Now on MySpace

Adva Mobile now has a MySpace page. Feel free to connect to us, and if you're a band, why don't you try our free mobile marketing service...we'll set you up in seconds.


We're looking for Facebook developers to develop a kick-ass Feacebook presence...drop me a line if interested!

Promo for Sep 27th show

Wow...I didn't even have time to post this. Great show last night, and great turnout from fans requests

Tonight, McAlister Drive's Video show + Lagoon, Club Felt Boston

They'll be providing unique mobile experience to their fans, with Adva Mobile:

Send to your phone, OR text McAlister to 70734



Send to your phone, OR text mybandLagoon to 70734



stay tuned for Saturday HearNowLive show!!!

New Report on Teens, Cellphones and Music

It's becoming a habbit to quote Marc Cohen, who voices the 2 key points from this interesting research by Harris Interactive:

• Cellphones are an ideal device for ad-supported music
• Teens and tweens are the ideal target market for ad-supported music
• 6/10 teens will provide personal details

Yes yes yes and yes. He's correct. I just hope more people will realize that, soon.

mIndustry success, and failure announcements

Cleaning up my reader this morning, I've noticed a number of announcements...
Successes (in my mind):

• FlyScreen: Perhaps because I'm a bit close to them, this week's announcement of an available download (beta, I think) of FlyScreen to Symbian 3rd Ed. phones. This is a young, ambitious Israeli startup. If they play their cards right, they'll go far
  
• FlixWagon: As much as I'd like to think of them and Qik as simply good timing (I don't want to underplay the technology, but in truth, they grabbed the uplink streaming API of 3G, adding storage and smarts, and added big time marketing on it), they seem to be shooting up. I am still questioning the consumer adoption, but perhaps there is something there. they're now talking white labeled service for operators...$$$
• Blackberry: there's talks about the Bold device being expensive, not measurable to iPhone, being forced by AT&T, or the new flip Pearl. I think BBs kick ass, the new flip is a good move, and I bet it's going to be very popular especially with young female workers who will find the form factor appropriate

But perhaps a bit saddening, is the news of people shutting down:

• Tira Wirless: Once a mobile porting shop, somewhat didn't keep up with younger, more nimble competition. they're gone
• Action Engine's future is in question. An On-Device-Portal company. Too early in Time to market I think
• Wippit shuts down. Sigh
  

Brring

One of the interesting companies presenting yesterday at Webinno was Brring. Free ringback tones for the crowds.
They got the formula right...music, free, for the crowds, that should work. maybe.

The service (read more on their site, but if you're lazy, here's what I got:) you upload your own tune, cut it to be a ringback length, and select who hears which tunes. (Future feature, community-style transactions (I guess) to share & recommend tunes). You get a number from them and whoever calls that number will hear a 5-10 sec audio ad, and then (and only then) the call will be forwarded to your phone and it will start ringing.

So a couple of thought (Otherwise why would I make this post?).
Here's the stuff I applaud Brring on:

• Pretty bold: moving in on the operators (and vendors) ringback market, which although been stable or declining, is a pretty chunky market in a D2C move
• Formula's right: Free, D2C, social for the crowds. It's all there. I can see kids rushing to it
• Bring a friend and get paid feature: sure, even better. Free is not enough anymore (I see that too in Adva) in audience acquisition. So something for "bring your friend" will ignite a bigger fire
• Not married to the carriers: I suppose they found a way to work around the carriers with this "Brring number" they use. Either way, not marrying the carriers is a smart move
  

Here's what I'm not convinced about:

• Maybe most important, the content licensing bit. I've not read through the complete T&C, but briefly it looks like they hand the responsability for content to the fans. That's not gonna fly. If that's the strategy, they better get a good lawyers
• You force someone who calls you (on this new number that you need to publish) to listen to the ad before your phone begins to ring. That goes right up the advertising tolerance discussion. hmmm...unsure about that. Good news (I think), you can turn the ads off for selected people (or can you? unsure)

Maybe all of these are issues that can be solved by figuring out the right product definition, but where the real smarts is, is figuring out what would motivate people to forget about the heavy Verizon advertising everywhere (Boy, with that ad budget, I wonder how they maintain their network) and go to their service. The typical D2C challenge.

Good luck guys!

Sincerely, the Management

Sincerely, the Management were on stage last week, fun band and fun show. They used our mobile service and a few fans checked it out.
Here's their shoutout, sorry it's a bit blurry:





We're on tonight with OldJack, Gardner and Michael Bernier at FestEvolve. Thanks to HearNowLive, we'll be next week at Copperfields and the following week at Church.

Last Weekend for Adva Mobile

So between crazy weeks and weekends I'll try to make the occasional post about how we're doing at Adva Mobile. I think though that soon I'll start looking for a proper blog for us...recommendations welcome.

So anyway, last Friday we were at another HearNowLive show, at Church, which was a lot of fun and a great show. HearNowLive have a great cover of the show.

We got great feedback from all the artists, they were interested and did the shoutout really well (Someday Rome took it to another level :-))

We estimated a crowd of 120 fans at the peak, and so a collection of close to 15% phone numbers in total, and higher numbers of messages from fans requesting content, that's not a bad stat (for the very limited set of features we already have live).

We're working on the next gigs, and new feautures. Check out McAlister Drive's MySpace page with our new widget, and this Thursday Club d'Elf is at the Lizard Lounge using trying our service.

much more to come...

Boston's Mobile Tourist

Wondering around Boston this weekend with the family, came across this sign:

Reminded me of the Freedom Trail mCode project (Remember?)

I think I've done well putting that one behind me, but from time to time I can't help but thinking what an unbelivable opportunity we had in our hands.