14 July 2009

New version is out


New version of Wirenode platform is out.
We have completed the new design, so now even the part "after" the login is in the new design. We have also implemented some new functions :

  • QR code support, under Promotion tab, each website has its own QR code which you can download or print.
  • Better form & polls support under widgets, you can create any combination of form you like.
  • Custom colors (will blog about it later), but you can experiment with it under Change design menu in the editor.
  • Improved Features page.

11 July 2009

More games languages

We have released new language mutations of the Free Mobile Game site:
Handy Spiele for German language.

And some other languages:
http://ar.free-mobile-games.net for Arabic language
http://ru.free-mobile-games.net for Russian language
http://es.free-mobile-games.net for Spanish language
http://jp.free-mobile-games.net for Japan language
http://kr.free-mobile-games.net for Korea language

So the experiment continues ;-)

20 May 2009

Java games in the Czech language

Finally we have Czech version of Greystripe games thanks to Google translator
Java hry zdarma.

We are testing Google translator in some other projects as well.

17 May 2009

Mobile Marketing Conference Bucharest

I was presenting at Mobile Marketing Conference at Bucharest last week.

09 April 2009

Wirenode sponsors Prague Techcrunch meetup

Hi all,

this Saturday, there will be a Techcrunch party at Hergetova Cihelna in Prague. We starts at 2pm.
All people from the Czech IT startup community will be there.

18 March 2009

Free Mobile Games

Together with Greystripe, we have launched portal for Free Mobile Games. You can download them into your phone for free, only you will see a short advertisement after you start the game. This project is for us mostly a fun/test project, where we are testing various internet parameters ;-)
We were lucky to get this premium domain for this project. It looks like it was abandoned two years ago, but it was used by Virgin entertainment before that.

We welcome your comments on this game project.

10 February 2009

3GSM

I'll be at 3GSM Barcelona next week. If you like to meet me there, please send me sms to +420 723 552 787

Looking forward to see you there.

Here you can read about some events there. If you know about some interesting event in the evening after the congress programme, please let me know.

08 February 2009

New Design

We have a new design for the public part of our web!

We are now finishing the texts and will be launching some new features. We are also working on a new branded version of our site for an UK customer.

If you have any comments or ideas about what we should improve, please let us know.

09 November 2008

Paradox of mobile CTR

I am reading the book about Mobile Advertising, the chapter about mobile and Internet Click Through Rate (CTR).

The author of the book writes, that CTR on mobile phones is higher than on the Internet and he is right. On the Internet, the CTR is about 1%, but on mobile (mobile portals), it can be from 3% to 6% CTR. I have personally seen it in different campaigns, as we have done more than 10 different mobile campaigns. Screenshots of some of them you can find at our "Mobilni marketing" page (still only in Czech).

The author argues, that higher CTR on mobile is because mobile is more engaging, but I have a different view.

I have two arguments, why CTR on mobile is higher than on Internet:

  1. On a typical mobile page, there are fewer links, because this, there is a bigger chance, user click on the advertisement.
  2. On mobile, its hard to "switch to different tab", so if user knows every outgoing link from the page, and he knows where they go (and don't want to go there), he automatically clicks on the new link (advertisement), because otherwise he would close the browser. Than he is lost, because from most of the landing pages, there is no way how to get back to the original portal.
The better the mobile browsers will be, the lower CTR we will see. Anyway, I hope we will soon see paying for CTR not for CPM. CPM on mobile is very expensive.

btw.: I would like to know, what is a CTR on some local search site, I can imagine, that in this case, if the ad is targeted well, the CTR can be more than 10%.

01 November 2008

Collecting customers phone numbers

It is true to say, that brands who understand that future of the marketing is interactivity collects telephone numbers of their customers right now. I believe in it too. But I could not resist myself to post here the classic Southpark video about collecting underpants. I believe, collecting msisdns is not the same ;-)

27 October 2008

Thanks to Tsahi Levent-Levi, we have made it to this release of Carnival Mobilists. It's hosted on Radvision blog.


Thanks a lot and I can recommend you to read this release of Carnival.

26 October 2008

Mobile Marketing Mess

I have visited Communication Wednesday conference in the Prague about two weeks ago. It was organized by Tuesday business Network, where Wirenode is a member.


The topic was targeted mobile marketing and there were people from marketing & advertising agencies, mobile operators and mobile technology companies present (more than 100 people). Most people at the conference were talking about bright future of mobile marketing. On other hand, people from companies who already invested in it and tried it on their own skin were less optimistic about how it helped them. It looks like we have still a lot of work to do.

The biggest problem, which I think we have in mobile marketing, is its fragmentation. I will try to illustrate it on this picture (feedback is welcomed). Traditional media usually have one form of advertisement. It can be print advertisement in magazines, sound clip in the radio or TV commercial in TV. It’s easy to explain how it works to potential person interested in it. Also it is clear how much does it costs and how many people will see it. Some of those advertisements are evolving for some time already.

In mobile marketing, we have so many different types of it and all ends in the phone, that it’s almost impossible to explain. For example on our Czech market, the situation is like this:

Mobile operators are offering mobile banners on their mobile portals (Vodafone live!, O2 Active and t-zones). They are offering it to companies, who usually don’t have their own mobile websites, but we can fix this problem for them. Nostromo is offering branded games and in-game advertisement. CrazyTomato is offering Bluetooth marketing. Tagg is offering QR codes, ATS is offering SMS and MMS, O2 is offering sponsored calls and Wirenode together with Micromedia are offering mobile landing pages.

All those companies including ours are talking to marketing agencies (to the same one) about their offer and how it can be useful for their clients. I myself have visited more than five of those agencies in last month and I am only talking about the possibilities of the mobile web with them.

People from marketing must be totally confused about our offerings. I myself strongly believe in the future of mobile marketing, but I think it will be something else than what we see today.

Some of companies named in this article are offering more than one technology. On a 60 minute meeting with a marketing person, it not possible to explain more than one of those very tech ideas. If a marketing person hears about all of them during one month, he would better spend the client budget in TV.

The main reason I think that mobile marketing will evolve slower than we all would like it because this fragmentation. I understand that it is necessary to try everything and find out what is working and what is not, but it will be a long run for this industry.

Only one person at the conference had an idea, that we first should ask the client what is his goal and what he wants to achieve. When we know it, it should not matter for the client, which form of advertising it is (sms, mms, etc…) but only if he got results he need.

So next time you will be explaining to somebody why the mobile marketing is cool and all its possibilities, ask what is the client goal.

04 October 2008

Easy - Central Europe Investment Marketplace Prague Conference

I have visited Easy conference in Prague yesterday. There were 30 selected startups with their stands and 15 of them were presenting.

For me it was good experience, where I have seen how other EU startups present their projects. If I can compare it with USA startups and pitches I have seen at TC40 conference last year, American level of presenting is much better than European. It's sad, but true.
At the conference, there were about 5 medical/biotech companies presenting. For me, it was sort of funny, because I had no idea, what they were talking about. So now I understand that in my presentation about Wirenode, slide called "Technology" was not useful at all. Non IT people could not get what I was talking about.

To the ITC startups from the conference, I will write only about the ones I liked at least a little bit.:

GuardSec - (camera to phone/web streaming used for protecting the houses/offices). This is a startup which belongs to the Naveed Gill, former director of Tiscali Czech Republic. I have been talking with Naveed, if he could help us and get us in contact with anybody, who might be interested in licensing our platform, but we did not agreed on cooperation yet.
His latest startup idea makes sense, but I don’t know how he will compete with software, which camera makers are bundling with Pc camera sales. The software is very similar to what he does.

eVision - They are making some SW on top of Microsoft SharePoint and they have a lot of customers between governments and banks. I don’t know why they want investment. From my perspective, they are good SW company oriented on business sector and they need a good sales person and not investment.

OnTheRoad - Service for travelers. It can create "travel blog" from your posts you are doing during your trip. The site web site has really nice design. The CEO is a former CTO of the Czech second biggest internet portal.

Renzoo - They are creating Mobile marketing platform similar to ours. Good news for us is that we are about a year ahead in development than they are. After I talked with the CEO, I think our companies might cooperate together, at lease share some info about what ideas customer likes and which not.

Locify - Mobile application, which works with your location and adds it to different mobile or internet services. Their website is nice, I have also seen how the application work and it works ok, but I think it will be difficult to get revenue stream.

BuzzMedia - It's a Czech version of Federated Media company. They cooperate with Czech top bloggers. The owner, Pavel Neuman is the Czech premium blogger about startups, aka Czech Techcrunch ;-)

Its hard to tell, who will be a "winner" in two years, but all of them have a chance and are "playing".

About money and valuation:
Each company has to present a slide about they revenue forecast. For me, it was a sad moment, because about a year ago, I made the same hockey stick chart about Wirenode. Almost all presenting companies were at zero revenues in 2007 and they are planning to have about Euro 2.000.000, - in revenues in 2011. I wish them luck, but after my experience, I think no one will be able to achieve this.

About presenters:
Some of the CEO presenting were trying to impress investors with their track record and CV. From my perspective, why somebody with a 17 years expertise in project management starts a crazy company? I don’t know. The crazy ideas don’t look crazy to a person, who creates them.
One particular presenter were telling us, that he was pitching his startup to Adobe, and they did not wanted to buy it, but wanted to employ him and Google did not wanted to buy his startup but they wanted to employ him too. He presented this as his success.
Anyway, good luck to all Easy startups. It was a good event.

11 September 2008

New Release

We have released new version of our platform today. This version improves RSS and blogs mobilization and fixes some bugs.
We have also added new Google Maps widget, so you can put a Google Map into your mobile page. As we are preparing some other new mobile widgets, it would help us, if you let us know, which one would you like to use.



Meantime we are doing some landing pages for mobile marketing purposes, for example the last one was a micro site for LG for Vodafone Czech Republic.



I will try to blog more often, what I can tell now is that it was really busy summer and I hope we will be able to announce soon some major news.

14 July 2008

Interesting articles

I have read two interesting articles about mobile future recently.

One of them is about mobile as the 7th mass medium. This article helps me to explain the difference between mobile internet and web. We had problems with some people, who were arguing that it’s the same. This articles game me some really nice arguments how to show the differences. The article is full of examples.

Second article is depressing one. It describes one nice mobile innovation example and the author analyze, why reality is so much different than all those nice mobile ideas.

I can recommend you both articles.