It is hottest topic in the web biz world. No matter it’s on TC, Virtual Goods News, Venture Beat or even BBC, people everywhere are talking about the vitality of the virtual goods market in Asia. Many people are stunned by the fact that the biggest market of virtual goods is actually not in USA but in Asia. In a matter of fact, the VG in Asia is actually a $5 billion market in 2008, which is 25 times bigger than the States.
Indeed, most people from other parts of the world have just realized Asia has been in the leading position of VG for quite a while already. No matter on SNS or on web games, in China or in South Korea, the Asian counterparts seem to be steps ahead in terms of virtual goods monetization comparing to other places. Read the rest of this entry »
June in Taipei is always the best time to spot the latest IT trend and to bump into some big heads of IT industry while Computex is taking place. This year’s ritual has been even more flavored with the publicity from the WiMax Expo held at the same time. The public attention is focusing on “WiMax on the move”. The new gen mobile internet, provided by the local WiMax connectivity provider “VMAX”, is now accessible for free on one of the metro lines.
We’ve got a very exciting announcement today. We’re launching a new Fortumo Affiliate Program. Through this program you can promote Fortumo and earn additional revenue.
How does it work?
The model of Fortumo Affiliate Program is simple:
1. You promote Fortumo by placing a banner, text link, promotional code or any other Fortumo promotional item to your website, portal, blog, IM, Twitter, facebook account etc.
2. We pay you 20 EUR every time an user who had found Fortumo through your site has earned his or her first 50 EUR.
By doing this, you are not only earning money, but also promoting a worthwhile cause.
We have already provided you easy promotional tools:
* pre-made flash banners in different languages which you can place to your site
* pre-made text banners in different languages if you prefer text to flash, but you can use them both
* promotion code which you can share with others via IM, Twitter, e-mail, facebook account etc
* your promotion URL which you can also share with others via IM, Twitter, e-mail, facebook account etc
Inside your Fortumo account you are able keep an eye on how things are doing 24/7. It is possible to see the numbers of visits, registrations, affiliate revenue etc and informative graphs.
For most of the people Web 2.0 is just a buzzword – round corners, a bit childish web design but nothing too special. But there are some key elements that make Web 2.0 different from yesterday’s web (Web 1.0). Major difference is that Web 2.0 websites allow users to do more than just retrieve information – people are able to create their own content and be part of democratic and organic web.
Main keywords for Web 2.0 are openness, collaboration, dynamic, interactive, context sensitive services, third party content. Vast majority of the Web 2.0 doesn’t have a good business model behind it, although recently we have seen a bit more of the ones that do. There is also a tendency that services with a business model tend to move away from Web 2.0 ideology (openness, third party content, content sensitivity). I think that Google AdSense is the best example of Web 2.0 with a great business model.
But what comes next?
7th february Vodafone & Myspace partner to develop mobile social networking
Vodafone inks an exclusive deal with MySpace allowing mobile users in the U.K. access to the social networking website on the move. The Vodafone deal with MySpace marks the first time that the Fox Interactive Media unit of News Corp. has made its MySpace.com portal available to European mobile users.
23rd february Lanetro zed acquires Monstermob
The acquisition saga comes to an end when Monstermob shareholders vote in favor of LaNetro Zed’s proposal to take a 52 percent stake in the company. The completion of the deal ends weeks of speculation that China’s Linktone would take control of the company for $78 million, and marks the start of a major shake up of the D2C mobile content sector.
Usually people picture SMS-services as part of web 2.0 or just web based solutions, but actually it is just one side of the SMS-services. Since the number of mobile devices in increasing all the time, SMS-billing has become a value adding solution. Cell phones are always with people and that is why people can pay for park, pay in shops, order a lightening to ski-track etc all the time notwithstanding how much cash does they have in their wallet.
What is I-Wood?
Well a Dutch company i-wood has developed a mobile bannering concept which makes it possible to have mobile advertisement on Idle Screen of a cellular phone. Every time a user starts an application and returns to the main screen the banner advertisement changes. The number of banners is unlimited. Banners are stored locally and are synchronized periodically with the servers of i-wood.
How does the system work:
* Banner rotates after a call is made
* Banner rotates after every application
* Users can scroll through the banners
* The number of banners is unlimited
* Banners can be remotely installed
* Banner does not influence the mobile phone
* Banner statistics
Sounds nice, why do we need Android (gphone) at all ? I-wood even has quite witty promotional video, much better than Google’s
Today i was searching some practical cases about how companies have used Bluetooth marketing. Among others i managed to find quite good success story video, have a look:
It made me think how can it work even better. When you are going to buy a car it is nice to get pictures and videos about the car, but how could Bluetooth marketing bring people to buy a car. Well, there are automated parking machines everywhere, why aren’t we integrating Bluetooth marketing with those. A lot of people have hands-free system in their car with Bluetooth nowadays, it means also that Bluetooth is enabled. Just push through any car related ads and it will most probably reach the audience. To be sure we could also make the car owner pay for the parking via Bluetooth or just give out 30 minutes free parking… car owner gets free parking via Bluetooth i think you follow the pattern now. I think i can bring people to buy cars, tires or whatever.So what are we waiting for, let’s integrate Bluetooth everywhere and see what happens – do we refuse to enable Bluetooth in the future or not.
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.
This is a typical law of development – the pioneers are making something sensational and the followers are doing right after the success something quite similar. But the followers aren’t stupid, they won’t make same mistakes. They will focus on the pioneers weaknesses and make a better product with more features and benefits. It seems that LG has simply followed the rule and been “impressively innovative”. This may be just a rip of, but i’d rather buy Voyager than iPhone, mainly because 3G, but at the same time i would differ from others. Personally i don’t think Voyager will be a real competitor to iPhone, because Voyager isn’t a “lifestyle” product, but it will take some customers away indeed.
Some facts about Voyager as well:
* Voyager has a large external touch screen that also slides open sideways for a full QWERTY keypad. This gives users a choice on how they access the phone’s features
* Voyager will use Verizon Wireless’ fast 3G data network to access the mobile Internet, on the other hand iPhone uses slower AT&T Edge data network
* Voyager also comes with multimedia capabilities, including an HTML Web browser; Verizon Wireless’ V Cast mobile TV, video, and music service; and the ability to play MP3, WMA, and unprotected AAC files. For more storage room, the phone has a removable MicroSD memory slot that holds up to 8 Gbytes of memory
It is hottest topic in the web biz world. No matter it’s on TC, Virtual Goods News, Venture Beat or even BBC, people everywhere are talking about the vitality of the virtual goods market in Asia. Many people are stunned by the fact that the biggest market of virtual goods is actually not in USA but in Asia. In a matter of fact, the VG in Asia is actually a $5 billion market in 2008, which is 25 times bigger than the States.
? I-wood even has quite witty promotional video, much better than Google’s 
