New Videos Debut on MSG Today, Kicking Off With GyPSii; Why (Location) Context Could be King
Regular readers will recall that MSG has partnered with bnetTV to cover industry events such as CTIA and, more recently, Mobile World Congress (MWC). The team did an awesome job, producing 200+ interviews. I focused on analysis, and conducted some 20 interviews with senior executives at companies including abphone, BuzzCity, Movius, Gracenote, Mob4Hire, GyPSii, AdMob, BuddyMob, Gigafone, BubbleMotion, Visto, JumpTap, and SurfKitchen (in no particular order). From JumpTap’s mobile advertising strategy, to Gracenote’s new music search and share features, to SurfKitchen’s widget launch, the video interviews are a valuable knowledge resource.
Today marks the debut of these new segments on the MSG video jukebox (located in the right-hand sidebar). This week’s focus, and feature video in the player, is my interview with Shane Lennon, Senior Vice President, Marketing & Product Development at GyPSii, a must-watch company leading in the race to deliver connected and cool experiences combining information, entertainment, social networks, and location/navigation. In our interview we connect the dots in the recent string of announcements and discuss the significance for brands and advertisers.
By way of background, I have followed the company – which is a business unit of GeoCentric, a company that provides a geo-integration platform for mobile phones, personal navigation devices, web browsers, and Internet-connected devices, including PCs and set-top boxes – since it broke on the scene last year. Unlike many companies that focus on social networking or enable location-relevant mobile marketing, GyPSii stands out as a company that connects people to people, places, and stuff across all platforms, devices and networks.
Indeed, it’s the raft of announcements over the last weeks — including a partnership to embed GyPSii’s app on a range of LG mobile phones; the tie-up with Nokia and RIM (blackberry) to make the app available on a wide variety of their devices; and a wise decision launch an open API (allowing partners to call the shots on how they integrate GyPSii into their mobile strategy and devices) – that speaks volumes about the company’s new and stronger focus. My take: GyPSii has both the ideas and the impetus to impact our mobile lifestyles.
In addition to the interview and my analysis (below), I also encourage you to read more about GyPSii in my regular column for the bnetTV newsletter, which counts some 10,000 readers. For all my coverage and columns in one place, check out this page on the bnetTV site dedicated to MSG news and views. Thanks again to bnetTV’s Michelle and Tony Sklar for promoting MSG to their growing audience of industry executives and professionals, and to Nicole Scott for bringing it all together in some great brainstorming sessions!
An excerpt from my weekly column:
Web 2.0 was all about the tools and technologies allowing users to freely create, share, and connect around content with members of a larger mobile community; Web 3.0 places location at the core of this exchange, empowering users to make their experiences personal, relevant, and much more compelling.
The jury is out on whether location – on its own – is a service consumers will pay for. But there is no question that location brings value to a variety of everyday mobile experiences, ranging from social networking to mobile search/shopping services, to more relevant and engaging mobile marketing campaigns. Indeed, the race is on to offer connected and cool experiences combining information, entertainment, social networks and location/navigation. And companies that deliver products and services that connect people to places and networks, from work to play to home, across all platforms, devices and networks, will likely lead the pack.
GyPSii stands out as a company that covers all the bases with a suite of applications that seamlessly combine location, social networking, search, and Web 2.0 technologies. I caught up with Shane Lennon, GyPSii Senior Vice President, Marketing & Product Development, during Mobile World Congress to connect the dots in the recent string of announcements and discuss the significance for brands and advertisers. We covered all the key questions, and then some. A special highlight: An explanation of GyPSii’s Open Experience API (called OEx).
Unlike other mobile social networking platforms such as Facebook, which offer a subset of desktop functionality, GyPSii has effectively given its partners the last word in how GyPSii is integrated into their devices and apps – and how much of the functionality they want in the first place. Put another way, GyPSii allows its partners to do more than location-enable/community-enable their apps and devices; it gives them control of the UI and with it the user experience they deliver to their customer base. Partners can integrate anything from a single app (create a piece of geo-tagged content) to a feature (find a friend) to full-blown social network.
By way of background, features/services include: User-Gen Content (create and share geo-tagged content); Friends (create and manage relationships with GyPSii members); Explore (find places, people and stuff nearby); Communication (keep in touch using messages, email and more); Profile (tell the community who you are and what you’re doing/feeling); and Advertising (integrating GyPSii’s location-based and contextually-tuned advertising service). To round out the offer, partners leverage GyPSii’s infrastructure to get streamline delivery of services to their customers.
As Shane put it: “We decided to have a next-generation approach to [mobile phone] client development….As we looked beyond smartphones it became clear to us that taking our user interface and jamming down into a Java enabled platform or WAP-like [platform] wasn’t going to work.” The way for this to succeed is to take a more embedded client approach, which is why GyPSii’s strategy is focused on embedding GyPSii on as many devices as possible, where the actual user experience (via the UI) is owned by the customer/partner company. (GyPSii’s platform is device and network agnostic, and works across iPhone, Symbian, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Web-based operating systems.)
A big part of GyPSii plans going forward is focused on mobile advertising. And with good reason since the disconnect between mobile advertising efforts and results is a growing cause for concern. Predictably, the lack of real mobile marketing success stories reduces the enthusiasm of major brands to invest in mobile advertising in the first place. And around we go. But it’s more than a catch-22 for advertisers and carriers. It’s a vicious cycle that threatens the health of the global mobile business ecosystem if we consider that the vast majority of content companies, app store developers, and mobile carriers have already bet the farm on the uptake of mobile services increasingly subsidized by mobile advertising.
Against this backdrop, GyPSii has purposely made Advertising a central focus of its OEx API, beefing up the offer with a location-specific targeting capability and the ability to deliver an integrated advertising experience/message across devices and platforms – even gaming consoles in the future. (Makes good sense given the perfect fit between games, location, and community…)
We wrapped up the interview with an interesting look at the future of content types and what might evolve from experiences that bring together information, entertainment, social networks, location/navigation, advertising, and search on all devices everywhere. It’s early days, but GyPSii is beginning to break down the content and comments it sees into its smallest components, allowing it to recognize the associations and relationships between the content and the context. “When someone looks for something or wants it [relevant information] in a mini-feed, we want to make sure it is relevant and [fits] in the context of their world.”
The right content to the right person at the right time and in-tune with their lifestyle/life stage? It’s a challenge. However, GyPSii has the capabilities (information, entertainment, social networks, location/navigation, advertising, and search) and mindset (open APIs and a sharp focus on the user experience) that may get us there.
Tags: abphone, AdMob, behavioral targeting, bnetTV, BubbleMotion, Buddymob, BuzzCity, Gigafone, Gracenote, GyPSii, JumpTap, location, Location-Based Services, Mob4Hire, Mobile Marketing, Mobile Search, Mobile Social Networks, Movius, SurfKitchen, targeting, VISTO
