THE COUNTLESS PLAYERS lumbering around on the user-generated mobile video playground aren’t just looking for consumers. They’re also hoping to find a viable business model or two.
The success of Internet sites such as YouTube, Jumpcut, Vimeo and Google Video has spawned a raft of mobile-focused competitors looking to get wireless subscribers to use their phones to record, post and share video content. And while some services seem to be drawing traffic and accruing users, whether they can be lucrative anytime soon is far from certain.
The state of the space was underscored last month when Mojungle.com aborted plans to auction itself off on eBay after receiving zero bids for the company. Mojungle, which allows users to send videos, photos and text messages to content-sharing sites wirelessly, reportedly hoped to get an offer of $250,000; instead the company failed to secure even the $60,000 opening bid.
“The decision to sell Mojungle was a difficult one,” executives posted on the eBay listing before the auction was pulled. “We’ve encountered unanticipated and growing personal obligations not allowing us to make the full-time commitment needed to build Mojungle into the strong brand we know it can be.”
While the company has maintained its photo-sharing site, Mojungle executives declined repeated requests for comment by RCR Wireless News.
Despite Mojungle’s troubles, though, there is no shortage of optimism in the
space. But even the players on the field say they’re concerned about providing a compelling service and gaining a following-and that revenues will come later.
‘The golden pathway’
“We don’t believe this market is really going to take off until one year from now,” said Steve Hoffman, COO of Zannel, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based startup that plans to launch service in March. “Handsets that are capable of video have to hit a critical mass. All we’re doing right now is laying the groundwork.”
Hoffman previously served as studio head of InfoSpace Inc.’s games business. The company closed a $6 million round of funding last fall and hopes to draw users with technology and a user interface that makes it easy to share video and other content across platforms.
“What we’ve noticed is that right now there are a lot of barriers to experiencing photos and video on your phone, developing a community around them and exchanging them with your peers,” said Woodham. “Our whole focus right now is on what we call the ‘golden pathway,’ making (that) as simple as possible.”
Meanwhile, earlier entrants to the market appear to be gaining traction even if they may not be generating much revenue. Zedge.net claims nearly 4 million users who share videos, screensavers and ringtones; other popular sites include Mobango, Tinytube, Mocospace and Mymobileclips.
Mywaves, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based outfit, claims to attract as many as 40,000 new worldwide users each week to its offering of both user-generated and clips from CNN and other publishers. The company-which has also raised $6 million in venture capital-offers a Web site and downloadable application that allows wireless users to consume a host of Internet-based content on their phones.
While Mywaves’ service is free to end users, the company hopes to generate revenue by delivering branded channels on behalf of businesses, and, after cultivating a following among mobile users, plans to place marketing messages between video clips, as many online video content providers do today. Like Zannel, Mywaves boasts an impressive front office with executives culled from TiVo, PayPal, Yahoo Inc., Napster and Danger.
But both companies face a substantial hurdle in attracting consumers to their unfamiliar names-particularly as well-known Internet brands try to elbow their way into wireless. And both are looking to carriers to help with distribution.
“For small companies, carriers do one thing very well: they represent a leveraged distribution outlet for your product or service,” said Mywaves CEO Rajeev Raman. “We know that reaching to a handful of strategic carriers can get you distribution or awareness that small companies would find very hard to do by themselves.”
But the slew of user-generated mobile video startups faces one other potential stumbling block: mobile data prices that may keep would-be customers at bay.
“For us, data plans are really the gating factor,” said Zannel’s Hoffman. “We would like to see them bundled in a package where the plan doesn’t seem prohibitively expensive. Teens and twenty-somethings are our primary users, and if they aren’t subscribing to data plans, they probably aren’t going to be using these data services.”
