MyNuMo Democratizes Mobile Content Creation, Distribution and Sales
on MobileCrunch
by Oliver, May 18, 2006
I’ve been playing with MyNuMo for several weeks now and speaking to their engaging founder Bill Volk about his vision for this very creative application. Bill (who really ought to have at least a paragraph or two about himself, his experiences and his vision and another couple about the rest of the MyNuMo team) is an entrepreneur worthy of respect - after all - few entrepreneurs have put their money where their application is to the degree that Bill has with MyNuMo which has yet to take in a round of financing from a VC or even any Angel Investors. Something which, when you see the degree of funcitionality that MyNuMo already has becomes that much more impressive.
So what is MyNuMo you ask? Well Bill would tell you that MyNuMo is the CafePress of mobile content, Ajit Joakar of FutureText/OpenGardens would say that it’s the first true Open Garden for mobile content consumption, distribution and sale and I would suggest that it’s the democratization of mobile content from creation to sale and consumption. Whatever you call it, MyNuMo is pretty cool.
Not only is the site fun to visit because of the collection of videos it sports - including a series called “Kung Fu Car Wash” that you have to see to believe, but within a few minutes you can sign up and begin to create your own saleable mobile content. There are tools that enable remixing of ringtones (think “Garageband”), more tools for working with video, wallpapers and even text. The site incorporates user generated qualitative rankings, has dedicated blog space and coolest of all they’ve recently introduced a marketing tool.
This tool, NuMoMatic, allows you to create snippets of HTML that allow you to post them on other sites (like your MySpace page) to promote the content you’ve created. Promoting content is only half the battle however. It has been fairly well established that people (and particularly short attention spanned younger people - will not buy something on their phone if they have to pull out a credit card to do so. The only means of buying that is sufficiently friction-free to prise money out of the pockets of the primary audience is via carrier billing with the charges simply added to ones phone bill.
It’s here where Bill has really done something special. Ordinarily it is about this place in the process that independent content developers discover that the carriers would rather they die - or at least limp off and let them (the carriers that is) alone. For an individual content creator to get onto a major carrier deck is all but impossible, but MyNuMo has inked deals with many majors including Cingular/AT&T and T-Mobile, they’re in a testing with Sprint and on Verizon’s list for their 3rd party content beta which is scheduled to start later this spring. Bill tells me that they’re able to bill for text messages on all major carriers as well.
On the user side is functionality just as critical to making the content people have developed sell: MyNuMo’s systems are capable of identifying which handset someone is using and adjusting the content appropriately. The customer doesn’t even have to know the make and model of his or her phone, MyNuMo can make the determination and provide the right content. If content isn’t delivered, no charges are assessed
Recently the MyNuMo site has added additional customization functions for the personal pages of MyNuMo members, allowing for the inclusion of HTML, images and Flash objects This allows for fairly comprehensive user customization like this page here.
Personally I think there’s a lot of good stuff happening with MyNuMo and I like the fact that someone has finally figured out a way to enable creative people to share their creations and monetize them without having to get a degree in carrier relations to do so.
I will say though that there are still some things that I would like to see Bill sort out. In addition to needing some information about the management team on his site, the fact that a website devoted to mobile content simply can’t be viewed on even a sophisticated smartphone like the ones I carry makes no sense to me at all. Bill says there’s a WAP site for this purpose but it isn’t clearly identfiable and this can be frustrating if you are trying to browse MyNuMo from your mobile.
I’m sure though that they’ll sort that out soon enough. This is a hugely ambitious undertaking made doubly so by the slim capital they have available…VCs take note; these are people that know how to do a lot with a little, making this a very good investment opportunity in my opinion.
Personally, I like what I’m seeing at MyNuMo and hope that they’ll continue to see very creative people develop unique and saleable content for a long time to come.
by Oliver, May 18, 2006
I’ve been playing with MyNuMo for several weeks now and speaking to their engaging founder Bill Volk about his vision for this very creative application. Bill (who really ought to have at least a paragraph or two about himself, his experiences and his vision and another couple about the rest of the MyNuMo team) is an entrepreneur worthy of respect - after all - few entrepreneurs have put their money where their application is to the degree that Bill has with MyNuMo which has yet to take in a round of financing from a VC or even any Angel Investors. Something which, when you see the degree of funcitionality that MyNuMo already has becomes that much more impressive.So what is MyNuMo you ask? Well Bill would tell you that MyNuMo is the CafePress of mobile content, Ajit Joakar of FutureText/OpenGardens would say that it’s the first true Open Garden for mobile content consumption, distribution and sale and I would suggest that it’s the democratization of mobile content from creation to sale and consumption. Whatever you call it, MyNuMo is pretty cool.
Not only is the site fun to visit because of the collection of videos it sports - including a series called “Kung Fu Car Wash” that you have to see to believe, but within a few minutes you can sign up and begin to create your own saleable mobile content. There are tools that enable remixing of ringtones (think “Garageband”), more tools for working with video, wallpapers and even text. The site incorporates user generated qualitative rankings, has dedicated blog space and coolest of all they’ve recently introduced a marketing tool.
This tool, NuMoMatic, allows you to create snippets of HTML that allow you to post them on other sites (like your MySpace page) to promote the content you’ve created. Promoting content is only half the battle however. It has been fairly well established that people (and particularly short attention spanned younger people - will not buy something on their phone if they have to pull out a credit card to do so. The only means of buying that is sufficiently friction-free to prise money out of the pockets of the primary audience is via carrier billing with the charges simply added to ones phone bill.
It’s here where Bill has really done something special. Ordinarily it is about this place in the process that independent content developers discover that the carriers would rather they die - or at least limp off and let them (the carriers that is) alone. For an individual content creator to get onto a major carrier deck is all but impossible, but MyNuMo has inked deals with many majors including Cingular/AT&T and T-Mobile, they’re in a testing with Sprint and on Verizon’s list for their 3rd party content beta which is scheduled to start later this spring. Bill tells me that they’re able to bill for text messages on all major carriers as well.
On the user side is functionality just as critical to making the content people have developed sell: MyNuMo’s systems are capable of identifying which handset someone is using and adjusting the content appropriately. The customer doesn’t even have to know the make and model of his or her phone, MyNuMo can make the determination and provide the right content. If content isn’t delivered, no charges are assessed
Recently the MyNuMo site has added additional customization functions for the personal pages of MyNuMo members, allowing for the inclusion of HTML, images and Flash objects This allows for fairly comprehensive user customization like this page here.
Personally I think there’s a lot of good stuff happening with MyNuMo and I like the fact that someone has finally figured out a way to enable creative people to share their creations and monetize them without having to get a degree in carrier relations to do so.
I will say though that there are still some things that I would like to see Bill sort out. In addition to needing some information about the management team on his site, the fact that a website devoted to mobile content simply can’t be viewed on even a sophisticated smartphone like the ones I carry makes no sense to me at all. Bill says there’s a WAP site for this purpose but it isn’t clearly identfiable and this can be frustrating if you are trying to browse MyNuMo from your mobile.
I’m sure though that they’ll sort that out soon enough. This is a hugely ambitious undertaking made doubly so by the slim capital they have available…VCs take note; these are people that know how to do a lot with a little, making this a very good investment opportunity in my opinion.
Personally, I like what I’m seeing at MyNuMo and hope that they’ll continue to see very creative people develop unique and saleable content for a long time to come.
posted by Gripplly at
14:06
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home