Video to Go

Skyward Mobile—Building Mobile Browsing ApplicationsBuilding mobile applications as part of a larger mobile media experience is not new. Mobile gaming in particular has been an in-demand space for a while now. But being able to create mobile applications quickly and easily, and expanding their scope beyond gaming and their capabilities beyond the limited capacity of mobile devices is another matter entirely.

"The mobile space is very much like the web was in ’93–’94. There are a few early adopters, but the mass market hasn’t gotten there yet because the experiences are too hard to use, too slow, and too unattractive. Therein lies the opportunity," says Jeremy De Bonet, CEO of Skyward Mobile.

Skyward Mobile is a new company launching this fall that "builds applications which create rich, seamless experiences where a user can freely browse for essentially an infinite amount of information in a customized environment which is true to the underlying brand and runs across all devices, not just high-end smartphones," says De Bonet. One example they’ve already created is making the Bible available on your handset. "The Bible itself is about 4MB of information; most handsets have less than a tenth of that. So how can you create an experience to allow you to browse from Genesis all the way to the end of Revelation?" says De Bonet.

Skyward’s answer is to stream the data in real time from server to client as you flip through pages, which is enabled by a small client download. What this opens up is not only the possibility of limitless information—" (because it doesn't open up the possibility of the ability). De Bonet notes that you could just as easily be browsing through 30,000 videos rather than pages of the Bible—but also the ability to make changes on the server-side that impact the client-side without requiring additional downloads.

While the text in this version of the Bible is formatted to fit the screen, Skyward has also developed a format for magazines that shows the original layout and then allows users to zoom in on different sections they want to read. Additional capabilities they’ve enabled are things like live chat between multiple users during a live mobile video broadcast, and applications that provide branded experiences around video content.

It’s their belief that video alone won’t win the day in the mobile space. "One of the big lessons that I think you can learn from VCast is that content is not enough. You need to wrap it in an entire experience," says De Bonet. "Verizon’s spent tens of millions of dollars marketing VCast but the uptake did not live up, in my opinion, because there’s nothing other than the content itself to keep you coming back. There’s no way for content owners to emphasize their brand, so all of a sudden HBO disappears among all the other content that’s out there, as there’s no opportunity to create an HBO destination."

Key to the paradigm Skyward hopes to establish is the speed with which they can develop custom applications. "Typical mobile projects take large teams months to create. With our team of twenty folks, we’ve created more than forty applications in less than a year. That’s a massive difference," says De Bonet. "It allows you to be flexible on the opportunities that come up, to try new things, to experiment and fail. You don’t have to have a hundred thousand users to be a success. If we spend four, five, ten days building an app and we only get a thousand users, it’s still a win. And every time you do that, there’s a possibility that it will be a hit."

Application discovery will be accomplished through multiple avenues, including carrier decks, shortcuts advertised in magazines, or on TV through things like 1-800 numbers, and, over time virally between users. Revenue models should span the gamut of pay-to-view, subscription, and, eventually advertising-supported.

Skyward’s current goals include finding content partners interested in leveraging their application development expertise to co-develop applications. While they do work for hire, their preference is to establish revenue-sharing agreements. They’re also open to arrangements where they might license high-visibility content to develop applications on their own.

Transpera—Mobile Video Gets Social
Two of the more important aspects of creating successful mobile media experiences are enabling widespread distribution and ensuring that content is properly monetized.