Shozu -One to Watch #10

London-based Shozu has reason to be pleased with itself. Last year, it scooped a GSMA award for 'Most Innovative Mobile Application' and has since been somewhat of a benchmark when it comes to sharing and uploading content from mobile to web as well as share content purely with other mobile users.

Shozu also recently raised $12m in new venture financing (Series C funding) and is supporting the growth in partners and integrations with other social networking or multimedia sharing sites. The list of partner sites is long, from Picasa to Flickr, from YouTube to Seesmic and from Facebook to Blogger.

They also recently announced that they had struck up a deal with 3 for its one-click mobile-to-Web image uploading service for mobile phones to be amongst a handful of applications featured on 3neXt, a new mobile applications community website from mobile operator 3. The site is designed to aid consumers in finding innovative mobile lifestyle applications that fit 3's focus on mobilising the Internet, as reflected in 3's X-Series phones introduced last year.

ShoZu currently supports 250 Symbian, Java, Microsoft Windows Mobile-based and BREW devices available from multiple manufacturers. The ShoZu service can also be used with select WiFi-enabled mobile phones such as the Nokia N80 in Europe and Dash in the U.S., permitting multimedia files to be routed over users' home, office or WiFi connection (or AirPort connection for Mac users) rather than the cellular network to reduce data transport costs.

I'm looking forward to listening to and exchanging views on Shozu's future plans with its CEO, Mark Bole, who will be presenting next week at the Mobile Internet Conference in Berlin. I will, of course, keep readers posted on salient points of the presentation.

YuMe -one to watch #3

REDWOOD CITY-BASED YuMe offers mobile advertisers an appealing proposition: focussing exclusively on video-based advertising, YuMe offers advertisers a tailored platform to stream or download video advertisements to specific channels with optional overlaying of interactive content.

Imagine, say, that you click on an advert for a Sony Playstation. Towards the end of the video, according to your operator subscriber address, an interactive overlay will provide you with the nearest store to purchase the item. Specific targeted promotions can also be included, so sales discounts can be offered at specific times of the month or year.

The company is very much in its infancy yet (it only completed its second round of venture capital financing in October 2007, raking in $9mUSD) and not on everyone's radar screen. However, in a recent Ad Focus ranking initiated by Advertising.com, YuMe managed to climb to number 37 in terms of US online consumer reach (just 3 spots behind Amazon).

If you have been following the story on Seesmic (see previous post) you will notice how YuMe is also going about monetising those yummy video channel revenues available in the future. Whereas Seesmic plans to do so via its community-led channels, YuMe is positioning itself directly at the service of advertisers through its syndicated video content channels.

Watch this space in the coming months to see whether these two models will eventually converge or whether the total revenue pie will expand sufficiently for both models to remain afloat.

Seesmic -one to watch #2

Loic Le Meur is no stranger to web enterprise -San Francisco-based Seesmic is the fifth such start-up he has embarked upon. Only that this time, there is a special touch, in that in a one-of-a-kind initiative, he is keeping a daily video diary of how the whole adventure unfolds.

So what is Seesmic? Loic describes it a community-driven video social software. Others have billed it a video-based twitter. The basic idea is for it to become a very open online video service with a high degree of interaction by part of its users. The company has not actually officially launched (this is expected to happen in February 2008 -aha, the month of the Mobile World Congress!) so only testers can access the beta version.

However, development of the site has achieved a crescendo of activity and it promises to deliver integrated social networking by linking in to facebook, skype, twitter et al. Channels will be created according to specific themes, like technology, hobbies, sports etc.

But what is the business model, I hear you asking? A high degree of user partcipation and critical mass within the channels is intended to act as a strong pull for sponsors and advertisers. Seesmic members posting some of the more popular videos to these channels will in turn receive a percentage of revenues from them.

Loic has a large following in Europe and is somewhat of a web evangelist, allowing word to spread fast about the seesmic initiative.5,000 testers are already helping Loic make his vision a reality and giving a welcome 'open' flavour to the whole project -in today's community-bound web, a sure-fire key to success.Loic has strong support from Niklas Zennstrom of skype fame- "Seesmic rocks -it is Web 3.0".

I will ask Loic what his plans are for seesmic on the mobile web and keep readers updated.Meantime, take a look at Loic's seesmic video-diary -you'll find it to be dangerously addictive!