Insight Community

Obstacles: Billing, network operator apathy, a raft of start-ups that have no clear route past these obstacles that will make you look like a me-too unless you can create and meet aspirations around connectivity. The route to that might be the professional content creator community, along with others: “Some 8,500 visitors attended screenings at the recent three-day Pocket Films Festival at Paris’ Pompidou modern-art museum. In addition to nearly 100 shorts, the fare included three feature-length films - all shot on cells.” But the business user is also a possibility: tried salesforce.com? SAP?

Marketing: Emphasize that the future of all content lies in connectivity. It's not about watching but being connected. Translate this too into its significance for professional users: It's not about content it's about connectivity. Build partnerships with th e likes of the above and Wildwave which already has global content distribution deals win place.

Groups of potential users: Did you look at Ymogen? "As part of the mobile and web community CMS development, an exploratory research project is being conducted with BBC Innovation Labs and Nokia, using location-based story-telling and its implications for citizen journalism. " The professional communications market is often overlooked by new mobile services that are not explicitly business apps.

Reaching the potential audience: Currently mobile networks earn 99% of revenues from voice. How can you persuade them that mywaves offers a credible value-added that will contribute to their revenues in any significant way? I think through having tight focus on different segments of the professional user market. Show them you have a strategy and a clearly defined client base. Remember those partnerships (above). Look also at what Access E and Mixcast are doing.

Your website: It should be clear I think you will struggle to be a consumer play until you've captured the imagination of the professional user audience/market. Reorientate your main site around specific segments of that, and then tease the general public into believing they can join it.

Video hosting platforms are obviously hot right now, however, like most other services, they have not yet capitalized on the emerging mobile market.

Barriers for Adoption 

Various adoption barriers such as cheap, high fidelity bandwidth to mobile devices will play a role for quite some time however Mywaves has a chance to grow with the market. Such barriers will all but vanish as handsets and networks improve and costs come down over the next 2-5 years. 

Distribution 

The best way to achieve distribution of the player is to partner with video hosting and sharing sites to offer the mobile compression and playback process as a form of sharing - very much like 'Digg this' buttons for Digg.

It would also be highly advantageous to to create a browser plugin that detects embeded video on a page and allows users to send it to phones. Very much like Skype detects phone numbers and allows you to call by clicking the number.

Potential applications 

Potential users and uses of the technology would be for young users who want to instantly share content with each other from the web to mobile.

Mobile to mobile is somewhat catered for via MMS, however if Mywaves can build in some community aspects that encourage usage for this scenario then even better. This might include a log of video sent and other incentives like replying to the MMS via SMS to add a comment to the video. The SMS might be rebroadcast to all the recipients of the video. Like Twitter for Video.

Another potential application might be for conferences whereby attendees can provide their mobile numbers and get video updates of the sessions - especially since some conferences run sessions in parallel.

Site and message 

The current site and message is focused on channels and galleries. It is probably unlikely that those on the move are going to be browsing for video content or wanting to set up long term viewing experiences.

It is more likely that users want to have the feeling of immediate sharing with their friends of a funny video or a timely piece of content.

With this in mind, it is probably better to focus the site on a few simple messages for the two target markets.

1. For users

Download the Mywaves toolbar to send video to your friend's phone.

Download the Mywaves phone player to receive videos from your friends while on the go.

2. Got video?

Put the Mywaves 'SND2MBL' button on your video content to help with mobile distribution 

 

I should not have to sign up to download any of the features above. Signing up should be optional and only required to facilitate community features.

The site should also be less brochure 'sign up now' orientated and more focused on exposing the interaction/activity happening within the community. Perhaps showcase the top video being sent around or the top community members.

By de-emphasizing the channel/video hosting side of things, Mywaves has the opportunity to partner with existing video sites and position itself as the leading conduit from the web to mobile device. While the company grows its support for multiple handsets and networks, video hosting sites and users can focus on what they do best - creating, uploading and discovering video.

1. Obstacles to adoption:

Do I need it?

    Market research is all important here, find out what people like and don't like about it currently. Let people use it for free for a while. Get feedback and release a restricted functionality version which can be installed on all phones free of charge and used as free marketing.

Why is this going to improve my life?

    Related to the above, find out what people like about it and push that. 

Is it going to cost me too much?

    Related to the above, release a cut down version for free and keep adding functionality which people can pay for as a subscription service. 

I already have too much installed on my phone and I can't keep track of the payments.

    Make it easy to understand and easy to subscribe, and all importantly, unsubscribe. People will not cancel something they enjoy using, but they will kick up a fuss, tell friends, neighbours, the internet, when something they don't want won't leave them alone.

2. How to market?

As above, do market research by letting it out for free as a cut down version. Change your website, the home page that you have tells me something technical which should be something I look for, not something pushed in my face. People will be genuinely interested to find this information, so make them work for it, put some advertising on your front page. Make it look young and fresh, have pictures of young people enjoying music. Look at the iPod website for example, full of adverts for their own stuff, links to sponsors, pictures of young people having a good time, American Idol, etc. This is exciting to people, not which phone it works with.

3. Which groups of potential users?

Do your research, but I would suggest you go for the young people with money who like to spend it, there tend to be 2 age groups, 13-21, who have less money, but will use it more, target these with free services, then the 21-35s who are still cool enough, but like to differentiate themselves with more add-ons and gadgets. These are the ones to aim the extra services at.

4. How to reach your target audience?

Partnerships with other companies. Simple as that. Get on to iTunes, Zune - I'm sure you know people you could work with better than I do. Make sure you aren't offering anything competitive, and have a good story about how you work ready. You need to be able to integrate with what they have without much or any extra work too. Then just tell them about it, and be enthusiastic, as though you are going to make them a lot of extra money and differentiate them from the competition. Remember, what you have is unique and you are offering something to a crowded marketplace which will make them stand out. That is the message to push. These people will help you reach your target audience.

5. All of the above, but look at other peoples music websites. Make it colourful, playful and interesting. Remember who you are aiming at! Don't make it technical unless people are looking for it, and make sure support is easy to find. Put up support email addresses and phone numbers wherever possible. Make sure you have enough people to respond to queries.  

First of all, let me say that I'm glad the Mywaves product does not rely on the success of broadcast or overlay mobile video networks for success. I've written a fair bit on how expecting consumers to pay high prices to send video content over an expensive (wireless) network just so the carrier can collect a toll neglects the fact that consumers will find  a cheaper alternative, like sideloading -- or, like using their existing unlimited data package and a third-party video provider, like Mywaves.

But while the carriers, Crown Castle, and Qualcomm are looking the other way, a product like yours could slip under the radar and build up a following. It worked for YouTube. On to your questions:

1) Obstacles to adoption.

Firstly, you run counter to the operator's way of thinking these days (with the exception of 3 in the UK). Carriers are still fixated on the possibility of capturing revenue from video subscription services, and your service requires them to have matured beyond those dreams. If carriers are not your partner, then distribution and marketing become a challenge. You will not have the advantage of the massive marketing boost that carrier placement offers. You will need to invest greatly to create market awareness of your service. Naturally, you will try to be viral to mitigate that, but the start reality is that it will cost you to buy awareness. Overcome this obstacle by not wasting unnecessary time trying to make deals with major carriers. They will wasted your time, resources, and cycles. Consider upstarts like Helio or Amp'd.

Second, there are lots of competitors out there, big and small, with the most obvious being YouTube. Yet YouTube is (now) a big company and less nimble. They may try to go some complicate route that includes deals with the carriers, thus rev shares, and thus higher prices. This gives you some wiggle room, but still you will be competing with YouTube for viewers and content partners. Overcome this obstacle by beating YouTube to market (as they beat Google) and offering a better product, sooner.

Thirdly, device compatibility is a challenge for you. You require 3G handsets, and suitable platforms for your service. This really cuts the market down in size. Not much of a simple way around this, because the device complexity issue is dogging everyone. At least the early adopters are more likely to already have these devices. If you could work with EDGE and 1xRTT it would really widen the market. Is buffering out of the question?

Fourth, you also probably are only advisable to subscribers who have a flat-rate data plan, otherwise they'll blame you for their surprise bill, and get negative word of mouth started. Make sure to CLEARLY warn users to have a flat rate data plan. Promote the purchase of a plan, this will get you in better stead with the carriers.

Fifth, in a world of Ed Whitacres, you could find yourselves blocked or degraded by non-neutral-networks. This will only happen in the event that you are very successful. Overcome this by regular testing to make sure your packets are traveling as fast as any on the network, and if not, be sure to tell your customer who to call to complain.

2) Well, it took me a few minutes to understand what you offered. It was obviously mobile video, but how, how much, what content, etc. took a bit to figure out. Perhaps there is a better, concise way of saying "What it is" on the home page... Your elevator pitch to consumers. A Flash demo of a new users subscribing is a good thing to have on your site. Using a reference point that people know, video podcasting, frequently in your explanations may help jump-start comprehension. ex: "In one minute you can get your favorite video podcasts on your phone - for free."

3) First, podcast viewers. Go where the podcasts are and put ads on those sites. Make deals with high volume podcast sites to mobilize their content. These can be free deals (since podcasts are normally free) but regardless it will get your client into devices.

Second, video www site operators. They want to mobilize their content. Some are mobile savvy and large enough to have mobile resources themselves (atomfilms, youtube) but many are not (compfused?). These may make good partners.

Third, content owners. Problem with these guys is they generally want lots of cash for their content. But a neat approach would be to partner with content owners who have lots of static (text or image) content, but little video presence. By embedding links to a Mywaves player and content within their static content, Mywaves could help them move to video, and also secure increased distribution of your client. Heck, you might even be able to charge them as a service, all while they promote distribution of your client. A good aspect of this is that the header information that these companies often receive from the users often indicates what model phone the subscriber has, and as such the promotion could only be targeted at subscribers with suitable devices. That increases success rates, and reduces user frustration.

Fourth, youth and MySpace subscribers. They love community, and acting goofy on video. They have the latest phones. They are raised on short, punchy content.

Fifth, Instant Messenger providers. Can you use your tool to connect PC IM clients to a mobile phone? Can I do video messaging to mobile phones with your product?

Sixth, Advertisers may be interested in getting their ad content out to devices. Ad aggregators or individual brands that already have presence within mobile content may want to extent that static presence to a video-enabled one. By embedding links to Mywaves-powered video it could get people to download a client, and related video content.

4) There is a fair bit of overlap between my answer to #3 and this Q4, so please consider what I've already said above, too.

First, Integrate into messaging, so that a P2P viral spread can affect your distribution. Encourage (through ease, and pricing) your existing subscribers to send video, and a client download link to others, and make it easy and free. Leverage email, SMS, and IM.

Second, if you can find a way to integrate a link to your content into existing mobile web content, it could potentially drive lots of traffic to your client software. Can you buy ad space in mobile content? Buy it only for suitable handsets to save costs and increase success rates, and use attractive video content as the hook -- don't push your technology or client in your mobile banner ads! Instead push access to good content. Nobody *wants* your client software...they want SNL on their phone.

Third, Avoid white label distribution deals of your client. That's not the business strategy that you are after, so it would be a distraction. For example, you might get to talking with some major brand, like Viacom, and they like your client, but they don't want your branding on it. "Can you build us this with Viacom branding, and let us control the content menu?" Sure you can, but holding Viacom's hand through that process will cost you bundles of legal, engineer, and management man-hours. A white label deal with a carrier is slightly more desirable, but only if you can retain control of the content menu. At least then you can sell ads to it, retain control, and get the advantage of carrier distribution. As I said before, the biggest carriers may be the wrong choice.

Fourth, Web ad buys on the right sites. Popular Video Podcast sites, and any other sites that represent content that you also have in a mobile context.

Sixth, A neat marketing spin might be to try to paint yourselves as the "Answer" to all those expensive video plans the carriers are pushing. Research study after study shows there is interest for mobile video, but that willingness to pay is lacking. The carriers want to push $15 subscriptions to idetic! Like Skype has successfully branded itself as the 'smart guy's way to stick it to the telco', can you successfully brand yourselves as the video equivalent? (Is Joost a potential partner, or a threat? hmmm.)

5) Sorry, but while my firm has expertise in website design, it is not my forte within the firm. I would say your site looks good, but I'd try to segment the market a little bit. There are probably two types who come to your site:

a) People who have been recommended to go there by a friend/contact. These people are going to download and install because they've been told it's cool, and that's what they came here to do.

b) People who want to know more about the company. This is less about the market, and more about the industry, but your site is light on this content. More exec profiles, VC pedigree, and possibly even technical information. The content you already have, like partnering info, is good.

c) People who want video, and have found you somehow, but need to be convinced. This is the main target for your site, since these are the ones that need to be converted into downloaders/installers. Appeal to them the most on the home page, and push the free aspect, and position that price compared to MobiTV, VCast, et al.

d) Tech enthusiasts. These are likely to be lots of your early adopters, and they are trend setters. But they are not just interested in video and pricing. These guys (including me) want to know first, "How does it work?". We want to understand it, from an high level, both in terms of tech and business model. When it makes sense to us, we like it, and are more likely to download it, try it, and then tell our friends about it. This group doesn't need to be spoon fed on the home page, but they do want their answers no more than one link deep.

e) Support seekers. I'm not sure if your product is error and complication free, but I've had enough experience building these apps to know that people can screw up anything. There should be a support link on the home page (not just your FAQ) offering tips, help, a knowledge base, and the usual deal.

Lastly, your blog is a good way to seem "community" but it is password protected to even view it! That's a sure way to block the world from ever seeing it. Is that what you wanted? I tried to log in with my new mywaves ID, but of course that didn't work since it's a Google blog. Get/host your own blog, use existing passwords, allow single sign in, and only require ID/passwords to post, but allow anyone to view. Clearly state your right to moderate it and remove offensive posts.

Good luck,

Derek Kerton

www.kertongroup.com

Is “Mywaves” the next wave, or will users take a waver?

Wireless providers are all about the video now.  You can hardly find a phone without a camera built in, and nearly all of them now beg you to stream audio and video.  The market, however, remains largely untapped by consumers.  Mywaves believes a better player and more rich content are the key to unlocking the keypads and getting users to spend their time staring at tiny screens.  Someone will get this right, and maybe this is the one, if they can match the market to the marketing overcome the fear and hype that’s holding back most of the industry.

I’m a target.  A target market, actually.  I’m in my (very) late thirties, have all the necessary tech gadgets and cell phones, a reasonable disposable income, and that magic “y” chromosome that so many marketing people find appealing when they pitch anything technology related.  I pay my wireless provider a king’s ransom each month for cellular broadband, and I use it every day.  I have more minutes available than I use.  Why then, do I not even sign up for my provider’s video broadcasting service?

The first problem is accessibility.  Video on demand in general, especially from the web, and even more so to mobile devices is being held back primarily by the ambivalence of the content providers.  Streaming the content itself has proven fairly easy.  Streaming content in just the right way so that commercials can’t be skipped and content can’t be re-used or shared has crippled the usability of these services.  Nobody chooses to watch video on a cell phone because it’s the best possible viewing device.  The cell phone is chosen solely for its convenience.  It’s there all the time, it’s always connected, and it is the ultimate in spur of the moment.  Absolutely anything that takes away from that instant gratification will be fatal to the service.  With barely acceptable speeds for live feeds, content should be transferred in advance of need – in the background – so that it’s there when you want it, not available to stream when you want it.  Preferences, subscriptions to specific content, and recommendations should allow users to find new content ready for them when they flip the phone open – even if it happens to be on a subway or in the air when no signal is available.

Yesterday, my daughter had her soccer practice and for the ten millionth time I found myself parked and waiting for a couple of hours.  I hit CBS's website and watched an episode of CSI using my laptop and broadband cellular modem.  This time it worked -- mostly.  The video was occasionally choppy, the commercials about 50% louder than the program, and any problems with the connection forced me to start over.  The connection can be "bursty" so during period of slower connection it doesn't serve the video well, but during higher bandwidth periods it doesn't pre-cache enough.  Some days, I can't use the service at all for video. 

Every one of these issues was caused by the need for content provider to control my use of this data.  Had they simply made the file available to download, I likely would pull the content from my own network before going out and watch it whenever I wanted -- in perfect clarity.  They'd get much more use out of the service.  Had the commercials been set to a reasonable volume, I wouldn't have hit the mute button and checked email while they were playing.   In short, the advertisers end up getting less value not more through this crippling technology.  I spend a lot of time waiting for things.  I'm a father of 3, a firefighter, and a consultant who travels.  I would watch more programs -- including their commercials -- if they would simply make them easily available to me.   I have a Zen player that gets almost no video use for this reason.   The content providers work so hard to control what I see and when I see it, than I don't bother with their content.

As much as the “older” crowd like me wants to see longer programming at times when other kinds of tools are unavailable – waiting for a plane, waiting for your kids, waiting in general; the younger crowd wants more viral content in short bursts of attention.  They want the 5 minute clip from “The Daily Show” to show their friends at lunch.  They are, however, extremely sensitive to cost issues.  Downloading video at the same per minute rate as they spend for talking on the phone isn’t acceptable to them and it isn’t necessary.  Background data transfer can make better use of the spectrum by de-prioritizing non real time traffic so that once again, content is available when the user is ready for it.

If “Mywaves” wants users to swarm to this technology, it needs to focus less on internet age buzzwords like “viral marketing” and “web 2.0” – and spend more time on the basics of any good business.  Provide a quality product that meets the real needs and wants of its user base at a reasonable cost.  The viral marketing will take care of itself – just try to stop people from showing it off if they like it. 

1. Mobile bandwidth is probably the first hurdle. Also the potential affects of a person's wireless bill. And since a majority of your target market likely does not pay for their wireless bill it's an even tougher sell.

Your second hurdle is going to be the influx of entrants into this market. What will you do when YouTube starts offering the same service through their already established community? The best way to overcome that is to integrate with YouTube before they have a chance to develop a similar service. Now that they are owned by Google they are less agile and you can sneak up on them. But there is likely a chance that many of the other video sites are doing the same thing. Integrate with them too. The content is open and free.  You should concentrate more on distribution and less on content production. The content already exists - use it.

2. Market yourself as a mobile video sharing service. Create your own videos of how to use the service that people can send to each other. Also market yourself as a new medium for distributing advertising and marketing material. 

Also let potential producers of content, ie marketers, tv stations, video bloggers know they can use your established medium to reach potential viewers through a new medium - mobile. 

Like I said above - if you integrate with existing content providers that have established communities you are creating value for a community and content that already exists - thus you do not have to start from scratch in creating it.

3. MySpace / YouTube users, obviously. Basically people familiar with SMS and social networking is the market - and that market has clearly been established through other services.

A secondary market is marketing and advertising firms and departments. Show them how they can use your service to distribute their content and their message.

And a tertiary market is content producers. Show NBC, Viacom, MTV, and CBS that they can use your service to distribute content to an established market. Let them know they can disintermediate companies like Verizon who license their content and get straight to the user through your service. 

4. Obviously as a startup your advertising possibilities are limited. I'd say a first step is reaching out to bloggers. If you can prove to them/us the service is a great solution than you will get a lot of free buzz. See twitter as an example. It became an overnight sensation due to viral buzz through blogs.

Secondly you need to invade social networks. Being that almost the entirety of your market is hanging out on MySpace and Facebook you must have a presence there. Just start making friend requests. Find users with a lot of friends and get on their list.

Although I'm sure this is probably obvious and the least feasible but if you can partner with any of the wireless carriers they can help push your product.

Again - integrate with current providers - YouTube, Revver, UStream, etc. Don't reinvent the wheel - just create a new way to drive.

5. One of the first issues I see with your website is that I really have no idea what the service does when I arrive. You should have that front and center so I know what you do. It gets me interested right away rather than having to try and figure out what service you provide. Many potential users will be lost in this manner. It's great you have a list (which is very large) of compatible phones but you do not list any additional requirements. The first thing I think of is how does this affect my wireless bill. You should also move your 'highlights' section to the front - let me know all the cool things your service does. Search and sharing video are your strong points - make that known from the start.

Also, show videos of people using the service. Visual instructions like that help attention and adoption rates.

Last but not least - Ditch blogger, get wordpress as your blog service and OPEN up your blog to the public. That is ESSENTIAL.  If you need help in that area, my company can help. 

To date I have used YouTube's embedded player on my blog or MySpace page. Initially because I felt it was a "more recognized/trusted" player. Later because in order to maintain visibility on YouTube, cumulative views count - thus, it makes little sense to spread my view count over too many players (would views via MyWaves register at Blip.tv as that's where my feed is...).

On MySpace I am "somewhat open" to offering people a player they can embed that features all my content (rather than a single embedded video) however it's not at all obvious, looking at the MyWaves player, that it does in fact connect to all my videos. I'm also aware that MySpace has a habit of blocking widgets and outside embeds, so that's a factor. I'm not sure everyone who videoblogs would be that aware of MySpace's track record in that dept.

I'm not particularly interested in whether I can get content on my phone because I have an older phone. I do have "younger" fans however, and I could imagine them forwarding my videos along in that way.... *maybe*. In huge numbers? Who knows...

As I do fairly heavily edited videos, I'm not likely to upload and forward on camera-phone video.

Do I think it matters to other vloggers? Maybe/sure... To the Twitter addicts with better phones...

Obstacles to adoption : I think that my "fellow vloggers" who are most interested in doing phone based vlogging are probably the ones who are most loyal to their Blip.tv hosting (and the Blip player). As long as any views through MyWave registered as views on Blip (via RSS feed) I can imagine *some* interest in using the player, but only if it's "as fully featured as Blip's player, and then some..." Videobloggers (in the videoblogging community, as opposed to on, say YouTube...) are pretty hostile towards services that "scrape" feeds or don't provide links and attribution back to their videoblogs. They're a tough crowd to please.

As far as the YouTube video community, obviously YouTube does not offer RSS feeds and a lot of videobloggers see YouTube as their one-stop-home (with Stickam as second...) thus they're not so much on MySPace and thus not using *any* players. The few people who are doing stand alone sites are hoping to make some income, so would probably consider Revver, say.

As far as videoblogger outreach goes, it's always appreciated but has to be more than a form letter. Too often it reads like "hey! get some exposure for your content" (by uploading it to our no-traffic site and then pleae bring your traffic to us...) I generally *glance* at these emails.... "We will feature your channel" is always good... ;) If MyWaves is *another way for people to get your existing feed* it has to be pretty clear... I don't read unsolicited outreach for the small print...

If you're redesigning the site... it's a little garish but the GoFish redesign actually makes me believe they have some interesting channels. The banner at the top of the page is big and bold and it feels like their "featured channels" aren't just the same as every other second tier sites (please, no more Ask A Ninja...) I'm typically more impressed by a strong selection of well-thought-out channels than thousands of random user-generated playlists... Coming back to your site several times and it's still DJSkee - not so exciting. There's no, say, video of the day that would make me feel "yeah, i could see myself sending that to someone..." It's also not clear to me what it's going to cost my friend at the other end if i sent him/her a video... so a tiny part of me is like "yeah, what's the catch?"

Bottom line, the player is small-screen and offers one interesting twist -send to mobile capability. I don;t understand why it doesn't *say clearly* 'play video - or send to mobile' on the front - the USP isn't all that clearly flagged up. For video bloggers, this can really be a "good secondary player/widget" but I don't see it replacing a larger screen player. It's also not clear that it contains/can access more than the single video showing on screen. If i were to encourage fans to re-embed it, the functionality just isn't that clear yet.  

 

 

 

 

 

1) Barrier to entry in mobile upload needs to be minimal. Users should be able to upload video without a pre-existing account. Perhaps a workflow in which unregistered users can text a username/password to a shortcode to create an account on the go. All phones and video formats from mainstream carriers should be supported out of the box.

1. What are the obstacles to adoption? How can they be overcome?

Obstacles include market saturation in the mobile content arena which can be overcome by differentiation of brand and novel marketing techniques such as viral marketing and blogging sprees. Use your own strengths to promote this service – viral marketing with a cool video featuring young talent speaking directly to your users. Who wouldn't want to use a product that is being used by the stars we all admire so much? Especially if they're speaking directly to your target audience through a viral video campaign.

2. How can mywaves be marketed so that potential users can better see its value?

Viral marketing comes to mind. As mentioned above, have young and widely known talent (sports figures, actors or musicians) create videos with your product which you can then distribute to your users. If the videos are funny, interesting and speak directly to your market, they will be redistributed.

A second technique is to create original content featuring well known forthcoming brands. New but not yet available automobiles and mobile technology are two ideas that come to mind. Make these videos available only through your service, adding the value of original content available  nowhere else. This gives an existing user base a way to market your service for you while drawing fans of the products to your services at the same time.

Try promotions with blog authors – while your pitching your ideas to a collection of blog authors, why not come up with a marketing scheme via blogs. Target cell phone, gadget and online content specific blogs. Either create a traditional marketing campaign (pay for advertising) or use a more novel strategy, such as publicizing blogs publicizing mywaves or exclusive media streams for blogs assisting in your campaign. Blogs that already feature podcasts would be prime candidates for this type of promotion.

3. What groups of potential users should the company be targeting, and who can benefit the most from the player?

You should target the 18 to 30 year olds. This group of users are currently already engaged in next generation media through video sharing services, SMS and the acquisition of feature rich mobile devices. Focus on the Americas and Asia, a good portion of who's populace is looking for the next interesting service for their mobile devices. Bring additional content from other areas that will peak the interests of your target market, such as talent or upcoming products.

4. How can mywaves better reach that potential audience?

You need to be present in your target audience's everyday lives. Making yourself something of an ubiquitous name is key now to not just surviving but thriving and growing rapidly. If your service is something that will appeal to many people (and I believe it is) then put it where many people will find it. Take your target audience, which in this case should be folks between 18 and 30 and place your brand within their easy reach. Feature it online in well frequented areas. Major blogs and video sharing services come immediately to mind. Host a contest where the funniest video produced through your service leads to a grand prize, such as attending a movie premier or sports event with privileged seating.

Another approach would be to create a partnership with an existing social bookmarking site. Digg or del.icio.us or other such services. Make video content that's available on their sites available on yours as well in exchange for the ability to plug in to their services easily by 'one button' uploading of content to them from your service.

5. Mywaves is in the process of redesigning its site -- What are the top three ways the mywaves site could be improved to better attract and support users?

1. Simplify. Let users get access to content that will interest them immediately and then keep them on the site with easily reached features. 2. Feature the best of your content and the channels they've come from. Rotate this often to keep the public coming back first through your site and later through your services on their mobile devices. 3. Feature your user forums more prominently and keep a presence in them to immediately address any negative issues and any praise that may be forthcoming.

Adoption Obstacles One of Mywave's major differentiator, its independence from a single telecommunications carrier, is also its biggest threat. Although Mywaves brings a unique and focused approach, it would be relatively easy for a carrier to acquire or build this skill set once mobile viewing begins to reach a tipping point. Mywave also has a significant challenge of customer acquisition costs. Once Mywave reaches a critical mass, these costs will drop dramatically as word-of-mouth takes over as a single driver of customer adoption. Until then, Mywave will have to invest in customer acquisition without being to rely on funds from tentative marketers. Maketers will want to see an audience before they invest, and an audience takes time and costs to aggregate.  Mywave serves an important intermediary role between content aggregators and carrier distributors, but it needs to demonstrate that value and not be perceived as a competitor to either. 

User Value Mywave's user story is simple, and fairly well expressed on its website. If an offering is easy, free and gives me unique content… I'm game. Users may be willing to bare fees for premium content, as evidenced by the unexpected market in ring tones. They will also likely endure short (interstitial 30-second preroll) ads but not much more. 

Potential Users More important than a broad audience, Mywave needs a deep one. It would be smart to target "key opinion leaders" in the electronics, video and technology sector. These would include early adopters who have an established base of followers – such as vloggers, bloggers, and technology writers. Next, Mywave should identify a core audience by age, demographic and behavioral dimensions. This should be based on a) an individuals likely use of Mywave and b) the value of this audience to the projected early marketers in this space. Since it's likely that technology firms and consumer-product goods manufacturers are likely debut advertisers, the target audience should show these firms that they can enrich their frequency, reach and depth with their own targets. 

Promotion to Audience The fastest route to an audience is to target those individuals who are engaging in mobile viewing, but carriers are unlikely to provide that access without some upside or exclusive arrangement. If a carrier permits targeting via, for instance, Verizon VCast then it's a "no brainer." Failing that, Mywave should hire a paid search expert and someone conversent in online advertising. Paid search is a cost-effeicient way to acquire customers, and some websites will attract Mywave's target. For instance, YouTube might permit advertisers to promote exclusively on its mobile-viewing channels. Mywave should also consider making its own viral-video campaign. This will show advertisers that it "eats its own dog food," and be a good way to build buzz around the offering. 

Site Improvement

The site has two problems. First, it's a difficult concept to understand and there's too much competing for my attention on the homepage. It would be good to triage visitors based on whether they're looking for videos on the website, videos for mobile viewing or to understand the product and services. Advertisers and partners can be addressed with less prominence (although that's an important audience, it's a less common visitor and they'll find the "about us" section and locate advertising information). My first impression with the site is that it's a relative startup without much content and without a prominent audience. The press releases don't address that concern well either. Ideally Mywave would cut significant partnerships for content, and accelerate use of the tool. In the meanwhile, the company has to give viewers the impression there's content, and advertisers and content-providers the impression that there is an audience. Testimonials can serve as an interim solution until stats speak for themselves.

1) What are the obstacles to adoption? How can they be overcome?

Simple branding, ease-of-use, and a large audience are probably the biggest obstacles.

Branding campaign: The online video world is so crowded that it will be hard to get oxygen and truly differentiate yourself. Why should I use mywaves? You need specific answers to that question. Why should I take the time out to learn a new application, a new password? You start with the message, and the best way to find that message is to talk to current users. Word-of-mouth is all the rage, but it works best in the context of a good integrated campaign that combines the mass media with one-to-one communication. The mass media shows you have money, and the one-to-one shows you're interested in putting in the time to communicate with your audience.

Ease of use speaks to how easy it is both to use your product, but also to integrate it into daily life. Sending videos to my phone is cool, and your site makes it easy. You did a good job with that. Managing content regularly and learning to deal with spam, slow load times, or a bunch of schlocky videos wil kill the experience. Does the content channel give me something good on a regular basis, or is it just an automated RSS of categories other people want to tag? If I sign on, but have to dig through a bunch of videos to find good ones, then the value is not so much. Video is cool, but by its nature it wastes more time than text. You just don't know if a video is good or not until you watch it.

A great delivery service doesn't mean much if I don't have real content. So Ease of Use means the whole site has to be easy for me to get what I want from it.

How do you do this? You make sure that human filters are in place, and you work to teach your community to find the content for you.

The size of your audience is currently a concern. How many people are currently using video on their phones. How many people have the cell phone packages and equipment to convert to video? I'm sure you have those numbers, but money spent on advertising only works if you have a large enough market to make it worth your while. We're constantly hearing about new technologies that are really great in online video, but who has time to test them all out?

You need customer evangelists to build loyalty and brand recognition, followed by a big online push from blogs and online advertising, followed by a media push capped with some big event.

2) How can mywaves be marketed so that potential users can better see its value?

I'd build a community of current and potential users and then promote them. Celebrate their creativity, their successes, and their overall coolness. Nothing sells like word -of-mouth, but most companies have really clunky social media programs because they feel the need to control the growth of that community.

What you do is start with community maps of the groups identified below. Find clusters of teens online, focused on current video products or sites, and create one-to-one dialogue with them. You have to filter these clusters for viability. You need bloggers, popular myspace users, Facebook fanatics, and anyone else who is already a trusted source to their social network. You have to identify the influentials, and you have to do it manually. This is about influence, not simple size. Focus on the mid-level influencers - bloggers with less than 1,000 links, amateur video podcasters, and video sites that are big enough to have an impact, but not so big they will ignore you. Introduce the product. Get them on the phone. Link to them from your blog (which has to be upgraded and taken on private status. You can't have a blog link on your site that's protected - better to have no link).

When you find enough of these people, chronicle what they do and make it easy for other people to follow them. Build up your evangelists using your site, and their popularity will enhance the value of your product. How do you find the influentials? I do it manually for clients, using automated programs to augment my searches. It's a lot of work, but nothing automated so far can make the decision on who is influential and who isn't - the algorithms just aren't good enough. But activity in connecting with online users will lead you to those who are considered influential to their peers. Traffic, incoming links, links from major publications, feed subscribers, and sometimes just sheer talent are indicators of influence.

The question you have to keep asking yourself, is when a video creator makes a great video, what can mywaves do to help spread that video far and wide and make that creator famous. Do that a dozen times, and the reporters will come swarming.

3) What groups of potential users should the company be targeting, and who can benefit the most from the player?

Clearly teens and young 20-somethings are the target audience, both for sheer numbers and for their addiction to their mobile phones. But you should also be reaching out to content providers and content creators.

Some groups that might benefit from using mywaves:

• Marketing and social media bloggers
• College students (majoring in design, marketing, communications and AV)
• mom bloggers(sharing video of their kids at the Starbucks with their smart phones - there are so many of them)
• political bloggers (think of the recent Obama/Clinton stories from the Mac commerical parody).
  
• Video games
  
• Anyone using online video to make a statement

Professional Uses:

Ad, PR and Marketing agencies and departments are struggling with how to use new video and social media tools - if you can convince some of them to use mywaves as part of their offerings, you will be better positioned to score a "home run" with a major brand. Automotive is an especially good target. Imagine people sharing BMW or Mercedes (for the professional crowd) or even Scion videos for the teens using the mywaves channels.

It's not enough to offer content partnerships. You have to get in on the individual level and convince the marketers to use the product on their own without needing to sign contracts. They should use mywaves the way that bloggers use Technorati.

4) How can mywaves better reach that potential audience?

Your blog is the first and best way. Become the goto place to talk about online video, and you'll have your audience. You do this by talking about online video, not about mywaves. Place small banner ads ($25-$50 a month) on the blogs of content creators (you get your lists from the community maps you've created from Question #2). You leave comments on the blogs and pages of these content creators, not in the completely lame way that most agencies do it - but honest to god real answers that don't actually pitch the mywaves product, but instead talk about post topics. The url of mywaves will still be visible in your comment, and you won't come across as a comment spammer (man I hate comment spammers).

A second blog should be your community. This is where you talk about all the cool people using your product. This of course, assumes, that cool people will be doing cool things with your product, but promoting talent is a way of filtering information to your core audience. If you become known as a great place to find good videos, not just from automation, but from human editing, people will be more likely to use your product instead of a competitors.

Let your users run wild. They will figure out uses of mywaves that we couldn't imagine, and you can take those ideas, call the person smart for coming up with you, and then showcase the new use so that new prospects decide to sign on. Again, this blog is not about mywaves. It's about the people who use mywaves, or people who should be using mywaves and how they use the product.

Contests, award shows, videos of the day/week, category-specific information (how to use mywaves to sell hand lotion, or watches, or how to send your baby's christening to friends and family.) are all different ways to connect. Your goal is to give them something useful in addition to the product. The best part is there is already a lot of information to use, and you don't have to create it. You have to find it and nurture it.

5) Mywaves is in the process of redesigning its site -- What are the top three ways the mywaves site could be improved to better attract and support users? 

1. Great home page design should center around one main goal. On the current home page, no one element is dominant, which can lead to a confused user. If the central flash area is the key messaging area, make it pop, make it informative, and focus it on a call to action.
2. Our eyes are attracted to movement.  The current movement on the site is suffering from poor placement. Although I love that you are trying to show video on the cell, it isn’t instructive.  Our eyes are drawn to the main flash portion, but where do we go from there?  It isn't intuitive to sign up - we are left the impression that we have to learn more before we sign up, because we're distracted.  That's a serious usability issue.      
   
3. Update the entire interface to look more modern. 
   

a) Lose the left alignment, go center aligned with content
b) Lighten up the interface (lose the heavy graphics look)
c) Make it fun: the site looks too serious for such a fun tool.

     Video on mobile is yet to become popular among masses. With the success of youtube and other similar services companies have started thinking of providing similar service on mobile phones. Here, their are many challenges in the form of slow mobile data transfer speeds and small screens to watch videos on mobile. Let us look at some issues with a hawk eye.

Obstacles for Adoption

Compatibility: Though the current Mywaves player is supporting large list of mobile models, One major hindrance to success of any mobile service will be the ability to support all mobile models across all carriers. To achieve this one option is to start supporting as many mobile models as possible while giving more priority to high penetrating models

Quality of Video : To make the video viewing pleasant on mobile phones its essential that the video quality be very high and the speed of streaming be decent. One way to achieve this can be to stream the video specific, to mobile phone. For example it makes less sense to send a very high quality video to a mobile phone which has limited display features like small screen, support for few colors display. So, for each mobile phone, based on the screen size, color support, frame rate, we can stream the video specific to that mobile.

Cost of Downloading/Uploading: Mobile data transfer is costly compared to general broad band internet, so this may be one concern for the user. While it may not be possible completely avoid these costs, it will be better if we can reduce the costs, one solution is to send mobile model specific videos where by you can reduce the amount of data transfered to some extent on low end mobiles. Similarly while user is uploading any of the videos we should provide an option for user to compress the video by which we can reduce the amount of data transfer.

Quality of Content: In these kinds of services, content plays major role in success. Youtube had vast and better content compared to google videos which made youtube attract more users. mywaves also have to get very high quality content if they want to be successful. While quality of content is just one thing, grouping the content and suggesting the users other similar content like stumbleupon is another important feature.

Advertizements: If Mywaves is thinking of making money through advertizements then it should be careful enough that it does not give too many advertizes and further the advertizements which it is displaying needs to be context driven.

 

Potential User Groups:

Mobile professionals: People who are mostly on the move will be the ideal customers for these kinds of services. Since these people spend most of the time roaming around in either buses, they can view the videos of their choice.

Social Networking: Social networking is one way to create the targetted groups. By introducing the concept of social network we can find a group of people who may be interested in some specific topic and whenever their is any new video on that topic we can send it to the entire group.

Marketing

Pre-Bundled: Pre-bundling the Mywaves software on the mobiles by entering into partnerships with the mobile dealers will increase the awareness among mobile users about the Mywaves. We can also pre bundle the small videos so that when user launches the application he will get the instant gratification.

Bloggers : Bloggers have become a popular source to reach the techies who are mostly the targeted customers for the servcies Mywaves. Mywaves should reach out to the popular bloggers like Michal Arrington of Techcrunch and OmMallik of Gigaom and ask them to review this service and post the review on their blogs. Positive feedback from these kind of influential bloggers may help in getting many users. Apart from bloggers if company can afford then they should give advertisements on internet portals.

Ads in mobile media: Since the targeted customers are mobile users its very essential to reach out to them through the mobile advertizing like sending SMS or using twitter like services.

Viral Marketing: Mywaves has already good features set ready here, since they already provide option to send the videos to mobile as well as email. Allowing people to embed these videos on their blog, myspace etc will be help in viral marketing. Also features like sending videos to all the contacts in Yahoo, gmail etc may help in reaching out more people.

Redesigning Site

Cross browser multi platforms: Website should be working properly on all popular browsers like IE, Firefox, Safari and should be OS/platform independent.

Demo on how to use it: The first page should clearly show how the service works and the costs that the user will incur. It should also show the limited set of popular videos, latest videos and popular communities (Assuming you will be implementing the social networking).

Search Engine Optimization: Ensure that the website is optimized for search engine so that people searching for things like mobile videos will have high probability of landing on Mywaves page.

This comes from a UK perspective. For some background, in the UK all data transmitted across mobile networks must be paid for on a per-byte basis. There has been a lot of movement recently to introduce flat-rate data plans on mobile networks, however most of these are limited in some way, either in a total transfer per month, or on an application basis, or both.

Obstacles
Having recently developed a mobile social networking service that incorporated image and video sharing between mobile and the Web, these are issues I've had to address. Given the background above, the primary driver for the way I implemented the service was to make the data transfer burden for the user as light as possible. This meant deliberately limiting the size of images and videos allowed, as well as automatically resizing all images to a more handset-friendly size (width & height, as well as data size).

When it came to video, we were very careful to ensure that all videos we provided direct were as small as possible, and we eventually decided on a hard size limit of 250k per video. This was a good compromise between easily downloadable without serious data charge penalties for those users not on flat-rate plans, and playback size, typically around 10 to 30 seconds (although using a high compression codec along with a low motion video and no audio, it was possible to encode upwards of a minute of video into under 100k of data).

Our primary concern, and this will hold true for any market where the user pays for downloaded data, was the negative association that could be made with our service if the customers - especially those on pay as you go plans - found that all their available credit had been taken up with video downloads, when the actual costs and charges to download were not made clear at the beginning, leaving them with no credit for making calls or sending texts.

It is unfortunate that it is not generally possible to identify what sort of data plan a user has in advance of sending any large files (and by definition, videos are large files). When it comes to streaming, this is an issue which just becomes more complex. Recently Rok TV announced the availability of a streaming mobile video player for 2.5g mobile handsets. Whilst this technology is very interesting, and one blogger points out that with most 'unlimited' data plans in the UK ('unlimited' actually means around 1Gb of transmitted data, as long as that data is not IM or VoIP, which are not allowed) that this allows 60 hours of streaming TV, the flip side is that this is the hard limit, and any other data transfers, including WAP pages, email, ringtone/game/wallpaper downloads and the like all use up portions of the available data transfer for that user.

On top of this, flat-rate data plans are still in their infancy in the UK, and can be expensive in terms of add-ons required before the best deals are offered. Whilst T-Mobile do provide a nice flat-rate plan at a maximum charge of £1 per day, this is still limited to around 1Gb per month, and users who go over this limit are typically sanctioned, either by adding on large charges (at normal data charge rates), or their service is degraded (MUCH lower transfer speeds), or their data access is totally cut.

Moving on from data downloads, the concept of streaming video to a mobile handset is something that is absolutely in it's infancy in the UK, with very few handsets on the market able to receive such streaming services, unless they are of the Rok TV type, which requires a downloaded player to receive the video. I did play with srreaming video in the UK a few years ago (over 2.5G networks), and whilst it was an interesting idea, another major problem was the ability of the cell networks to cope with the traffic. It's recently been noted in the UK that a typical 3G cell tower can support around 30 users at a time streaming data (not voice, this uses a different set of channels and more than 30 users are support per cell) of any type - beyond this, the additional users just get no data service at all.

This doesn't get away from the issue that there are huge data charges for the amount of data transferred that will be incurred by the user, and since streaming videos typically are larger than download videos (with support for streaming protocols having to be encoded into the stream, rather than just choosing the best, most efficient compression method, this can lead to additional data being encoded into the stream that would not be needed if the video were a pure download video at the same quality settings) as there is a perception tradeoff between download size and the ability to download whilst streaming/watching, this can lead to higher charges, especially where the data is fragmented during transfer (requiring repeated download of the same packets and hence increasing the potential data charge), coupled with a degraded user experience where the mobile networks drop out or are congested so the video stutters or stops streaming altogether.

To make this work, the only option I can see is to partner with the carriers to provide this as a service to their users, as this allows the cost of data transfer to be mitigated somehwat through tariff deals or zero-rating of the content, as well as allowing some, if limited, access to data transfer quality services provided by the carriers - as well as avoiding possible blacklisting for providing such a data-heavy service (Typically UK carriers block or explicitly disallow data-heavy services like Voice over IP and Instant Messaging from their data tariffs, cheap or otherwise. See my comment earlier about support for concurrent users on individual cells).


Marketing and Potential Users
I'm going to throw some random ideas around here. Some of these I've tried, or started to try to promote mobile video download services around my own social network service, however due to that service being shut down by the parent company, I have not fully explored the possibilities, so a lot of this is conjecture.

The obvious group to promote this service to are peopel who are interested in User Generated Content, but since these are so hard to quantify... An initial step could be to promote the service to users of existing social networking sites like Myspace, Facebook and Bebo as a way of sending videos to their friends when they're not using the websites in question.

Partnering with a film festival or other similar event would provide a relatively wide audience for the service who may not have considered mobile video, and certainly doing the same in association with a mobile carrier, as part of their own promotions around mobile video would be a good idea.

With the rise in the use of widgets, providing access to the streaming videos through desktop widgets for the Mac and PC (Yahoo Widgets, etc) and other similar widget-type services would help with some broader adoption, and would leave you in a position of being able to almost immediately provide the video streaming service to a broader range of mobiles, once widgets for mobile become more widely available.

Partner with mobile social networking services like Dodgeball to provide instant upload/streaming video of an event that someone is attending. Dodgeball allows people to say 'I am here! Come party!'. Adding in mywaves would allow people to provide short streaming clips of the event they're at, which may work as a greater inducment to potential attendees, since they can see what's going on.


The Site
The one primary criticism I have of the existing mywaves site is it doesn't really give any indication of what the site and service is about. Even playing with the website for a few minutes didn't make it really clear what was going on, and the layout of the video playback page really drew the focus away from the videos, whilst helping to confuse matters further.

The site also doesn't make it clear whether it's a consumer offering or a B2B offering, with a mishmash of signals on the front page. If the site is supposed to be aimed at consumers, then remove all references and links to business or marketing offerings and press releases, and put them on a separate domain or a separate part of the site. Perhaps set up a 'corporate' sub-site.

My top 3 suggestions for making the site more user friendly:

1: Make it obvious what you do. Perhaps use a small animation to illustrate what the service does and what it offers. Add a big friendly Help or About button that goes into more detail about how people can use the site. Also, make sure the browser renders properly in the most popular browsers. At the moment the site looks different when you look at it in Internet Explorer and Firefox. I've not checked using a Mac (or a KHTML browser) yet.

2: Make the video playback page on the site much more user friendly, with the video window taking prominence above others. Also, make sure that the other parts of the page - the user comments, the video selection window etc - are updated so that they are relevant to the actual video playing, and not just the first video selected. I noticed at one point that even the video window title didn't match the video that was playing, lagging behind by an entire video.

For streaming to mobiles, when a user is browsing the site using their handset it should be possible to read the handset's User Agent and determine the capabilities of the handset. The same thing should happen when the intended recipient of a streaming video visits the site to 'download' their movie, so that the user is told whether or not their handset can stream the video or not, and be presented with options hsould their handset not be compatible.

3: Make it obvious there's a community around the service, and that the service providers (mywaves) are participating. One of the first things I noticed was users asking questions in comments, but no obvious reply from mywaves. The comments window itself seems to bear no relation to the video that's playing, or any other windows within the page, except for the first selected video, which made for an extremely confusing experience for a first time user. The YouTube/Flikr/blog paradigm where a single video is presented alongside all comments on a single page, with links to additional videos, also presented whilst playing on a single page make more sense that automatically scrolling through a list of videos to play, whilst not updating the comments or descriptive text.

Another thing I noticed was that the tags and description of each video were very sparse, with emphasis placed on the list of tags (emphasis shown by placing the tags above the video description), whereas the description should always come first. Tags, whilst very useful in finding or sorting videos, are very user unfriendly, and often have no real bearing on describing to the potential user what the content of the video is. I'd also suggest making a good description mandatory, so that potential viewers have some idea of what the video is about, rather than just being presented with a bland list of tag words.


End Words
I hope this is useful. I have a great interest in mobile video, and have been speaking to and working with the carriers and different TV stations in the UK for a number of years on the potential for mobile video, unfortunately without much real success, typically as the carriers themselves don't have the infrastructure or capacity to deal with high data usage.

One additional area that could be explored is the idea of using a video call service to provide the video rather than attempting to stream across the mobile networks. This would limit your potential suers to those with 3G handsets and video call plans, but would also increase the ability and quality of the videos that are delivered. Companies providing video call services like this typically also allow some limited two-way communication using DTMF tones to control the video call, and it's possible - in the UK at least - to initiate an inbound (to handset) video call from a remote server using a WAP link. These calls can then be 'sponsored' if need be, allowing some cost mitigation to be done for providing the video call at a reduced cost to the user.

Mywaves has potential in becoming a tool for viral marketing. However, there are several things that need to be considered for the success of the product.

If Mywaves is to be seen as a place where cell phone videos can be uploaded to the web, people may tend to stick with someone that has a wider presence like YouTube. For sending videos to another cell phone user, there’s already MMS and the default Inbox application on the cell phone.

Obstacles to adoption and how to overcome them

• Presence of bigger players, specifically YouTube

• People may prefer to upload their videos to YouTube which reaches a wider audience than the ones with access to Mywaves.
• Another problem here is that people may just be waiting for the mobile version of YouTube, slated for a June 2007 release

To overcome: Mywaves needs to be given a push in terms of publicity, in terms of blog buzz and to differentiate clearly the advantages of a Mywaves community over YouTube (channels, controlled access to videos, better mobile phone integration for the player, etc). Essentially, the Mywaves viral marketing platform has to be, for want of a better term, virally marketed first.

 

• People unfamiliar with MMS or unwilling to sign up for MMS

To overcome: This is a very different problem. I would let the cell phone operators take care of this, because it is their revenue stream.

 

• People familiar with uploading videos directly to their blogs may not want to upload videos to Mywaves (for example Cingular users and their Myspace blogs)

To overcome: The difference between sending an MMS to upload a video to Myspace and sending it to Mywaves should be clearly brought out to the users. Mywaves is a community site where other users can access your videos on their mobiles, with the added advantage that it is also available on the Internet. (The primary target should still be mobile users, and users should be reminded of it often).

An incentive to marketing (with the specific purpose when Mywaves is used for viral marketing) could help bring in users. For example, a points system where earned points can be redeemed for prizes.

Potential users

In my opinion, the target audience will be a subset of the mobile TV audience. Sure, mobile TV is being touted as the next big thing, but this is dependent on a variety of factors including the availability of compatible phones, their prices and how much a TV subscription costs among other things. For Mywaves, the immediate problem of compatible phones and subscription charges are not present, because the player is already compatible with a good number of phones and users need to spend only as much as sending an MMS in order to start sharing/marketing videos.

While it’s hard to put in specific numbers or age groups for potential users, it will continue to be in the same age group where MMS is popular, approximately 17-30.

Site Redesign

1. The gray theme is begging to go. It is very somber at the moment and cannot be associated with a community website
2. Certain bugs. For example, at present, you can rate the videos without even watching them!
3. Better display of comments left for a video (right now it’s in the bottom right corner)
4. Have a “Who’s watching this video?” info box allowing users to connect and expand their social network

To begin with...Kudos!

This is real hard work and smart piece of work. Watch the video, get the code, send to mobile and email it all at one place. That was nice. But being very frank, many great innovations have come and gone like nothing over the world "wild" web. If you have been this great to create such an application then you should also follow the very basic precautions of www. I will mention them as we move (I observed those while surfing a lot through your website) but for now let us start step by step to your five major concerns.

 

1) What are the obstacles to adoption? How can they be overcome?

Obstacle number one youtube. How? Youtube players do not let you send videos to mobile, neither do they give the so easy to embed code etc etc. But the reason is simple. Using the code which you offer in your website, so that people can embed your video to there Myspace profiles or to there blog, you give your viewers the youtube like look. Now consider the very few seconds for which visitors usually see the blogs. Many might wont even notice that you have something extra. Send to mobile feature etc.

So what I am trying to point out is that you need to tell the youtube audience you got a better way out for them. There might be many obstacles which others might have pointed out to but I think this is not a small one either. Hit the peak. Create google adwords which get listed in the youtube ads in the right sidebar. Target the youtube page. You going to get many people from there, many!

One more obstacle which I can see is the size of internet. Correct?

Get the word out. Bring more people in. Once again advertising. Yeah true that google relied on word of mouth in 1999 when they gained fame. But rare cases remain rare. Give away as much as possible "TODAY" to earn more and more "TOMORROW".

 

2) How can mywaves be marketed so that potential users can better see its value?

Do you think I am asking to spend too much money on advertising. Okay lets make things little cheaper.

But let me make one thing clear. Stop thinking that what if people come and go back and do not return. Mostly they wont as you got something REALLY new.

Your own registered users can bring in more and more new users. Like every website gives out a feature of "invitation" which a registered user can send to others, you should also be having one. BUT with little difference added to make things cheesy. Give out some thing. Some kind of contest or something. As many people your "registered" people invite, to make the reach of your application more and more, that much gain that user should get. So start giving out prizes. A mobile phone would do. Every month. That would be great. I am sure more and more invitations are going to be sent out. People love free stuff. And you get more blogs and myspace profiles having your application. So more being send to mobiles. So the virus starts spreading.

The growth could be exponential. You just need to give a punch start to it, not just another start like many have done and failed miserably.

Bloggers should also be given a piece of cake if they bring in more users for you. If one particular blog gets too many hits for your videos then give that blog a part of profit so that it gets attached to you. Permanent helping users are much better than registered users doing nothing.

All your employees should be having myspace profiles? And they should be using these videos? Ask them to get the code to there friends profiles.The "word of mouth" I mean. It could also be a good idea for traffic inflow.

Now coming out of the FREE ways of getting users lets get back to spending some bucks. Do not create adwords just like that. You should be targeting your competitors. Target youtube. Target Myspace. Adevertise in myspace. Advertise in different places where your competitors reign.

By the way you are lucky that you actually do not have competitors, as your work is an innovation ;)

See how easy the path is for you. No one to fight. An open field. Just GET THE WORD OUT. And get that out quick.

 

3) What groups of potential users should the company be targeting, and who can benefit the most from the player?

Teens. They are the real mobile junkies. Life without mobile for them is impossible. You are trying to connect mobile to internet in a new fashion. And this can do wonders.

Create separate channel for teenagers and give them all the unofficial priority you can. Trust Me. They are gold mines.

Now who can benefit from the player? YOU can if it goes a hit and your users can if it makes there life comfortable. So target the users comfort. It would be great if someone can hear her fav rock star while in a train. Just by using your player. She would anyhow become a addict to this soon. Just get the thing to "her".

 

4) How can mywaves better reach that potential audience?

I have said that soo many times till now that it seems to repeat. Just see that people come in once. Let me tell you they wont go back because your player is awesome piece of work. Could be a real wave, the only thing being it needs to spread deadly.

Once again. Target your so called competitors. All the video sites. Show the user your player alongside other players. Then they would easily know that you got something extra. Advertise. Growth will be exponential.

 

5) Mywaves is in the process of redesigning its site -- What are the top three ways the mywaves site could be improved to better attract and support users?

ONE: Bring more flash in. The highlights page. Make it a flash based highlight. Make it easy to navigate. Users do not like to read things too much. So give them flash which gives them moving pictures. Its sure shot attraction.

TWO: May be you wont agree on this but I would prefer a white background with all the glittering flash. Its more soothing and easy going to eyes.

THREE: Better placement for few special things like buzz, meet the player kind of links. And DO WORK on that sign up button above the "mywaves and admob advertising news" button. When I clicked on that it got stretched to a longer sidebar thing where I was being asked to enter my info. But there wasnt any way to squeez that back again to smaller size so that I can see "meet the player" image. Here "I" is acting as a "layman" user.

 

Now few silly mistakes which geniuses also commit...

• There wasn't the "one click highlight" button available for the code in highlights page
• Good that you got a blog but take this as a WARNING. Use another URL instead of blogspot URL. Ok blogger as platform is great but that URL is isn't. There is a myth in internet that most blogspot blogs are just created to earn money by fraud clicking. Get your own URL please.
• A cool looking website and NO favicon? How did your forget THAT?
• Take a look at your buzz page. Its hardly readable. It can be a lot cleaner.
• Every time I load the home page I get the same 4 mywave Featured Videos in the bar at the bottom.I guess they should be changing on every page visit!

 

Thats it. I might have been harsh at few places but hey that was for your good.

Hope this might be of little help to the genius brains on the other side.

Thank You...

1) What are the obstacles to adoption? How can they be overcome?

The main obstacles are that there are other competing sites and the service requires user education.

Competing sites may already be established and can add the mobile angle which they can then market to their user base. There is probably a limited time period in which mywaves features will be unique / not widely available. To overcome this obstacle is not a one point solution, rather it is about being more visible and (if applicable) giving a compelling reason to switch.

User education refers to the mobile angle. It is still relatively early days in mobile. Most people still regard it as a voice communication device. However this is changing and I imagine mywaves is part of this wave. Explaining the benefits and how it works can be important in this context because users may be unfamiliar with the idea. The idea of online video (in a flash player) is familiar, but the fact that most mobile phones are also video capable is not.

I’m not sure there is anything that can specifically over come this obstacle. However a concentration on making things simple to do and creating a great experience will lower the barriers to adoption. Think about how ordinary people find and start using the service – step away from the feature set and technical aspects and consider the service from an experience point of view.

Consider how many people are in the potential audience (this how many have the necessary inclination and also have skills to use the service). Lower the necessary skills (by making the experience easy to use) or increase the inclination (by creating a great experience) to increase the potential audience.

However as a personal device (a social device) the video seems to be the more natural viewing mechanism, especially considering that many can also record video. I think playing up this angle makes a lot of sense. I think there’s a trend to viewing video on mobile, but I’m not sure it will happen quickly. While it is a key component and very useful as a flag waving marketing tool it is also important to realize that it alone can not drive adoption.


2) How can mywaves be marketed so that potential users can better see its value?

Two issues spring to mind - one is attracting users initially and the second is better converting those who do arrive at the site.

Attracting users initially:
I have made some suggestions below about new potential features and the use of blogs as marketing tool. I think the key here is to get a few users interested who will then spread this to others. I think converting visitors / prospects into users is more important. Users will automatically generate new prospects thanks to the sharing features, but in order to build growth you need to maximize the conversion of these prospects.

Consider two groups:
- One is familiar with online video – what does mywaves offer that will induce them to switch
- New users – why would they want to share / view video on line at all.

Both of these groups are relevant, but the first is easier to reach. I would focus the marketing on this people and seek to explain the unique appeal of the service.

For better conversions of potential prospects:
A more coherent tour would be useful once users have been attracted to the site. Keeping this accessible to existing users would also be helpful so that they can take advantage of the more complex features / new features as they become familiar with the site. On logging back in after my first visit the site felt overwhelming, there was no obvious way to get help or how I could understand what I was supposed to do. The FAQ offers some value, but it better for those looking to do something specific, rather than those looking fro an introduction / getting started guide.

Also consider something like a video tour showing off the features. These videos could also be offered for embedding as an extra marketing tour. The offering is all about video s why not show it off using video?


3) What groups of potential users should the company be targeting, and who can benefit the most from the player?

I think there is fairly broad appeal for mywaves.com. However some groups should be targeted because they will help drive uptake more than others. If you can attract those who are familiar with technology / are keen social networkers / passionate mobile users (i.e. tech leaders) then these will have a trickle down effect.

The technology seems geared to appeal more to the serial sharer rather than sharing video within a family group. There is therefore scope to target specific groups as leaders in the community – (any group who creates video that it wants to share).

Those who can benefit most from the player are those who are already using video on mobile. Sending video between phones using Bluetooth or MMS is already popular among young users. Tapping into this market and offering there more sophisticated functionality (e.g. the channel creation) make sense. Attracting this type of user is difficult though.


4) How can mywaves better reach that potential audience?

Reaching the audience can be done by marketing or by creating features which is more attractive to a given group. The viral nature of the service makes me think that creating site features that encourage the users themselves to spread the word makes the most sense.

To reach social networking communities an enhanced embedded Widget might be useful. Help sell the channel concept by creating a player with a play list / channel navigation. Allow users to show off their collection of videos / channels. I think this would help show potential users the functionality of mywaves.com. Also consider that different people want different things from their embeds and try to cater to this. For example bloggers may want something to go in a sidebar, where as social networking users want something that differs an embed and forget experience (and preferably two options, one to embed something specific and one that updates automatically).

Passionate mobile users can be hard to reach. However once you recruit a given number it is likely that more will follow. Many passionate mobile users are heavy users of forums and/or blogs. Make it easy for it to promote to their follow users. If you look at a large mobile focused forum (e.g. Howardforums.com) you will see many users have badges from sites like Flickr or link to services and sites in their signatures. If you can get your message in here there is very good potential for reaching very passionate users.

The mywaves blog is a good way to reach tech leaders and both of the above groups (if you can access the tech leaders group - hard to do, but excellent pay offs if you do manage it). Widsets used their blog to engage in conversation with mobile bloggers and others to help drive uptake of the service. As a result they have managed to get quite a few people writing about their service. Other examples include eqo.com, truphone.com. This particularly applies to mobile tech leader who tend to be particularly tech savvy. It would help if the blog were better associated with the site (I only found it through a Google search).

Think about sponsoring / giving a free phone with necessary instruction to an extreme sports group (or any other group similar to this). They will create video and can act as ambassadors.

Partnering with other services can be very useful, especially if the services are complimentary. Partnering with a carrier for mobile is very good in terms of exposure and they will help you improve the mobile offering. However it is very hard to do successfully and may not be as profitable as it seems. Consider joining programs such as Orangepartner.com to learn more about working with carriers. There are also events to attend, you may not achieve the end result of working with a carrier, but you can learn a lot from the process itself.


5) Mywaves is in the process of redesigning its site -- What are the top three ways the mywaves site could be improved to better attract and support users?

- Create a more sophisticated mobile site that takes advantage of the more feature rich mobile browser that is now becoming the norm (see some general issues below).
- Someway to pop out the video / show it full screen would be good. This may be possible already, but wasn't obvious to me.
- Make the video player more central. The site is dominated by the video list. It would be better to move video to the top of the page as it is the key offering.


Extra) Some general comments of experience of using service and mobile application.

In terms of the current application there are a number of things I think might be improved to encourage user adoption and use.

• Share messages - it would be good to know who sent the message. People are more likely to respond / take action when sent from someone they know.
  
  
• It maybe possible to improve the look and feel of the install /download page. User can be put off if thing are perceived as unsafe. Consider using a logo and or branded colours. Minimise the necessary clicks (good at the moment) - each action - receiving SMS / following WAP push link / following download link loses approximately 10-25% on each step (figures vary by market).
  
  
• The application name mwztv could be renamed to make it more obvious as to what it is. Users may have many application / java program so making sure your identity stand out is important.
  
  
• Given the application appears to be just a shortcut it might be worth sending it as bookmark to some phones (e.g. Nokia via Wap Push). I'd suggest this would be additional to the application. The advantage is that it gives another hook within the phone users normal UI navigation.
  
  
• Consider a richer mobile experience for more advanced phones. e.g. Nokia's S60 phones have an advanced browser - take advantage of this where possible. Many of the users interested in this sort of service have phones of this type (video recording functionality tends to be strong too). It can also be a differentiator between mywaves and other services and could be useful in the marketing context. Also it worth noting that if a phone does not support certain things (e.g. access keys) then users can become frustrated if things don’t work. User experience applies to mobile in the same way as web (and is arguable more important), but there is general less focus on this in the mobile area (e.g. a good example where mobile web experience done well has helped drive mobile usage is Google Reader).
  
  
• On one of the devices I tested with the download function did not work on the mobile site (Nokia N95).

 

Please let me know if anything needs clarification.

This question has specifically only asked about the mywaves embedded player, and not the channel library and business as a whole. Hence I will try to keep the answer within that scope.

Also note: this is fairly straightforward feedback -- its meant to be taken as an honest look at how to make Mywaves more successful.

1) What are the obstacles to adoption? How can they be overcome?

Adoption happens much like viral videos become viral -- it is that eureka moment when the user experience for a particular person gets perfected to the point that the individual will choose to evangelize and believe in your product over the others.

For this to happen, everything about your product must be perfect in the first instance. Before anything else I would point out that there are still a large number of technical issues with the embedded player and also the technical library which hinders adoption.

Technical Obstacles

Just to list a few:

    * Embedded player time-seek controls do not work well
    * Embedded player video quality is low -- even if the content is resized for mobile the quality is too low for long-term use on a blog
    * When "SND2MBL" is used, a form asks for a name "from" and description. However, both of those items do not appear in the SMS received (I will write about why this makes an impact)
    * The Channel library UI design makes it very difficult to discover interesting channels
    * The Channel library UI is intrusive -- after 10 minutes of average use I was frustrated enough to want to leave
    * The registration process is based only on the number and not the country code -- apparently someone in the USA shares my number, so I can't register.

Information Obstacles

During the research for this answer, I found many sources -- including the question itself, interviews of the CEO, a thorough recommendation at CrunchGear -- that all said that sharing video to your phone and your friends is dead-simple.

However, I was not able to find any information on your website, nor on the embedded video page that describes clearly how to get started with sharing, or how to get started with uploading video from my own phone to the player.

The same thing with the channel library, and also with the overall "value proposition" of the business -- from the website front page it seemed like mywaves is an software ODM for handset manufacturers and thus can detract an average user away from it.

Finally, information in terms of demos / how-to video presentation was missing. The average user wants to know why he/she should sign up or register and give out personal information (cellphone number!) even before knowing for sure what the value is, and I did not see any screenshots of the channel library without signing up.

Value Obstacles

There are a number of aspects of the Value to discuss.

The first is How easy is the solution to use

Here, I am a bit confused. For me, the product simply did not work as advertised / reviewed online. I suspect that this is because I am an international subscriber and do not use a US / Canada carrier. Either way, lets take a look at both options. Other factors were that I did not have the MyWaves player for the Phone installed on my phone when testing.

For me, here is the total experience in using SND2MBL:

1- Click SND2MBL -- I fill in my friend's number, and add a little note to get him excited about the video

2- My friend receives an SMS, without my name or description. He has no way of knowing who this message is from and whether to trust them (I tried this with a couple of people and they deleted the message).

3- The SMS has a URL, so they have to use Data Rates and browse the internet to a website from where they can perform additional actions

4- The website has a play link which links to the actual source file. For me, clicking on that opened up my Real Player on the phone and it started streaming the content.

The trouble with the above steps is that simply put these are too many steps, and thus is not easy to share with friends.

Secondly, this is not exactly downloading the video to the phone. This is more of a web to mobile web share, and requires the receiver to use data rates and browse to a website and click on a link.

While this approach makes it easier to adjust video parameters based on the device and carrier, it might have been better if SND2MBL actually sent the video over a MMS message.

This is where I am confused, because the reviews of the service claimed to do so, and perhaps it does for US Carriers.

Similarly, the instructions for actually embedding the player onto ones' website uses about 6-8 steps, and the process has to be repeated for each video. This is simply too many steps to support adoption.

Finally, if I look at an embedded video, and want to install the mywaves video player to upload/download videos, how do I do that? Again, this is an information obstacle.

The second aspect is How Useful is It?

This is at the crux of the adoption obstacles. Right now, I dont see a case where I can go to a website, see a video, and then would want to send the video to my phone. I can simply watch the video right there, or email the link to my friends, why would I want to care about tiny screens, expensive data rates on a phone?

Secondly, at a higher level the product needs a much clearer differentiating factor -- something that can immediately set this apart from other embedded players. It needs to be explained somewhat liek the AdBrite Invideo introduction video, which clearly defined how it was different. 

Removing Obstacles to Adoption

All of the obstacles mentioned -- in aggregate -- does not give users an experience that demands loyalty and rapid adoption. I suggest the following high-level changes then:

First, Website redesign so that it focuses only on your specific value proposition and provides information clearly, with visual guidance, tours, demos and tutorials to get started

Second, Reduce the number of steps-to-action. Anything that an average user wants to do should take no more than 1-2 steps.

Third, and most importantly, shift the purpose of the embedded player so that it has a clearly distinct value-proposition.

I would suggest two things:

1- Instead of letting people send one particular video to their phone, let them send all videos from this site to their phone (like an RSS subscription for video). In that way SND2MBL has more value for me on the road.

2- Also make it possible to download the player for the phone from right there on the embedded player as well -- you may have to make the player more lightweight (see later). 

2) How can mywaves be marketed so that potential users can better see its value?

The best way would be to have exclusive (or "first") content. Blizzard just announced a sequel to a popular game -- make a deal with blizzard to let you release that exclusive from mywaves 3 days before they put it on their own website. They may not mind because the video quality will be low so their own posts will still get hits.

Have Ask-a-Ninja or other popular podcasters make an exclusive show that will only be shown on your mywaves player.

Then, use the gmail technique and send it secretly to 10-50 of your community members' phones. Let them spread it around.

Convince any music labels you may have deals with to give you special "sneak previews" of upcoming artists, and send them to 50 college students like the Napster guys did. Let them spread it around. 

However, every time someone sends that video to a friend, let MyWaves also send that other person a way to download the player quickly, somewhat like the approach Flash. 

3) What groups of potential users should the company be targeting, and who can benefit the most from the player?

Here is the most important question, which I read as "What should the position of MyWaves be in the mobile video realm?".

Without a lengthy preamble to it, I will get straight to it.

I think MyWaves should become a way for video podcasters to create their own "micro television networks" for their loyal followers.

Think of it as Twitter meets "Next New Networks".

For publishers, dont just give them an embedded video player, but give them a content management system. Let them decide how, when, and how frequently content should be updated on their respective websites.

If they see something interesting and record it from their cellphone, the video uploads to your servers and from there you automatically make a blog post that also adds a whole new embedded player with the new video -- they dont have to worry about any manual changes.

For consumers, make a selective RSS feed for all the videos on one particular site and let users RSS2MBL subscribe to all future updates. 

Even for the MyWaves Channel library -- switch that more closely to an entire TV network that vloggers can use to create their own communities, just like Twitter.

The advantages of looking at this market is:

• Vloggers with commercial success will be able to get much greater reach
• Mywaves will not have to invest in marketing because the VLoggers will do it themselves
• VLoggers will get a thorough content management platform from Mywaves
• MyWaves could easily enter into an ad distribution partnership with these micro mobile TV networks.

4) How can mywaves better reach that potential audience?

Through Video podcasters, as described above.

5) Mywaves is in the process of redesigning its site -- What are the top three ways the mywaves site could be improved to better attract and support users?

Your biggest asset is not the technology, but the community of 30,000+ channels in your library.  Focusing on your asset on your website should be key.

1- Create a community driven interface, let people discover each other, other channels etc -- all this without a signup process. Only when they want to watch that video you could require them to download the player (to subscribe to the RSS of that channel)

2- Give lots of visual guidance, with step-by-step picture tutorials on how the whole thing works. Not many people care about reading text -- focus on letting people navigate and find information super-easily.

3- Create Tutorials (for creating TV networks), guides, video screencasts and more.

 

1) The key obstacle keeping users away is the time involved, and the level of technological sophistication required.  The value proposition is that you can spend time when you're bored watching streamed videos of your choice on your cell phone.  Sharing is secondary, people are more interested in viewing than sharing...though for some the ability to share videos from phone to phone will be the big value (it is, afterall, the concept that YouTube based itself on...you're doing what they wanted to do).  

Mywaves.com – TechDirt Insight

Mywaves is a video service offering customers the ability to create their own mobile video channel to stream or download to their mobile phone.

Assumptions

The business models are unclear with the exception of a partnership with mobile advertising provider, Admob.

That the service is generally compatible across a wide variety of mobile phones and network operators globally.

The service is currently in English only but not limited to US and UK customers.

The service offers a video player for use in your blog page (myspace, blogger, wordpress et al) to stream your chosen video clips to be viewed by visitors to your page/s.

The author is from the UK so many comments and insight will be UK specific so needs to be adjusted for relevance in other markets.

The service was tested on a Nokia N70 using T-Mobile’s 3G web ‘n’ walk tariff.

 

1. What are the obstacles to adoption? How can they be overcome?

• Data rates
• Wap usage
• Usability

 

Data rates

At the moment, in the UK, the majority of mobile phone users are pre-pay (or pay as you go) customers. This means that typically, they have on average just UK£2 (@US$4) topped-up on their phone. Added to that is that most data is still charged at a per mb charge [see http://tinyurl.com/ytxg59] – typically around the £3 mark. This results in two things.. firstly it makes a free download very expensive (I notice the video clip file sizes did not seem to be particularly optimised for mobile) and results in billshock – the customer has no idea what the file size is and even less idea of what that might cost them. And it results in having no credit left on their phone and leaves a bad taste in their mouths. Yes, flat rate data packages are entering the market – t-mobile’s web ‘n’ walk, Three’s X-series – but these are not yet the norm.

TV viewing is also banned on T-mobile’s UK web ‘n’ walk package and there are restrictions on X-series around viewing TV. Since the service currently offered is video streaming and download, this shouldn’t be an issue. However, if you were to move to a Mobile TV model in the future, this aspect of data usage will need to be monitored in relation to off-portal (off-deck) services.

The way to tackle this is to be open and up-front about the potential of data charges and offer help to customers by highlighting the latest flat rate or other data packages which may be more cost-effective for them. This is good customer service and needs to be applied in detail on the website and in smaller form on the wap/java service.

In addition, countries can be targeted where data rates are cheap and English is commonly spoken such as South Africa and India. These countries’ mobile customers can be targeted using Admob to drive traffic to the Wapsite and using online marketing techniques to drive traffic to the website.

Wap usage

The latest statistics from m:metrics shows that some multi-media services on mobile are down from the previous quarter. http://tinyurl.com/2h5v32. Previous research told us that an average of 15m British mobile customers browsed or downloaded from a Wapsite each month in Q4 2006 [http://tinyurl.com/2apd73]. This is encouraging in light of the fact that data charges are still so high, so there is potential. However, we also know that it is not the youth demographic who is browsing wapsites in the UK. The data market is predominantly led by the over 25s (m:metrics).

This suggests that either the youth market needs to be educated about the service, or the service is initially aimed at the over 25, slightly geekier customer. Since I know very little about the current customer base it’s difficult to know which would be the right way forward.

Usability

This is critical to success. Customers are fairly tolerant when trying new stuff – particularly the early adopters, but their patience does have a limit. Currently the service is still in beta mode so this means there is an expectation that improvements will be made over time. That said, many full-blown services remain in beta (or gamma mode with flickr) almost permanently. It’s a web 2.0 ‘thing’. So something being in beta doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing any more.

I tried out the service on a Nokia N70 on a web ‘n’ walk package from T-Mobile and I have noted below what I discovered. Most of these things can be fixed by the technical and operations team/s.

Usability - Online

· the viewing experience was limited. I wanted to see things in full-screen online.

· Content discovery was very difficult. Where was the stuff I might recognise like mobisodes from the big TV series’ like 24 or some of the mobile content from channels like MTV? It all seemed a bit random.

· I didn’t ‘get’ the navigation or what I was supposed to do to create a channel. Nor did I know why it would be a good thing to create a channel. I didn’t understand the auto-channel – especially if I was going to allow this to be streamed via my blog or myspace page – as it was random and I could end up with something inappropriate streaming through my site.

· Widgets – this is a good thing. I’d like to see specific instructions for the most popular places where you can use them and examples of them in use (using your own myspace or blog pages for example?). Can they be used just in posts, or can they be permanently streaming widgets in your margin or header on your blog page for example.

· It wasn’t clear how mywaves was different from any other video sharing site (many are listed here http://tinyurl.com/re8p8) with the exception of streaming to mobile (except that Rok streams to mobile, but they call it TV..).

· The sign-up process seemed to be ok but why wasn’t there an option to complete more initial information, if you wanted to, the first time you do it? Seems a wasted opportunity.

Usability - Java app/wapsite

· The download was very quick and worked first time. However, a welcome text message, as well as the wap push, would be helpful and also reinforce the brand message.

· On opening the java app, I would have liked to have seen a personalised welcome message with a bit more information including the fact that you recognised that I was using a Nokia N70 on T-Mobile in the UK. This level of information is relatively easy to manage across most countries where there is any kind of critical mass of mobile services.

· Asked me to define default access point which I haven’t seen before. Normally I get a drop down list for me to click on the service I most frequently use to access wap.

· The text on the Wapsite (via the java app) was very very small and almost illegible (and I have good eyesight).

· The streaming function didn’t work at all, but the downloads did. However, they were very slow (I’m using a 3G handset) and that was due to the filesizes which seemed unnecessarily large. Files did not seem to be particularly optimised for mobile.

· No warning about data costs.

· No information on what it was I was downloading – a short synopsis would be useful

· Missing FAQs, privacy policy, terms and conditions and ‘about us’ pages on the Wapsite. These should be an abridged version of what’s on the website and offer reassurance that this is a professionally run service.

Other ideas and comments

· The addition of an ‘I’m feeling lucky’ button on the website and Wapsite would be a fun addition to the service.

· Content discovery is critical and more work needs to be place on making that easier. As the service grows, it’s going to become increasingly difficult to find the content you want. Focus and attention needs to be placed on this – building on community tagging, reviews and other web 2.0 techniques will be important. In addition, a personalisation engine such as the one created by Leiki [http://www.leiki.com], might help to solve the problem so less time needs to be invested in finding the content you want, particularly if you’re searching via your mobile phone.

· Assuming the streaming problem can be fixed, I’d like the option for the channels I choose to be looped so that I can watch it like TV rather than switching between channel

 

2. How can mywaves be marketed so that potential users can better see its value?

It is not currently clear where the value actually lies. Is it in having great content available for free, is it about having a streaming widget for your blog, is it about having a mobile video service, is it about offering a route to market for publishers of content? What is actually special about how you deliver to mobile? The answers to these questions are not clear to me from what I have seen of the service as an outsider.

Decisions need to be made about the proposition for each of the target markets and also the potential revenue streams for those segments chosen to focus on. This will help you focus on the needs and wants of those customers and translate that into value. There is currently little differentiating mywaves from many other video services out there as the capability to stream and download to mobile can be copied. What do you do that is better, simpler, cheaper, more effective than the competition?

There are many video services out there and increasingly, more mobile TV services so lessons can be learned by what they’re doing. I would be tracking what Rok TV is up to in terms of customer marketing and also look at what the major TV networks and production companies are doing to promote their mobile video content services.

Since this service is free, this means that there is no value. Consideration should be made about what a ‘premium’ service might look like in the future. If it is likely there will be a premium service in the future for both customers and publishers, then it’s worth alluding to now and offering ‘free for life’ access to the first x,000 customers and/or publishers. This will make the customer feel like they’re getting something for nothing.

More live examples of how the service is being used by different customers should be shown. The best channels and content should be highlighted.

The highest volume users could be invited to join a ‘mywave fanclub’. These members can be elevated to moderator status (to monitor for inappropriate content, to be a visible reviewer of content and to help others via forums and the like to get the best out of the service). In return, fans can get free stuff – new handsets, virtual vouchers to spend on other sites, chances to join a live music video shoot or whatever is appropriate to the core audience.

Attention should be taken to publishers of content and the benefits and rewards of publishing to mywaves should be made very clear. Are there revenue opportunities through shared advertising revenue? Can you reach an audience that other sites can’t reach? What makes mywaves special beyond being able to stream to mobile (which is ultimately replicable by any half-decent technical outfit – video streaming and downloading to mobile isn’t new). Can you use the service to offer premium and free video content to customers and make money on revenue share?

3. What groups of potential users should the company be targeting, and who can benefit the most from the player?

Publishers and creators of content – from corporate entities to one-person outfits to ensure a good range of content.

High volume video users and fans

3G phone users

Mobile users on a flat rate data plan or from countries where data rates are cheaper

Music fans

Gadget freaks

Comedy fans (or other specific content genre fans)

Bloggers – music fans (to allow music video streaming to their sites), gadget fans (especially mobile review sites offering them incentives to review the service).

Other video sites – can your service be offered to them to get them mobile sooner rather than later? [saying: “keep your friends close and your enemies closer still”]

 

4) How can mywaves better reach that potential audience?

It’s hard to advise in a brief document without researching the audiences in more detail but some of the techniques to use would be:

Targeting the right blogs and starting a blog relations programme to engage bloggers globally to spread the word.

Create and manage your own myspace (and other social network) pages so that you can make friends with video fans and show them the service in action. It may be that the blog widget drives all other activity.

Make the mywaves blog posts more frequent and include an editor’s tip of the day and occasional pieces reviewing content, articles about the content creators and have a guest reviewer from the customer base who can write a review (for a chance to win a prize maybe).

Use Admob to target wap traffic by country and handset capability.

Use google to target website traffic

Seed content on other video networks and make sure that you create the links back to the mywaves service

Advertising in focussed consumer interest magazines (gadgets, film-making, computers, music) and use a keyword plus shortcode to encourage people to text in to get the link to download the player to their phone.

Partnerships with targeted media to offer a keyword/shortcode access and promotion to their consumer base. This could be on a bounty basis – US$x for each successful download for example.

Offer the player to content publishers as an easy way for them to publish video content to their site online and on mobile.

Email marketing with regular reviews and service highlights to remind customers to re-use the service.

Encourage feedback and act on it.

Devise a competition to encourage more content to be consumed – a video treasure hunt might work.

Sponsor a short film competition and as part of that offer full site support and forums to drive awareness of and traffic to mywaves. This could be in conjunction with a consumer brand or with a film school or film promotion site or magazine.

5. Mywaves is in the process of redesigning its site -- What are the top three ways the mywaves site could be improved to better attract and support users?

1. Rethink navigation and the potential for content discovery.
2. Make an email address and sign-up to a newsletter an optional part of the sign-up process online to make email marketing easy.
3. The Wapsite needs a complete overhaul – see answers above to question 1.

Hope this helps and good luck!

Helen Keegan

http://www.technokitten.com | http://www.beepmarketing.com

Submitted 20 May 2007. 

1.

The principal challenge that mywaves faces is integrating into the existing online video ecosystem. Being unable to work with flash-based video platforms such as YouTube means that mywaves is currently operating outside the dominant ecosystem.

mywaves does have a clearly differentiated "killer" feature -- enabling consumers to watch videos on their cell phones without subscribing to a wireless carrier's video content service. But the source of that content is another big challenge for mywave's consumer play. mywaves is attempting to woo consumers away from their current online video destinations in order to access the killer mobile feature by creating proprietary mywaves channels located on the mywaves site. Any time a company tries to change existing behaviors rather than leverage or integrate with them, it faces an uphill battle. And on the web, becoming a destination for content is increasingly a difficult proposition -- even CBS gave up on it, instead creating a syndication network.

On the B2B side, enabling content owners to add a send-to-mobile capability to their video assets is also a killer feature, but again the current technology limitations keep this feature outside the existing ecosystem. The vast majority of video content publishers use Flash-based platforms, whether YouTube, Brightcove, or any of a host of other competitors. These platforms orient content publishers towards the video player as the consumer facing front end, rather than the video file, which is the current focus of the mywaves B2B offering. Enterprise users of Brightcove or ThePlatform, for example, likely won't want to manage their video content separately through mywaves to make it available via mobile. Integration with existing video content management platforms should be a top priority.

Not knowing how close mywaves is to enabling the service for Flash-based video platforms, it's difficult to know how hard to push in this direction. But as it stands the lack of Flash support and the lack of integration into other online video platforms -- those used by consumers for discover and by video producers for publishing -- are a huge obstacles.

2.

For consumers, mywaves should focus on highlighting the high cost of wireless carriers' video services and the limitations that these services place on available content. mywaves essentially does an end run around these services, giving consumers more choice and more control. mywaves needs to make it more vividly clear to consumers the downsides of using the wireless carriers' service. The pitch is only compelling as it stands on the website IF consumers have already looked into and rejected the carriers' offerings based on the limitations. mywaves might consider displaying examples of pricing information and the limited content choices for one or more wireless carriers' video services to help consumers reach that "aha" moment on why the mywaves service is such a killer app.

This positioning is especially important for the sharing with friends feature -- users need to know that their friends don't have to be subscribed to a pricey carrier video plan to view the video being shared on their phones.

For B2B, the ideal positioning would be seamless integration into whatever video platform the content owner is using. Since the technology doesn't currently support this, mywaves should augment the current focus on feeds -- many online video producers who use a flash-based platform also have their content available in feeds, i.e. as a a video podcast. It goes without saying, then, that independent video podcasters are also a prime target. But the positioning should highlight more overtly the focus on the feed, i.e. make your video feeds mobile, so that video publishers can understand from the positioning how the technology is currently oriented.

3.

The strongest consumer segments for mywaves are evident in the Lounge categories with the largest number of subscribers for the top channel in the category:

Comedy - Best of YouTube - 1221

Sports - Jordan TV - 763

News - The Daily CNN - 644

Kids & Family- Cartoon Network Video Podcast - 3982

Health - Yoga Today - 49

Arts - New Yorker Animated Cartoons - 142

Business - 60 Second Ideas - 106

Education - National Geographic Video - 228

TV & Film - TrailerCast.tv - 325

Religion - Baldworship.com - 25

Music - SkeeTV Trailer - 1576

Tech - Geek Girl TV - 175

Focus on people interested in Kids & Family, Comedy, Sports, News, Music. Forget segments like Health, Arts, Business, and Religion -- don't try to be all things to all people. Focus on the under 25 segment -- the MySpace and Facebook generation. These are the people who have learned to live through their cell phones, texting up a storm.

As already mentioned, independent video podcasters who publish their videos in feeds are an ideal target on the B2B side. mywaves should identify and target some high profile video podcasters, including those already part of the mywaves Lounge. mywaves should also approach independent online video producers, like PodTech and JibJab.

4.

mywaves needs to be marketed in a distributed fashion. There are too many web services that have launched and are essentially waiting for consumers to come to them. One way to create a distributed marketing platform is through the SND2MBL button -- require all content publishers who use the feature to also display a link back to mywaves for consumers to discover more content that they can send to mobile. If all content owners using SND2MBL are also included in the mywaves Lounge, they will benefit from links back on other content owners' sites because more consumers will be discovering the Lounge.

mywaves should also introduce or optimize search marketing campaigns to reach users who are interested in video on their cell phone, e.g. keywords like "cell phone video." To this end, mywaves should have on its site some high quality content about how to choose a cell phone for consumers interested in watching videos on their cell phones. It would probably be worth working with an SEO consultant to optimize for search.

The sharing feature is also an essential element of the marketing platform. Users who genuinely find it cool that they can now bypass the carriers' expensive video offerings should be given every opportunity and encouragement to tell their friends about it.

For B2B, the best way to leverage distributed marketing is simply to get the SND2MBL button on as many sites as possible -- when video content producers come across the button, they will want to know about the functionality for their own content. mywaves has had good coverage in the tech blogosphere but needs to reach out to high profile video bloggers and independent content producers who may not read GigaOm, Mashable, etc.

5.

Simplify, simplify, simplify! It took me at least 10 minutes to figure out exactly what the mywaves service does. It should have taken me 10 seconds. The explanation on the homepage doesn't stand still -- nobody has patience for that. The site needs a clear, concise articulation of the principal value proposition prominently displayed on the homepage.

White text on a gray background is VERY hard to read. There's a reason why Google and just about every other site has adopted black text on a white background. It has worked for 500 years.

Overall, the new design should focus on mywaves' most important objective -- enabling prospective users to understand as quickly and easily as possible exactly what the service does, how to use it, and what the technical requirements are. Give prospects an overview first, then allow them to drill down for more detail. Consider using a simple conceptual graphic to help explain the technology.

I also found it difficult to find the content Lounge from the homepage. Visitors need to easily see what content is available without setting up an account. Visitors will want to learn and explore before they sign up.

1) What are the obstacles to adoption? How can they be overcome?

It appears that the element that distinguishes Mywaves from other web-video providers is the mobile player. You are banking on user enthusiasm for mobile video to jumpstart a video aggregation service.

There are a couple problems with this strategy:

1) From what I’ve seen on your website you don’t appear to have a workable plan to get your application onto mobile phones. You seem to be relying on an SMS based installation method, a “click on link to install”-type system. That method won’t work on many US networks. For example, have your engineers tested the application installation process on Verizon or Cingular? I suspect it won’t work on either carrier’s handsets. There’s a reason they call it the “walled garden”.

To get our application onto Verizon phones we had to go through a lengthy “True BREW Testing” process for certification, followed by months of negotiation to get a spot on the carrier’s deck. Far as I know there is no way to circumvent that process.

2) In the US, mobile users have not shown much enthusiasm for “channel” content on their handsets. By and large people seem more inclined to watch shows and viral clips on their computers or TVs. That’s not to say there isn’t a place for mobile video, but the successful formula may be more focused towards realtime-generated user-content. That is video that’s taken via the device’s inbuilt camera, and is immediately broadcast to a friends-list or subscriber-list.

2) How can mywaves be marketed so that potential users can better see its value?

As I said earlier, I believe the best way to get traction with users will be to pursue the mobile user-generated content angle.

There are two critical pieces to that:

1) You must get your mobile player onto as many national carriers’ content decks as possible. Regardless of what other web-based viral marketing you do, this is the place which offers you the most visibility as well as the least painful (sometimes only) user installation experience.

There is no magic pill for this. You will need to hire a top-notch mobile sales consultant--someone with contacts into the “old boy’s/girl’s” network who can get your application placed into the carrier decks. People that have had experience working for mobile game publishers like EA, Glu Mobile and Hands-On, and who have a record of getting their game/music/wallpaper applications highly placed in the deck are the people you should be looking for. The good news is you don’t have a library of games to place, you have just one application. The bad news is that carriers expect you to sell something so they can share in the revenue. If they can’t make money on the application sale then the whole process is an uphill battle. We tried to pitch them the “your users will download more data and you’ll make money” story, but that doesn’t seem to work these days. However it might be worth a try again—just be prepared to take the conventional sell-an-application route if the carriers don’t jump on the freebie video player model.

2) You really need to structure your website and video player to target users who create video using their mobile-device cameras. Your player needs to be both a video player and an application which allows users to upload video they’ve shot on their phones to your server for redistribution. And the time between upload to your server and availability can’t be an hour or more like it is for Youtube—people are going to want to use your service to show a community where they are now, not where they were yesterday.

I suspect that in order to fulfill these requirements that you may need to access the phone video hardware directly, or write a converter that takes the OEM video formats and drops it into something standard that you can support on all platforms. I’m not sure Java supports accessing the video hardware in a standardized way yet, so your best bet may be the latter.

3) What groups of potential users should the company be targeting, and who can benefit the most from the player?

As I said earlier, people don’t seem to watch too many TV show on their handsets so far. Go for the high school, college, young-adult demographic that is addicted to 24-hour connectivity and MySpace. Give them an application that lets them broadcast their life 24-7, live. That’s what they’ve been asking for, and nobody is able to give it to them. Mywave should be the platform for live user video, across all carriers!

4) How can mywaves better reach that potential audience?

I think I’ve covered this in my earlier answers.

5) Mywaves is in the process of redesigning its site -- What are the top three ways the mywaves site could be improved to better attract and support users?

1) Put the focus on "feeds" of user-generated video. Emphasise the realtime aspect of the uploads. This is not just archived video of goodtimes from a month ago--this stuff could be happening right now! Always encourage your webviewers to download the mobile video player/uploader. Have a set of pages that describe exactly how to get the application on each carrier deck (it will not be an identical process)

2) Be explicit about people's friend-list/contact-list. In this you need a view thats similar to a Facebook or Myspace--a place where you can add contacts/subscribers/friends by phone number or name.

3) Emphasise your "Mywave Stars" on your front page. I mean the users that create the most compelling mobile video streams, your popular/attractive/vocal superstars that will draw in their peers and get you a user base virally.