Interview with Ariel Poler, CEO Textmarks February 24, 2007
Posted by David Kaye in : Mobile, Business, Interview, SMS , 7 comments
Earlier in the week I profiled Textmarks, a user-generated SMS content startup who just launched a premium SMS version of their service targeted at bloggers and other small content providers. The TechCrunch crowd gave the product a bit of a kicking, so I had a chat with the company’s CEO Ariel Poler to ask some questions about the product and find out why he thinks there’s a market for it.
Breaking: Porn No Longer Popular February 23, 2007
Posted by David Kaye in : Adult, Stats , 8 comments
Netimperative reports that in January 2007, search engines accounted for 13.3% of all UK internet visits, while adult traffic comprised a mere 11.5%.
Heather Hopkins, Vice President of Research for Hitwise UK: “Search engines overtook adult websites in October and the lead has been growing ever since. This marks an important point in the maturity of the internet, with mainstream consumer activities overtaking the early attractions of the internet. It indicates that search engines have become the point of entry for the web, used to navigate to specific websites and to search for products and information.”
Whoa. Search engines have become the point of entry for the web and are being used to search for products and information. These and other simiarly banal revelations are available in the full article here.
Life After Ringtones February 20, 2007
Posted by David Kaye in : Mobile , 6 commentsGood summary of the current direction of the mobile content market from Reuters here.
Direct to consumer subscription plans, community and social services are increasingly where things are heading.
Textmarks Launches Awesome Self Publishing Premium SMS Alerts For Bloggers February 19, 2007
Posted by David Kaye in : Mobile, User Generated Content , 12 comments
After 8 years in the mobile industry, it takes a lot to get me excited about a new service. This new SMS application from Textmarks, however, is very cool indeed.
In a nutshell, TextMarks allows anyone to set up and run an SMS alerts service. Here’s how it works: You sign up with them, reserve your keyword (e.g. RAZOR), and then anyone who messages the Textmarks shortcode (41411) can subscribe for $4.99/month or $9.99/month. The owner of the keyword can then send SMS messages to subscribers from a simple web-based interface.
How To Get a Wii: A Lazy Man’s Guide February 11, 2007
Posted by David Kaye in : Games , 11 comments
Like many people, I’ve been trying to buy a Wii for a couple of months now. If you’re like me, however, the idea of hanging out in Best Buy/Target/EB holds no appeal, and you’re not going pay a premium on eBay either. There are ways to get a Wii with virtually no effort, however. I got mine a few days ago - here’s how.
MySpace Monthly Ad Revenues: $25 million February 10, 2007
Posted by David Kaye in : Social Networking, Stats , 16 comments
Mashable snags the most interesting tidbit from Rupert Murdoch’s keynote at the McGraw-Hill Digital Media Summit in New York: MySpace is currently doing $25 million per month in advertising revenue, at a growth rate of 30% per quarter.
How much of this is already accounted for as part of the $900m deal Google struck with News Corp is not immediately clear. Either way, that $580m purchase price is starting to look like more and more of a bargain as the months roll by.
Ubisoft Gets Into The Movie Business
Posted by David Kaye in : Games, Movies , 9 comments
Top ten games publisher Ubisoft is to start producing CGI short films based on the company’s own intellectual properties. Yves Guillemot, Ubisoft’s CEO, had this to say:
“Video game production has progressively moved closer and closer to film and television production and this convergence will only intensify in the coming years,” commented Guillemot. “This natural evolution is accompanied by revolutionary changes in online distribution channels via the explosion of free and paid-for digital content. Today’s launch of a studio specializing in digital film creation will allow Ubisoft to be a pioneer in the domain for the years to come.”
This makes a lot of sense. In the short term, these films will be serve as fantastic marketing tools for upcoming titles when distributed across channels like YouTube and Xbox Live Marketplace - it’s no accident, I’m sure, that the first of these CGI shorts is for a new Ubisoft IP (Assassin’s Creed) rather than an established one.
Long term, this allows the company to build the in-house expertise to take major properties to other media when the time is right. Ubisoft is arguably one of the best positioned publishers to make a success of this, given their strength in creating original IP and doing innovative things with established ones such as Tom Clancy.
[via Kotaku]
Facebook Starts Selling Virtual Items February 8, 2007
Posted by David Kaye in : Social Networking , 34 comments
Facebook has just started testing the sale of virtual items. Dating site HotOrNot has allowed its users to buy virtual flowers for each other for a while now, and the now-defunct social network FunHi was probably the pioneer in this area, but this is the first time a successful major league social network has introduced such a scheme. Users can send their first for free, and pay $1 each after that.
I’m noticing a lot of negative comments in the TechCrunch thread from people who are convinced this is a stupid idea that won’t catch on. My prediction: they are going to make a lot of money. People have proven time and time again that they are perfectly willing to pay for things that show other people they care about each other. Facebook’s bling-starved environment has always been a little more sedate than the HTML-soaked MySpace, which is going to make this even more welcome to its users.
[via TechCrunch]
