Mobile Web Americas conference, Orlando: the revenge of the Mommies

Rating: call me Madam

By Annie Turner

So of course I thought this panel was really great as I was the moderator, ably aided and abetted by panellists Tony Phillip, CEO of UpSnap and Jason Thibeault, CTO of start-up GoWare.

There’s been a lot of talk today about understanding your audience, perhaps most notably by Rick Cecil, director of user experience at FRY whose fictional shopper – do you like my shoes? – Jane was a most entertaining creation (allegedly based on Rick’s wife!). Anyway, Jason did a good job of continuing the theme, talking about his company’s creation for Moms. Before launching the service which allows Moms to download anything they like from their PCs onto their handsets, GoWare did huge amounts of research and its been so successful that two days after launch Nestle approached GoWare about advertising. Turns out what Moms really want is coupons. I wouldn’t know.

Which made me think of how much I liked the user interface on the doomed Disney MVNO, developed by m-Portal. Apparently one of Moms’ favourite features was their ability to block all use of their offsprings’ phones, apart from being able to call their Mom of course, until the trash was taken out, their bedroom tidied, whatever. Turns out it wasn’t enough to overcome a service that was too expensive though.

Which lead me to thinking about Virgin Mobile USA’s highly innovative incentive scheme, Sugar Mama. MVNO Virgin Mobile USA seems to be rocking, going for an IPO. Virgin’s customers aren’t bound by contracts, but it’s incentive scheme, enabled by Ultramercial, allows its customers to earn free texts or calling minutes if they are prepared to watch ads (and answer questions on them to prove they’ve watched them). See our full report on Sugar Mama in BKI Media’s Mobile 2.0.

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