. Actually they don’t use anything new, but moving background with theme noises can really set the milieu. And of course the voice, tone and text, it is all so simple but it works so well. Despite that the background was maybe too flashy and i didn’t have chance to scroll the demo to the part i wanted.
I don’t know why but for a moment i felt this resembled me Mac OS x Leopard demos i saw months ago.
They aren’t so similar, but it seemed these demos were made in the same ideology. Has Windows stolen something again? No i think they have also understood that the best things are: simple, easy to watch, interactive….also cool things should happen on the screen.
To see the improvement Windows has made, see the video below.
Good news for Fortumo users from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, who would like to cash out their revenues via PayPal. In the end of last month, PayPal announced new international withdrawal functionality for multiple countries including the Baltic states. Users from these countries can now receive payments to their PayPal accounts and withdraw the money to either bank accounts in the U.S. or to Visa debit or credit cards. Unfortunately many Visa debit cards do not have a Card Verification Number on the back of the card, which is required to receive payments. Of course one could also use the accounts to pay for other goods and services via PayPal or just send money to someone else. PayPal charges € 0,35 + 3,4% for receiving the money, and € 2 for withdrawing it to a Visa card.
Users from Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland can also withdraw their PayPal accounts to their local bank accounts. And Fortumo also supports direct bank transfers (in Euros) to local bank accounts in all the member states of the European Union or in EEA countries (that also includes Norway).
I was surfing around other day and found an interesting startup called trutap. Usually all the fancy apps and innovative solutions are for wider audience, but actually they are only available in bigger countries like US, UK, Germany etc. Cool is that people for example in Malta can also easily use tartup. Trutap should be available in 210 countries across the world at the moment.
Trutap is a free mobile service that combines all the elements of people’s social life into one application. With trutap users can connect and converse with friends and family, wherever they are, whenever they want. Users have the ability to use IM, group message, upload text and pictures to blogs and send pictures via a mobile phone. It leaves all the the doors open for the future, i wonder when will we reach to the point where there isn’t any difference whether you are talking to a person face to face or via computer, cell or with something else. At the moment tartap is in closed beta, so it is possible to show your interest and maybe they will let you in.
What is trutap?
* Combines all elements of your social life into one application, for the first time
* Offers the ability to IM (MSN, Yahoo!, AIM (AOL) and ICQ), group message, upload text and pictures to blogs and send pictures via a mobile
* Instant Messenger (IM) – access all accounts and converse with everyone at the same time
* Blog and Photo Sharing – supports Blogger, Blog.com, Livejournal, Flickr, Friendster, Xanga and others so text and pictures can be uploaded
* Messaging – picture messaging, online status and group message with ALL-Reply functionality
* No need for special configuration and easy to download
* trutap offers privacy – restrict access and even block users
* trutap will also be available via a web browser from a computer shortly
* trutap is free, fun and it works. Go on, you know you want it!
It seems that Google has taken the world domination as their next goal. At the moment they have tonnes of information about what people are doing in Internet. They know what people are searching, mailing, looking in YouTube, writing to their documents, information about websites and they even can see your daily, weekly plans and schedules but this isn’t everything. Soon they will know much more – gPhone is coming.
Apple’s iPhone came with its revolutionary look and features, Google has decided not to compete with a rival gadget. Instead Google Phone will be an unprecedented marriage of online advertising and mobile internet, in software that can be downloaded onto a phone. Google plans to persuade wireless carriers and mobile phone makers to push phones compatible with its new software. Soon marketing people can get any target group at any time and it’s all thanks to Google. Bluetooth marketing could be a last years fashion, Google is in the house now.
Google is expected to reveal details on the concept before the end of the year, and phones based on the new technology could be available as early as next year, but already now you can get information about gPhone from wikipedia. I wonder what Yahoo! is doing, where is yPhone?
Last week we had some complaints that some of the people from outside Scandinavia and Baltic States couldn’t get the password. Mainly the problems have occurred in restricted or limited markets, since it is not possible to send sms-s from short number to foreign country.
At this phase when we are not providing our service over the globe it is still important that everyone from anywhere can get access to Fortumo and provide sms services in countries that are available in that moment. To enable registration 24/7 to everyone despite the location we decided to change sms based registration with e-mail based registration. It is widely used, people are used to it and it isn’t more time consuming nor unsafe.
What would happen if search engines would think? Intelligent search engines would rule the world and marketing people will name it the search engine 2.0 era. Search engines will give their opinions about keywords and life would be a better place.
Well i wanted to try out whether Google is an intelligent search engine or not. So i took a random keyword – fortumo
And i was astonished when i got the search result, Google really thinks. Google gives its opinions about keywords, for example Fortumo is a synonyms for fortune. It is almost true – you can get a real fortune using Fortumo. When Google thinks that Fortumo leads to fortune then i don’t dare to argue with them
Some time ago i introduced a new device Bluepod Media had developed and talked a little about bluetooth marketing. I might have been a little too untimely with conclusions. So i decided to invest some time and find out useful things about bluetooth marketing.
First what is bluetooth?
Bluetooth is an industrial specification for wireless personal area networks. Bluetooth provides a way to connect and exchange information between devices such as mobile phones, laptops, PCs, printers, digital cameras, and video game consoles over a secure, globally unlicensed short-range radio frequency.
Bluetooth also said as Proximity marketing is the localized wireless distribution of advertising content associated with a particular place. The process of Bluetooth based proximity marketing involves setting up Bluetooth broadcasting equipment at a particular location and then sending information which can be text, images, audio or video to Bluetooth enabled devices within range of the broadcast server.
It used to be that due to security fears or a desire to save battery life many users kept their Bluetooth devices disabled. To overcome this problems marketers have combined bluetooth marketing with advising via traditional media – such as posters, television screens or field marketing – suggesting people to enable their Bluetooth handsets in order to receive free content.
Nowadays mobile phones seem to have usually bluetooth switched on by default. Many other devices like car kits and handsets are usually bridged over bluetooth, so users now leave bluetooth switched on for easy connection. How effective bluetooth marketing will become time will tell.
