TechFold - Bold tech & web commentary

Textango - Music purchases by Cellphone - a new label-less distribution model

In a Nutshell: Textango offers music purchases and free promotions by text message. Send a code (like “bbq”) to a number (23333), and you’ll get a redemption code to enter on the site which will download music to your PC.

IMHO: There’s something here in providing a unique promotion and avoiding credit cards (for consumers) and labels (for bands), but communicating its proposition is a muddled affair due to the multistep nature of the Textango process.

Textango has identified a real need: that of record labels and indie bands to promote their music in new and attention grabbing ways, and do so in a relevant context - i.e.: at a concert venue, on campus, at a skate shop. They’ve also twigged to the credit card-less nature of the key target demographic (teens), by using cellphone text messages as a payment vehicle.

FACT: Only 13% of teenagers ranging in age from 12 to 18 have credit cards.

FACT: Over 76% of teenagers ranging in age from 12 to 18 have cell phones. Considering that the 12 to 18 age demographic makes up literally half of the music industry’s target audience, that gives you an idea of what Textango’s Affiliate programs earning potential is.

[from Textango Affiliate Program]

To that end the Textango system lets artists sign up to offer fans downloads of either tracks of albums, either free or paid through your cellular provider (via a premium SMS charge). Presumably, then an artist can poster up messages along the line of “Text MatchFinger34 to 23333 to download our single for free!” They can poster up their gig venues, blog, local record store, or wherever, and drive downloads or sales, as they see fit.

One other disruptive element: Textango lets bands bypass labels for sales and distribution. I don’t know enough about the music industry to guess at the impact it might have, but in such a crisis-prone industry, its an interesting entrant.

Caveat: I haven’t tried the service, as I’m in Canada, where it doesn’t yet reach (recv’d an error message from ai-na.com). Textango apparently works with all major US carriers other than T-Mobile.

It sounds like a great service; however, it comes with a complicated use case. Consider the steps required to purchase an album:

1. User send the initial text as described above.
2. Textango replies with payment authorization text.
3. User replies “Y” to authorize payment.
4. Textango replies with download code.
5. User, later at home, retrieves download code from phone.
6. User heads to Textango site and enters code.
7. User downloads requested music.

[See this page, for example]

Its a complicated way to complete a simple transaction, particularly for free promotional downloads. One wonders how actual conversion rates would compare (measured by download volume) between a Textango promotion and a band simply directing audiences to their website. Or how album sales would compare between selling CD’s for cash at a venue and a Textango promotion.

That being said, for paid downloads, Textango presents a way for credit-less teens to make purchases, and text message inboxes can provide a convenient means of storing download credentials for later use.

Additionally, it provides a unique vector that adds buzz to a band - a fact that hasn’t been lost on a number of bands, indie labels, and sites, found via Technorati, that are taking advantage of the service: Raining and OK, IndieHeaven (label), Negative Progression Records, Bleed the Dream, AbsolutePunk.net, John Frusciante, Bayside, Ignition, 3MS, Glassjaw Boxer, Corporate Punishment Records, Drag Citizen, The GoStation
, etc. Many more on the Textango website too.

Incidentally, that’s too many horrendously formatted MySpace blogs to look at in a lifetime, much less an afternoon.

Business Plan & Management Team

Pat Phelan has a good round up of the Textango revenue model and management team. The key points are diversified sources of revenue (commission on sales, eBay-style promotional options, keyword registration), and a team that includes some seasoned entrepreneurs.

Depends on the Bands

So - all of that being said, I find Textango to be an awkward, if interesting way to get at music… but I’m way out of the target demographic. Cellphone using, indie-band consuming teens may very well glom to the concept, as the right bands can add credibility to a distribution system very quickly. To that end, Textango’s success largely depends on their ability to get bands signed on and promoting their service.

More thoughts at KOAR and Collaborative Web Services.

itunes, mobile, mp3, music textango

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PixDrop - send photos from desk to cell

PixDrop is a simple service, elegantly executed. All it does is send a photo to a phone number. Entering your email address is optional. The service takes about 3 seconds to use, and takes place on the site’s only page without reloading.

Unfortunately, PixDrop to date works only with the US major carriers (Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and AT&T), so I’m SOL up here in the Great Hot & Humid North (Telus is my carrier). Can anyone out there tell me how it handles re-sizing? I’m hoping that PixDrop automatically re-sizes photos for mobile presentation and byte-savings. What about watermarking?

The other question that I love to ask is usage scenarios. Generally, I’m trying to get pictures from my cam-phone to my desktop - not the other way around. That being said, I can see fun and practical applications: the usual sending of silly pictures, or sending my phone a picture of a particular car I’ll shopping for later. But - most of these scenarios are very niche-y - I’m not sure about PixDrop’s long-term growth prognosis.

Suggestions

1. Widgetize it for the MySpace Crowd. Want a quick usage growth vector? Build a MySpace widget that lets people “drop” photos the the mobiles of people viewing their profiles. To me, this service speaks to MySpace-y tweens - so give them a viral tool to use & promote it.
2. Widgetize it for Professional Markets. Insurance adjusters, real estate agents, people home shopping - all targets for this technology that could provide longer-term growth. Create a real-estate tool, for instance, that watermarks house photos from an online listing with address and price and sends them to a shoppers phone. Or a similar tool for property assessors, or any of a million and one mobile professions that are time & margin based and looking for ways to squeeze margins. Good opportunity here for “pro” paid accounts as well.

Summary

PixDrop is a useful feature with IMHO a monetizeable technology that could be re-packaged for a number of different markets and business plans. I’m looking forward to the addition of Canadian carriers to their serivce.

mobile, photos, pixdrop sharing

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Please Let It Be Available: Mobile Booking Service

PLIBA.mobi (”Please Let It Be Available” - here’s their non-mobi site, here’s their press release) aims to be premier the cell/mobile-friendly booking agent, allowing users to book from an expanding list of services and providers, which currently includes hostels and car rentals.

I tested the PLIBA.mobi website from my desktop. A RAZR on GPRS is just too painful an experience for web-browsing. That being said, PLIBA.mobi looks the same in a browser as it would on a phone - so you can try it out too.

PLIBA starts with a simple search screen:

Unfortunately, search results were generally weak, and would have been particularly frustrating on a mobile. Here’s the search results for “car rentals in london,” for example - what I would consider to be a fairly typical, easy to parse our search from a traveller:

I’d been hoping to see a list of major car rental outlets, sorted by location. The only relevant option is the last one listed, which appears to be a specialty service, unless Ferraris are common daily-use rentals in the London.

Ok, keep trying. It turns out the clicking “car rentals” in What’s New is the real way to access this functionality. That leads to a much more intelligent rental handling system that walks you through vehicle options, pick-up and drop-off locations and dates, and prices.

Much better - it even had good options for my own tourist backwater of a city, which implies good depth of coverage. Completing the request was a simple matter of selecting options and clicking through “Next” - until PLIBA asked for credit card info.

This is a finicky one: cleary its a good thing to ask for from a provider perspective, to avoide frivolous bookings. From a user perspective, its a bit intimidating, however. Do I trust PLIBA? Do I trust the mobile provider of whatever country I’m in? Are mobile connections “secure?” How about just billing services to my cellular bill (as with ringtones and other goofy downloads) instead?

Cell Phones as Digital Wallets - Carriers as Creditors?

That opens an interesting can of worms on the topic of mobile payment infrastructure, and the evolution of mobile phones as a “digital wallet.” Will carriers essentially become credit lenders, with your mobile account doubling as a credit source? IMHO, with the availablility of services like PLIBA, co-operation between carriers and credit card co’s is inevitable and beneficial. On my ToDo list: find out what goes on with mobile payments in Asia, where I understand the concept is widely deployed already.

Anyway, back to PLIBA. The service makes sense, and once you know how to use it, has great features and provides a powerful tool for mobile usage scenarios. That being said, the implementation is rough around the edges, lacking focus, and (speaking for myself here) difficult to figure the first time. Given that the mobile experience is generally lame to begin with, PLIBA needs to make the first experience as smooth and trouble-free as possible, or risk abandonment.

Ditch the Search Box

My first suggestion for PLIBA would be to ditch the search box. I never did get decent results out of it for any of the variety of searches available.

1. You have great vertical functionality. Surface it as a “Main Menu” instead, by starting with a list: “Hostels, Car Rentals, Restaurants” that leads users into each vertical’s functionality.
2. Doing it that way removes the need to type on my cell’s keypad too, which would be a big relief.
3. This does suggest a strategy of targeting verticals - i.e.: who are your users? Locals looking for a specific restaurant (do they need a search box?)? Or travellers unfamiliar with an area, looking for a type of restaurant (Tapas, for example, mmmmm, hungry)?

There’s a distinct possibility that I’ve missed some core piece of PLIBA functionality in which the search box would be useful, but if I’ve missed it, I’m sure many others would too.

Summary

In summary, PLIBA is at the bleeding edge of an emerging transaction mode, and has put together good functionality to start the ball rolling. Doing so in an evironment where there are no “best practices” white papers floating around is no small challenge, and PLIBA has expected rough edges. I’m looking forward to seeing where the service goes from here.

bookings, cellphone, cellular, micropayments, mobile, online pliba

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Phozi: The Online Photobooth

Phozi is a freshly launched Flash-based site that lets you edit and widget-publish photos in the style of those bizarre photobooths you find in malls and bars: add goofy surrounds, hearts, “BFF!” declarations, etc. There’s no registration required, which is great for getting going quick, although it makes the mobile aspect cumbersome (see below).

Phozi let’s you connect a webcam (via Flash interface), upload a photo from your PC, or send a photo from your cell phone. Once your photo is up on the site, you can edit it, and then publish it with ready-to-embed widget code.

click to expand

I couldn’t get any photos to upload from my PC, but the mobile upload worked great: when you click “Send from Mobile,” the flash app loads with a one-time email address to send your picture to. Do so, give it a minute, and click “Check for Photo” - when it gets there, it shows up, and you’re ready to fancy it up. This is where registration would be useful: having a persistent Phozi email address to send pictures to (and have them queue up in my account) would be more friendly than having to thumbtype in a new phozi email address for each picture.

When you’re done with your photo, click publish and Phozi creates code that’s ready to embed in MySpace, blog posts, where ever. The embed code is pretty heavy, but copying and pasting works just fine.

click to expand

Here’s my embedded phozi photo:

That’s a picture of a foot standing on the cyanide poisoned ground of a former gold mine in Northern Manitoba which I visited for this WorldChanging blog post. The border denotes the toxic alien-ness of the landscape, the skull and cross-bones is self-evident.

All in all, Phozi was fast and intuitive to use. The flash tool is simply built and generally works smoothly, and the mobile upload is a neat feature even if the one-time email address is a little clunky. I’m obviously not in target demographic (young teens & kids, myspace types), but I could see the tool getting traction in this group - especially with the embed displaying a prominent (perhaps too much so) link back to the site.

A quick note on business model: So far, phozi seems to be exclusively ad-supported with a few tasteful AdSense placements on the top of the site.

mobile, mobileapps, photobooth, photobooths, phozi, pictures, web2.0 webcam

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