Two local Australian companies, TigerSpike and Intazaar, are building their businesses on mobile content created and submitted by consumers, also known as user-generated content. Both companies are entrants in this year’s Frontier competition, which has a prize pool of $26,500.
The Frontier competition is an initiative with The Australian IT and Ericsson Mobility World, Ericsson’s global partnering program. The aim is to find the latest next generation content and applications, with entries including anything from 3G multimedia entertainment services, to innovative business automation across broadband or mobile networks.
Frontier entrant, TigerSpike, records 1.3 million website views per month and since 2004, the company has aggregated user generated content for events including the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, Sony-BMG artist promotions and recently Telstra’s Street Idol.
Luke Janssen, CEO for TigerSpike, says user-generated content expands marketing channels and creates interactivity for consumers.
“Consumers send in mobile phone images, video clips and even recorded audio files to the TigerSpike mBlog platform. This content can then be published to other media such as picture messages sent to websites, mobile WAP Internet sites, big screens at exhibitions and digital bill boards,” said Luke.
TigerSpike has also tapped into the reality show market through Telstra’s Street Idol. For those who didn’t make the cut of Australian Idol, you can record a 30 second karaoke video clip on your mobile phone and send it in to the Street Idol website (www.streetidol.com.au). The in-bound messages are processed by TigerSpike, approved by a moderator and then made available on the site for the public to vote.
Another Frontier entrant, Intazaar, has its roots in advertising, including online advertising campaigns with Renault Asia Pacific, Carsales.com.au, Telstra Bigpond and Beyond Blue. Founded by 19 year-old Aaron Hornlimann, Intazaar currently features over 235,000 registered members, ranks fifth amongst 669 mobile entertainment websites in Australia and experiences 4.2 million website views per month.
Speaking on future opportunities, Aaron said: “To maintain our exponential growth of 10,000 new members a week, new developments to the website including MMS compatibility and instant messaging are currently in the pipeline.”
Intazaar generation2 is slated to be released within two months and will include new features include new features such as MMS, e-mail, instant messaging and video conferencing.
Billing is handled by IPX, Ericsson’s Internet payment exchange service.
These entrepreneurial Aussie developers are competing for Frontier’s grand prize of a travel and accommodation package to either 3GSM Asia in October or CommunicAsia in June 2007. The winner also claims a Sony VAIO notebook, Sony Clear Bright Monitor and a Sony MP3 Walkman. They also receive business consulting from MAP Management Consulting.
Three Australian finalists will present their entry to a judging panel of industry heavyweights, including Telstra, Hutchison, Vodafone, Optus, Goldman Sachs JB Were and Commander. Finalists also receive the latest 3G mobile phone and free membership to the BEA developer program, Dev2Dev.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
Elizabeth Middleton
Ericsson Australia
Phone: +613 9301 6589
Mobile: +61 409 426 480
