Webwag Mobile

We've written before about Webwag, a personalized start page. Webwag Mobile is a Java app. It looks very much like a desktop widget service (like Yahoo! Widgets). Certainly looked slick and the ability to sync with the Internet version is useful for heavy Mobile Web users. The TomSoft blog has more details of Webwag Mobile.

RuleSpace isn't a startup, it's an 11-year company. It calls itself a "content categorization" company, which analyzes what users are looking at. In the mobile space, it does parental controls applications. It's also being used in mobile search solutions, and has anti-spam and recomendations technologies. It is heading into even more granularity, which has applications in mobile advertising.

kyte

Kyte enables you to create an interactive TV channel on your website, blog, social network or mobile phone. It has a Facebook app too. kyte really shows off the creative and collaborative nature of modern Mobile Web apps.

Photo by Rudy de Waele

Ex Machina

Ex Machina is a social gaming company, that has a gaming platform for Web, mobile and TV. The example showed today was PopKids, described as "Tamagotchi meets American Idol". Essentially you raise a (virtual) child and hope it becomes a top American Idol singer. It takes 18 days for the 'child' to grow to 18 years in the game. You need a partner to have a kid and raise it, then you need to provide guidance to the child. This encourages social interaction in the game. The game is a mobile app, but it is going to be developed for TV too. It all sounds a bit strange to me, but then I'm not the target audience - so it'll be interesting to see if the PopKids game catches on.

Photo by Rudy de Waele

The other notable feature of Taptu is that it includes rich media - e.g. playable audio and video. Here's an example:

In the Mobile Launch Pad Segment which I'm watching as I write this, CEO Stephen Ives says that Taptu has special algorithms catered to mobile. He says they find "the best mobile friendly results".

The first public version of Taptu, being launched today at http://taptu.mobi, focuses on music and fact-finding. However expect more categories to be added in the coming months. The first release is optimized for 20 popular handsets from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola - and the iPhone.

Taptu is also releasing a Facebook application today, called Music Wall. It's powered by the same search engine and allows Facebook users to find music on the web, add to their profile and share with their friends. The company says that future releases will include "a unique social network to mobile integration."

heysan

heysan describes itself as a "mobile meebo" - it's a meta IM service for mobile phones. It is mobile browser based and works on the iPhone. The service is free and features include one single buddy list and a chat conversation view. They launched in April 07, a product of the YCombinator program.

Taptu

See our full review of this product, a new type of mobile search.

Mippin

Mippin connects mobile users to their favorite web content, which for mobile means the freshest content optimized for small screens. It has a search function (although a search for "mobile2.0" didn't discover any R/WW posts), and if you find a good story you can share it - via services like Twitter. It also allows you to publish content.

Update: Prashant Agarwal from Mippin comments: "hey richard, I searched for "Mobile2.0" when I did my demo. But if you search for "Mobile 2.0" you guys come up. Stupid, I know, we're working on it."

Mobile Analytics

MobileResearch is a mobile data company; it sells data feeds, does phone testing, etc. They've done a lot of work on device targeting. The Mobile Analytics product is a stats service for Mobile Web, launching in January. Currently the service is in private beta testing.

Next up is Tomi Ahonen, author and Mobile blogger. His latest book is called 'Digital Korea', about how South Korea established itself as a technology leader. His talk today is about mobile social networking and communities - in particular the business opportunities in Mobile 2.0.

Tomi calls mobile "7th mass media", which he says "is as different from the Internet as television was to radio" - he's referring to things like user experience and business opportunities. His definitions of mass media: Radio was 4th, TV 5th, Internet 6th and Mobile 7th. He says mobile can do everything the previous 6 media can do, including interactivity and search of the Internet. But mobile is different from the previous 6 -- he says mobile is "the first personal mass media", it's always on, always carried, has built-in payment model, it's a creative tool at point of creative impulse and gets the most accurate audience info. He says mobile is "a far superior media experience" than the previous 6 mass medias.

He says mobile apps can be "magical" and discusses an example from Japan - a cameraphone OCR translator. It's from a Japanese company called MediaSeek; the product is called Kamera Jiten, and it allows cameraphone users to turn their device into a translator.

Business Opportunities in Mobile Web

Tomi then outlines some opportunities: e.g. mobile books (M-Books) are an $82M business in Japan. In Japan and South Korea, there are big opportunities for revenue - e.g. 54% of Japanese mobile phone users consume ads - and what's more 44% of them have clicked on interactive ads. Tomi says hat "advertising is becoming content", because it is relevant to mobile users. While he says this isn't a radical new idea (e.g. MTV videos in the early 80's were essentially advertisements of music products), it is something we need to adapt to more in the mobile Web era.

He talks of a new company called Blyk, which launched 24 Sept in the UK. Blyk is a new mobile network for 16 – 24s that's funded by advertising - according to the Blyk blog it's "an invitation-only mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) that links young people with brands they like and gives them free texts and minutes every month." Tomi says Blyk is a company to watch and emulate.

He says the big brands (Coca-Cola et al) will be present in the upcoming mobile social networks. Cyworld is an early example of this.

Flirtomatic, a UK flirting service from May '06, is another good example of a mobile/social service. It gets half its income from ads, and half from personalization and gifts. Indeed the company abandoned their original subscription fee business model because of those other models. Flirtomatic is now one of Britain's leading florists, according to Tomi.

In summary, an excellent talk by Tomi and I learned a lot about the opportunities in the Mobile Web world. His next book btw is on the topic of the 7th Mass Media - some of the content in his talk today was from that book.

Today Read/WriteWeb is the first to announce the Mobile Launch Pad demo companies at Mobile 2.0. These are all exciting and up-and-coming mobile web startups; I'm looking forward to checking them out next week. Here is the launchpad list:

Part 2:
Webwag - http://www.webwag.com/
RuleSpace - http://www.rulespace.com/
KyteTV - http://www.kyte.tv/
ExMachina - http://exmachina.nl/

We'll be reviewing some of these products over the coming weeks.

As well as the above startups, the speaker list at Mobile 2.0 is a who's who of the Mobile Web world -- so keep an eye on Read/WriteWeb next week as we provide coverage of this event.