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September 12, 2007
Mobile Socnets + Location Not Compatible With Making Money
Mobile socnets with a user's location feature are profiled in a TechCrunch post this week. There you will find several out of Europe, including imity, aka aki and mobiluck. The post had us trawling the net for news on one of the first ones in this category that we profiled, ClicMobile, which was not highlighted.
The startup still in business and is actually doing well (at least five techie jobs on offer), but it has dropped the location-based aspect of its service.
It offers its mobile social networking software and mobile marketing service via a white label business model. It has several reference customers from the media and cellco worlds, according to founder Alex Kummerman who responded to a quick email this morning.
"So far we signed Vivendi and Orange. We are about to announce 2 other telcos. Telcos are not the only target we have: Media groups such as M6 ( france ) and MBC ( Dubai ) are also using our platform. We have as well signed Nokia for their Mobile advertising platform," said Kummerman.
The cellcos are stalling on opening up their location based data, which led to Kummerman's decision to change from the original plan. "Indeed, we stopped the location based service because of the business model imposed by telcos to get location a location fix. It is just too expensive and complex for a 3rd party publisher," said Kummerman, adding that he concluded "there is no room for margins with a Cell ID a business in europe."
The difficulty of comibning location services with mobile social networking is one of the issues discussed in the Gong Show's Mobile Frustrations, an aptly titled post that looks at the money-making chances and barriers to market penetration for such projects. [via Techmeme]
Posted on September 12, 2007 12:42 PM | Posted to Media | Permalink
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