AOL:

• AOL announced its earnings this week.  The most interesting part of the report: “Revenues decreased 17% ($207 million) to $1.0 billion, due to a 26% decline ($165 million) in Subscription revenues and a 6% decrease ($33 million) in Advertising revenues. The decline in Subscription revenues reflects mainly a decrease in domestic AOL brand subscribers, related primarily to AOL’s strategy to offer its e-mail and other products free of charge to Internet consumers. Driving the decrease in Advertising revenues were declines in display advertising on AOL Network sites and sales of advertising on third-party Internet sites, offset partially by an increase in paid-search advertising.”
  

Apple:

• According to a recent report by SquareTrade, The iPhone is more reliable than Blackberry and Treo after one year of ownership.  This doesn’t surprise me since there are less externally moving parts on the iPhone than a Blackberry or Treo.  The study is summarized by MobileCrunch here.

Facebook:

• Rumor has it… Will Facebook buy Twitter?

Google:

• Google ends it’s Advertising Agreement with Yahoo because “government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement”
• According to CrunchGear, Steve Ballmer says Google is behind the competition and is questioning Android’s financial strategy.

LinkedIn:

• According to an Anderson Analytics’ study, LinkedIn users are high income.  You can see a good summary of the review here.  Among the findings: LinkedIn users that make between $200,000 and $350,000 were around seven times to have more than 150 LinkedIn connections than those who made less money. 66% of LinkedIn users are identified as “decision makers”.
  • TechCrunch reports that LinkedIn cut 10% of its staff, some of which will be re-assigned to other roles:

MySpace:

• MySpace launched with Auditude, an online video tracking platform.  Auditude fingerprints user posted videos to determine who the “content owner” is. It then inserts advertising into the video and tells the user whose content they’re watching.

• TechCrunch reports that  less than 1 month after it’s launch, MySpace MyAds is making a load of money: “Demand for the product was immediate and significant, we’ve heard from multiple sources close to the company. Average daily revenue, say our sources, is $140,000 – $180,000, which means MyAds is at least a $50 million/year business for MySpace already.”

Nokia:

• Nokia laid off around 600 workers in “follow-up” to its earlier 2008 layoffs.  Nokia Research Center is also going to “sharpen its focus on fewer but stronger research areas.” You can read the announcement here.
• Nokia launched the beta of “FriendView”, “a location and micro-blogging service that helps you stay in touch with your close friends. It let’s you share where you are and how you feel from home, work, or on the go. With Friend View it is easy to meet up at only a moment’s notice. “

RIM:

• CrunchGear reviewed the Blackberry Bold saying, “The Bold is unequivocally the best piece of hardware that RIM has ever put out.”

Samsung:

• Samsung reportedly surpassed Motorola in US Mobile market.

Twitter:

• Twitter is contemplating corporate accounts as a way to make money.
• Twitter is now hiring a Director of Strategic Partnerships. This is the company’s first business development hire… At last, the answer to “How do those guys plan to make money?!” question will likely soon be answered.
• TechCrunch reports that “Digital Garage, Twitter’s partner with Twitter Japan, launched Twicco, a site that lets Twitter users create groups and then subscribe to them.”
• <Repeated from above> Rumors are swirling… Will Facebook buy Twitter?

Yahoo:

• Flickr: The 3 Billionth photo was uploaded to Flickr this week.

Misc:

• Rumor has it…
  • <repeat from above> Rumors are swirling… Will Facebook buy Twitter?
• Recent Layoffs:
  • <repeat from above> LinkedIn 10% layoff
• M&A:
  • Wink & Reunion.com are merging and will launch a new site next year: “Through this merger, we’re redefining the people search space by bridging existing social networks and providing consumers with the tools they need to find, be found, and stay connected,” said Michael Tanne, chief executive officer of Wink. “We’re aiming to create an entirely new online experience that simplifies people’s lives by making it easy to find and keep up with everyone they know. There will be exciting developments in the coming months as we integrate our strengths and push our business forward.”
• Technology announcements:
  • PerfSpot: Perfspot will be rolling out “Friendvouch” to its 25M members in 3 million member segments over the coming months.  Friendvouch enables users to sign up for advertising offers, which they can send to heir friends.  When those friends indicate interest, Perfspot then sells those details back to advertisers and rewards the referring user.   Here’s how the Friendvouch website describes it: “Make great recommendations and earn cash with friendvouch. friendvouch is a community of people created to connect you directly to your favorite brands. Become a brand ambassador while earning money in the process.”
  • Barak Obama & Joe Biden: The office of the President Elect launched a transition website, where people can learn about what they’re planning. There’s a blog, newsroom, job application submission, agenda information, and more. Citizens are encouraged to submit their ideas to the future administration on all agenda items including technology.
    
  • MobileCrunch did a nice summary of the “Mobile Market View” study by The Kelsey Group.  The most interesting point from my perspective: “18.9% of mobile consumers in the United States are now toting smartphones, with 49.2% planning to pick one up within the next two years.”
    
  • Though not released this week, I learned about the Pico Pocket Projector by Optoma, which is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a while.  For all of you mobile geeks, this pocket-sized projector seems to solve the problem of needing an Elmo to showcase the latest and greatest app on your phone AND makes it easy to project the videos you store on your ipod or mobile phone on a wall… Very cool.
    

I’m starting do to a quick weekly round-up of the Social Media and Mobile news that I find most interesting.  Enjoy

AOL:

• AOL Journals and AOL Hometown are shutting down (joining Xdrive and BlueString)
  

Apple:

• Apple announces retroactive improvements to “MobileMe”. The following improvements were silently launched in Sept. : http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3182
• iPhone users in the US now get free wi-fi at all AT&T hotspots.
  
• Ralph Lauren launched an iPhone app.  I agree with TechCrunch… They’re better off focusing their mobile marketing dollars and efforts elsewhere…Like ShoZu. 😉 (more…)

Yelp burned a bridge with me this week, and I’m defecting to the Rummble beta.  Rummble is London-based mobile + web 2.0 start-up that provides geographically relevant recommendations and reviews from likeminded people.

My frustration with Yelp started when I got an email from my dentists’ office… Earlier this year, I wrote a glowing review of my dentists, a fantastic couple who took over the practice from my former dentist when he retired.  Noticing that mine was the first Yelp review anyone had written of the new practice, I emailed my dentists to thank them for their great work and let them know about my review.  They replied thanking me for my review.  After my latest visit, I got an email from one of my dentists, checking in to make sure that I was happy because they noticed that my positive Yelp review was no longer posted on Yelp.com.  I went online to look, and sure enough, while I could see the review on my page, it didn’t appear in the public view.  There was only one other review listed – also a 5 star positive review.

Bewildered by why my review was removed, I re-posted it again, and it appeared in public view. I then emailed Yelp to ask what happened.  In the note, I explained that I wasn’t a spammer, but rather a social media blogger with a positive track record of contributing to online communities.  I received the following response:

Hi Lisa,

Thanks for contacting Yelp about your reviews.

Yelp has a system that automatically determines which reviews show for a given business. Just as your Yahoo or Gmail email account doesn’t deliver every email (spam, etc.), we don’t show every review. This protects both business owners (by suppressing reviews that may have been written by a malicious competitor, for example) and consumers (by suppressing reviews that may have a definitive bias, having been written by owners or their friends). It’s important to note that these reviews are not deleted (they are always shown on the user’s public profile) and may reappear on the business-listing page in the future.

I wondered how my review could have been “automatically” removed by Yelp. I am not a spammer.  I have only written a handful of carefully written Yelp reviews, and none of them feature spam-worthy words like “lumberjack”, “rolex”, or “viagra”.  If someone like me (thoughtful reviewer with a track record of social media involvement) was ‘automatically’ screened out by their system, I couldn’t help but wonder what sort of reviews I was missing out on when I used Yelp to discover new places.  I was also frustrated because I took the time to write a review to help the ‘Yelp’ community, and yet, no one in the community could see it.   The worst part is that I felt like my relationship with one of my favorite service providers was compromised by Yelp’s “automatic” screening system, when my dentist was left wondering whether I’d removed the review on purpose.

I wanted to keep liking and using Yelp, so I replied asking what would have ‘flagged’ my reviews to their spam filter.   I asked if was possible to get my review re-instated to Yelp at large.  Here’s their response:

Hi Lisa,

Thanks for taking the time to write us again.

While we can’t evaluate individual cases or re-instate specific reviews, we certainly appreciate your feedback and are continually striving to improve the user experience.

We recognize that this explanation may prove frustrating, but we hope you understand that our efforts and actions are geared toward increasing the overall trustworthiness of Yelp as a place for people to share local knowledge.

Thanks again for caring enough to contact us and for trying to make Yelp better for everyone.

I was disappointed by Yelp’s refusal to evaluate individual cases or explain their filtering criteria.  Yelp acknowledged using an unreliable system to screen out ‘spam’.  Yet, they wouldn’t explain how their filtering ‘system’ worked.  At the end of the day, I was more annoyed by Yelp’s explanation than their removal of my review.

Isn’t the whole point of an online community to allow every user to provide their input and have others flag abuses of the system?!  Wikipedia has a vibrant community and manages to keep its users relatively honest through community policing.

Reading Yelp’s response, I couldn’t help but imagine the customer service agent shrugging her shoulders, sticking out her tongue and making a facetious “I dunno” face.  The image inspired me to do a little research about other’s experiences with Yelp.  So, I Googled “Yelp complaints” to see what came up.  Here are a couple of  interesting articles on the subject:

• On September 19, 2008, CBS 5 reported, “Business Owners Raise More Complaints About Yelp”
• On August 13, 2008, The Register wrote, “Yelp ‘Pay to Play’ Pitch Makes Shops Scream for Help” claiming, “Over the last year, five San Francisco Bay Area businesses have told The Register that the company has offered to “push bad reviews to the bottom” of their Yelp pages if they paid to advertise on the site.”
• In July, 2008, TechCrunch wrote, “Angry Businesses Organize Anti-Yelp Websites. This Is A Sure Sign Of Their Success”:
  

Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman said recently in the NY Times, “We put the community first, the consumer second and businesses third.” Their goal is clearly to make businesses need Yelp, but not to expect a lot of help when it comes to disputes. Complain all you want, you’re just proving that you need Yelp more than they need you.

My recent experience makes me doubt Yelp’s assertion that it puts community first.  Until I have a reason to change my mind, I’m boycotting Yelp.  Instead, I’ll be using Rummble, and encouraging others to turn it into a vibrant and unfettered online community that allows users to share geographically relevant recommendations from likeminded people.  One of the coolest parts is that it allows you to get not only local recommendations but national and international recommendations from your network – a useful bonus for frequent travellers.  If you want to join in, add me as a friend on Rummble.

I’m curious to hear about your experiences with Yelp.  If you’re not a Vox member, feel free to email me your comments, and I’ll post them manually.

1. The line: I spent 4 years living in England, the rumored birthplace of queuing.  I know the rules of standing in a line, and I respect a good queue.  It avoids people trampling on each other, and that’s a good thing.  But, when a line is 1/4 mile and 3+ hours long, count me out.  I can’t think of a single reason why I’d wait in a line for anything longer than 30 minutes, except for maybe medical care or food, following a major disaster.  A week after the iPhone 3G came out, I stood the line in front of the Apple Store very briefly with a friend before discovering that it was still hours long, and the chances of getting a 16GB model were slim to none.  We left in favor of brunch. Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to play with friends’ iPhone 3Gs, and I’m happy I didn’t wait longer in line.
   
2. You can only use one app at a time: As if the queues in front of the Apple store weren’t enough, once you get the iPhone home, you’ve got to line up your apps too.  That’s right, you can only use one 3rd party application on your phone at a time.  I gave up on PalmOS because it is a single threaded operating system that only allows you to use one application on the phone at a time.  I was excited for the iPhone 3G because I assumed that with the launch of the App Store, Apple would launch a device that enabled several apps to run at the same time.  Unfortunately, it’s one at a time.  Until this changes, some of the coolest mobile apps out there won’t work as well on the iphone as they do on other phones.  Being able to keep one app open while checking another app is a valuable feature, especially when you’re cutting and pasting information between applications.
3. No copy and paste: Speaking of cutting and pasting, you can’t copy and paste on the iphone.  TechCrunch reports that Proximi has an app called MagicPad, which is awaiting approval to launch from the App Store.  But, MagicPad won’t enable you to copy and paste from one application to the next.  The main ways I want to use copy and paste on a phone is to copy from my browser or email and paste into my calendar or contacts.
4. Built-in battery and abysmal battery life: 3G speeds, massive data streaming, and multimedia applications are a battery suck for mobile phones.  That’s why so many “smart phones” are still huge… They’ve got big batteries.  The iPhone 3G looks much more elegant than any of the other mobile phones on the market, but the battery life leaves something to be desired.  Most mobile phones have a removable battery, which means that if you’re a power user, you can swap in a spare battery if your phone goes dead. iPhone 3G has a built in battery.  So, if your battery goes dead, you need to find an outlet and wait for the phone to re-charge.  That’s especially inconvenient if you’re a road warrior or want to use your iPhone for all of it’s features – phone, music, applications, GPS, etc.  Also – anyone who has had a laptop for a couple of years knows that battery life decreases over time. The same is true with mobile phones.  I worry that after a year or so, battery life on the iPhone 3G will dwindle and replacing that battery (which requires monkeying with the hardware) will likely be expensive and time consuming.
   
5. Reported performance problems switching between many apps: I’ve heard reports from friends that when you download a large number of apps from the App Store (say 15) and open and close them throughout the day, the iPhone 3G goes a little nuts – blanking out parts of the screen, showing jumbled lines of text, etc.  To correct this, you’ve got to soft reset the phone.  This really only impacts power users, but it sounds like enough of an issue that I’d like to wait for a fix.
   
6. No turn by turn directions: iPhone 3G has integrated GPS but no turn by turn directions, which means that you can’t use it as a GPS while you’re driving.
   
7. I have a Love/Hate Relationship with Multi-Touch: Multi-Touch is cool, but sometimes, I just need a keyboard… In bright daylight, it’s tough to see an LCD screen.  The iPhone 3G’s “Multi-Touch” technology does not provide sensory input that allows you to feel what keys you’re pressing.  It requires you to actually see the keys.  I much prefer a QWERTY keyboard, though I would rather have a screen the size of the iPhone.  I’d love to see someone come up with a jelly case that incorporates a real keyboard on the back of the iPhone – so that I can look at the big, beautiful screen as I touch type.
8. Tethering isn’t possible: Most 3G smart phones allow you to ‘tether’ your phone to your PC – using your phone as a modem.  iPhone 3G does not.  This means, that you’ve got to buy a separate card for your Mac or PC to enable it to connect to AT&T’s network.  Wireless cards are cumbersome… I’d rather use my phone.  Apparently, I’m not the only one. Yesterday, TechCrunch reported that “tempers flared” when a tethering application that was briefly being sold on the iPhone App store was quickly taken down.
9. Removing the SIM card voids your iPhone 3G warranty: I work in the mobile industry and am constantly trying new phones.  To do this, I swap my SIM card out of one phone and into another.  Apple says that taking your SIM out of your iPhone voids your iPhone warranty.  Frankly, swapping my SIM should be my prerogative.  If I own several phones, I should be able to use whichever one I want – depending on the circumstances…. If I’m at my client site (Motorola), I may want to use my Motorola Q9H (smart phone), but if I’m going out for a night on the town, I might want to swap to a smaller, more portable phone that fits easily in my pocket.
   
10. The iPhone 3G is locked to AT&T: You must use your iPhone with an AT&T SIM card.  I’d like the option of paying more for an iPhone to unlock it so that I can use it with a pay as you go SIM card when I’m overseas (to avoid overseas roaming rates).  I still use my AT&T SIM to check messages when I’m abroad, but it seems silly to pay $2/Minute to make a local call when I’m visiting London.

P.S.  8/4/08: #11 (which should actually be #1): The Daily Mail (authority on all things tabloid-worthy) just published the following article which claims: “Apple to launch the iPhone ‘nano’ in time for Christmas.”

If you’re a fan of ShoZu, in addition to keeping up with the ShoZu blog, you can now follow ShoZu on Twitter (when Twitter is working!).  ShoZu is sending out regular updates at: www.twitter.com/shozu.  Be one of the first to find out when new destinations are added, how famous people are using ShoZu, what new features are available, and more.

Jen Grenz, who leads marketing for one of my clients, ShoZu, recently showed ShoZu’s re-vamped mobile application to the BBC.  Check out the video.

ShoZu 4.0, is much more robust than previous versions.  It allows you to update your status on various social networking sites from your phone, reply to comments (and read friend’s comments) from your phone, and download your friends’s Flickr feeds to your phone.  And, it’s easier to use than the last version, which itself is simple (and I’m not just saying that because they’re one of my clients).  It makes social networking from your phone simple and it aggregates social networking interactions so that you don’t have to jump from WAP site to WAP site or from on mobile application to the next. The newest version of the ShoZu app is even better from a useability perspective.

In this major new release, ShoZu started showing ads.  While ads normally annoy me, the ads ShoZu shows are (so far anyway) good.  Unlike ads on websites, I’m seeing ads from a small number of companies that are the type of companies people like me want to learn about… companies that have products/services that actually appeal to advanced mobile users and mobile social networkers.

From a useability perspective, what’s interesting and unique about the way ShoZu displays ads is that those ads are kept entirely within the ShoZu experience.  So, when you click on a banner ad, it doesn’t take you to a WAP site, it takes you to a splash page within the ShoZu application that gives you more information.  And, it’s much easier to navigate away from the splash screen on Shozu than it is to interact with some other mobile ad types like WAP.  With WAP ads, you’re navigated away from the task you’re participating in and loading is slow.  ShoZu’s ads are lightning fast and can be opened and closed in fractions of seconds.

You can download the new version of ShoZu by clicking here.

Last year, I wrote a post with predictions for mobile in 2007 and beyond, using inCode’s  “Top 10 Global Wireless Predictions for 2007” as a starting point.  We’re almost 2 months into 2008, and it’s the perfect time to re-visit those predictions to see what came true, and make a few more predictions for 2008 and beyond.

Topping both InCode’s and my own predictions for 2007 was the mobilization of social networks.  To date, while social networks aren’t nearly as mobile as I’d like, they’re taking big strides and moving in the right direction.  In October 2007, Dustin Moskovitz (co-founder of Facebook) spoke at CTIA in San Francisco on the importance of mobilizing social applications and announced Facebook’s first mobile application (for RIM).  And, in one of the most exciting things to happen since I started blogging, Dustin Moskovitz read my post expressing disappointment about Facebook’s mobile announcement and solicited my input on how to improve Facebook’s mobile strategy and WAP site.

In other exciting mobile social networking news in 2007, ShoZu (one of my consulting clients), who makes it easy for users to interact with their favorite social networking sites from their phone, was nominated for a TechCrunch Crunchies Award.  And, in early 2008, ShoZu announced that ShoZu will ship on 50 Million Mobile phones in 2008, the number of users downloading the app from non-pre-installed phones is doubling quarterly, and 100,000 users are registering for ShoZu every month!  With stats like that, it’s clear that mobile OEMs and Operators are buying into the mobile social networking proposition, and users are embracing mobile social networking in droves.  Mobile social networking on the whole will continue to increase in popularity in 2008, and mobile accessibility will improve dramatically, as mobile browsers and social media apps get better.

inCode also predicted that in 2007, “Multi-Function Devices [will] Become Cheaper and More Versatile” – including the introduction of video-capable, GPS-enabled, and LBS-capable devices to the masses.  Video-capable devices are definitely here to stay.  GPS-enabled devices haven’t saturated the market, but LBS is taking off.  Google Maps recently incorporated LBS via network triangulation, and while triangulation isn’t nearly as accurate as GPS, it’s still very useful.  It’s great to see carriers like AT&T opening up triangulation to allow mobile internet technologies to leverage LBS.

A year ago, I predicted that in 2008, “large mobile operators and OEMs will begin to pre-load devices with social networking-focused applications that incorporate GPS.”  It seems that mobile operators are moving in the right direction, based on several new product announcements at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona earlier this month.  OEMs like Nokia and Sony Eriksson are jumping on the GPS bandwagon in 2008 with innovative handsets with built-in GPS and designs that rival the iPhone.  Once GPS technology is more readily available on slimmer handsets, the influx of GPS-enabled social applications will come.  By 2009, interacting with friends from your mobile phone and locating people near you so that you can interact with them in real life will get easier thanks to new GPS enabled handsets and apps.

Last year, I also predicted: “collaborative and community-based entertainment like YouTube on the go will evolve and continue to be popular.  I also expect that sites that monetize video footage (of, say, news events) that users take on their mobile phones will become increasingly popular….Think sites like: ScoopLive.com, Scoopt.com, and SpyMedia.com.”  So far, I’ve been right on YouTube, but monetization from video is still a long way off.  Check out the lack of traffic on the above sites according to Alexa!:

Paidforuploaders

Given the current economic downturn in the US, I don’t suspect we’ll see much movement in the paid-for citizen journalism space until 2009.  And, by that point, there will probably be a whole new set of competitors.  More likely,  I suspect we’ll see Video AdSense from Google (just released from beta) and similar video ad platforms make their way towards mobile and start picking up momentum towards the end of the year and into 2009 as mobile advertising revs up.

With an increased amount of mobile content becoming available and more ISVs and websites trying to monetize their mobile efforts through advertising, the discoverability of mobile content needs to improve.  So, I’m sticking with my original prediction from 2007 that later in 2008, mobile search and mobile SEO will gain momentum.  Mobile ads will gain some momentum later this year but won’t likely take off until 2009.  By that point, there will be a need to track the effectiveness of mobile ads, and by 2009, I suspect we’ll see an increase number of mobile analytics vendors like Bango and Mobilytics emerge.  From there, it’s only a matter of time before the heavy hitters in website optimization and testing incorporate mobile website testing and optimization tools into their product suites.

It’s an exciting time to be in both mobile and web 2.0, and 2008 and 2009 will be exciting years for both industries as convergence moves further away from a dream and towards a reality.

Today is an exciting day for my client, ShoZu, who closed $12 Million in Series C funding in a round led by SEB Venture Capital in London. ShoZu makes uploading/downloading content to/from your favorite social networking sites very easy, and usership is growing rapidly amont those downloading the app from their mobile browsers (m.shozu.com). Plus, ShoZu is being pre-loaded on over 50 million mobile phones in 2008!  Here’s a copy of the release:

ShoZu Raises $12 Million in Series C Funding;

Round Led by New Investor SEB Venture Capital, London

Mobile Social Media Company Now Attracting Over 100,000 New Users Monthly

LONDON – January 28, 2008 – ShoZu Inc., the leading provider of mobile social media services for exchanging content between mobile phones and Web-based social media sites, today announced the closing of a $12 million Series C round of financing led by new investor SEB Venture Capital, London, the UK-based venture capital arm of Swedish financial services firm Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken.  Previous investors Atlas Venture, Crescendo Ventures and TTP Ventures also participated.

The new cash commitment reflects ShoZu’s growing market traction in the highly competitive mobile social media sector.  The ShoZu application will ship pre-installed on more than 50 million mobile phones in 2008.  In addition, the number of users downloading the ShoZu client to non-preloaded handsets is more than doubling every quarter, with more than 100,000 users currently registering every month.

“ShoZu is the only mobile social media company that has secured global pre-installation agreements with multiple handset manufacturers.  That fact alone positions the firm for substantial growth,” said Frank Kelcz, an investment manager with SEB Venture Capital’s London office who has joined ShoZu’s board of directors.  “Demand for Mobile-to-Web enabling technology is being driven by a variety of factors, including the need to stay connected with online social media like Flickr and Facebook on the go, and ShoZu has the opportunity as well as the initial market presence to dominate the space.”

“The industry is still grappling with solving the usability problems of the mobile Web, from navigation to dropped connections,” said ShoZu CEO Mark Bole. “ShoZu is addressing many of these challenges with its approach to simplifying the user experience, exchanging content in the background, and providing an open gateway that offers a shortcut to key destinations.  Strategies like these may be the answer to mobilising social media in the short term and also help define the shape of the mobile Internet moving forward.”

Over the past year, ShoZu logged a series of successes in establishing its service as the industry standard in mobile social media connectivity.  Achievements in 2007 included securing global pre-installation agreements with Motorola and Samsung, creating the first unlimited-use ShoZu access package through a carrier partnership, expanding its Web 2.0 partner ecosystem to a market-leading 30 sites, and introducing the market’s first two-way multimedia social media capability with a service that will send friends’ latest Flickr photos directly to the handset on request.

Also in 2007, the company added to its collection of major industry awards with the top 3GSM award for Most Innovative Mobile Application, a 2007 MEFFY Award from the Mobile Entertainment Forum for best handset application, and a 2007 Ultimate Innovator Award from the Interactive Advertising Bureau for its mobile advertising platform.

These developments coincide with growing consumer demand for mobile connectivity to social networks and other online communities.  A recent Juniper Research report predicted that the number of users accessing social networking sites by mobile will skyrocket from 14 million in 2007 to nearly 600 million by 2012, helping to push mobile operator revenues from user-generated content from $576 million to $5.74 billion.

ShoZu’s Share-It service enables mobile users to maintain contact with their Web-based social networks, personal blogs, photo/video sharing sites and other social media with a few clicks.  Users can publish photos and video clips up to 10 minutes in length from their phones to favorite Web 2.0 sites without complex navigation, transmit photos at full or blog-quality resolution, exchange comments with friends, and sign up to receive friends’ photos and other multimedia files on their handsets automatically with no manual intervention.  These and other capabilities are unique to ShoZu.

The ShoZu application is currently available on 317 handset models with users in over 100 countries.

About ShoZu

ShoZu is the leading provider of mobile social media services that connect mobile consumers with their online social networks, personal blogs, photo storage sites and other Web 2.0 properties from the handset.  The company’s patented technology provides fast, easy, one-click uploads of photos and video clips from the mobile to the Web, full-resolution photo and video delivery without compression, an emerging suite of services that push content to the phone, the ability to work in the background even if a connection is dropped, and other unique features that simplify and enhance the user experience, plus a mobile advertising service that provides non-intrusive and behaviorally targeted ad delivery.  The company was founded in 2000 and has formed partnerships with some of the leading players in the mobile ecosystem, including Motorola and Samsung.  For more information, visit www.ShoZu.com/AboutUs.

About SEB Venture Capital
SEB VC is the venture capital arm of SEB, a leading Nordic financial institution. SEB VC has 280 M€ under management in an evergreen fund structure, focusing on early stage and expansion investments in life science, media and technology, and industrial growth. The firm’s 22 seasoned professionals have made more than 70 investments and 34 exits since the fund’s inception in 1995. Offices are located in Stockholm, London, Vilnius, Gothenburg and Malmö.

Treemo is a social networking site that’s all about digital expression – “sharing digital media, empowering self-expression, and transforming creativity into action” by creating and sharing video, audio, photography, words, and visual art.  I like Treemo because there is an emphasis not only on creativity but also on mobile

Yesterday, Treemo launched the “Alicia Keys – As I Am” contest, benefiting the charity, “Keep a Child Alive.”

Keep a Child Alive is an urgent response to the AIDS pandemic ravaging Africa. With more than 28 million dead and 15 million orphaned, the disease continues, wiping out whole societies, threatening economic infrastructure and creating tragic family devastation. Keep a Child Alive provides life-saving medication, support, and orphan care, to keep these children and families alive. Keep a Child Alive gives 100% of public donations to it’s cause.

For every contest entry, Treemo will donate $1 (up to $10,000) to Keep a Child Alive.  To enter, upload a photo, video, image or text message to the site that explains why you or one of your friends is a “Superworman.”  If you’re a Treemo user, go to the registration page, or text an explanation to: 873366. Click here to sign up for a Treemo account.

The grand prize winner will receive a VIP All Access Trip for 2 to an Alicia Keys concert.  And, one finalist will receive an iPod Touch, an Autographed “As I Am” Alicia Keys album, and a Alicia Keys poster.

There’s a great article out on Clickz.com summarizing two reports recently published on mobile social media.  It’s well worth reading. Unsurprisingly, the US is behind Europe when it comes to social media on phones, and teens and University-aged students are the most active users. ABI Research reports that the audience for social media on mobiles is approaching 50 million members worldwide and is expected to reach 174 million in 2011.

Another interesting article on Clickz.com lists Social Media as one of the top 10 trends driving Traffic and Sales in 2007.