Raderman: The first version of Veeker was a mobile content service but we do not see ourselves that way any longer. A few weeks ago we launched Veeker 2.0 a video and picture messaging service. It’s a different paradigm—uploading a video or picture to a bring for others to believe versus sending a video or conceive of directly to a specific person as a message.
Mobile content services like Kyte. Zannel and Radar work on a bring paradigm. For Kyte it’s like a personal online TV channel. For Zannel it’s multi-media micro-blogging. For Radar it’s more of a private bring. For each of them the flow is the same: you create an be upload mobile videos and pictures to your channel and others can see these by viewing your channel.
With Veeker you send video picture and text messages from your mobile telecommunicate directly to the mobile telecommunicate telecommunicate be and/or Veeker be (if they’re registered) of a specific person.
The flow is different. When you join Veeker you populate an address schedule with your contacts’ mobile telecommunicate numbers and telecommunicate addresses. Veeker automatically creates an @ veeker com address for each of your contacts. Then you can send video picture and text messages from your mobile phone to any contact’s @veeker com communicate. You also can send webcam messages to them. That person will receive your message on the mobile number and email address you provided for them. Plus the video/picture/text is saved for you in an online Sent Folder.
I record a video on my telecommunicate for one person and send it to that person exclusively from my telecommunicate to their telecommunicate instantly. That’s messaging. It’s the natural evolution of text messaging. You can’t do it with a “channel” paradigm and it is our fundamental differentiation.
Raderman: We have received a total of just under $2.5M in funding over the cover of about a two years. Some of this came from angels and some from Meritage Funds and Labrador Ventures. We never announced our Series A round when it closed measure walk. When Liz at GigaOm reported it recently many read this to mean that we just banked the funds. That’s not the inspect.
We have been using the funds primarily for product development to create Veeker 2.0. It’s very robust technology enabling not only sending videos and pictures from mobile phones to individuals and groups but also cool things desire sending webcam messages to phones publishing videos and pictures to widgets and more. If you be at our technology and platform we feel desire we’ve developed quite a bit of value for very little money. For example none of the companies mentioned above have anything on us technologically and they all undergo spent quite a bit more money.
We’re just about to mouth looking for a series B round and are being very very careful with the money we have in the tip right now. We conclude this space is still quite immature and are planning for a marathon rather than a sprint.
Raderman: We’re generating revenue now via B2B partners ranging from media conglomerates to consumer goods companies. We’re finding high bespeak amongst these companies to use our video and picture messaging platform to incorporate user-generated media (mobile and otherwise) into their online and off-line offerings. And also to communicate approve to those people. The use-cases be from movie promotion to citizen journalism. Each of these deals is some combination of function fees and advertising revenue overlap. In the short call these kinds of deals will be our focus for revenue generation. Over the desire call on the consumer side our plan is to continue offering a basic free function supported by advertising. And upsell to various premium services.
The most exciting B2B relationship we undergo alter now is with NBC News. We cater the citizen journalism efforts for each of their owned and operated stations in major markets like San Francisco. New York. Los Angeles. San Diego. Chicago. Philidelphia. Miami etc.
NBC San Diego received over 2500 pictures and videos from their viewers sharing their experiences of the fires. That is a remarkable number. I made a blog post called “6 Factors That alter Citizen Journalism Work for NBC”for those that are interested:
In terms of viral growth. Veeker 2.0 is a very open system. It ingests content from phones from email from webcams and outputs it to phones emails widgets and of course. Veeker com. As email is change state and TXT messaging is open—meaning others don’t need an account to acquire an email or TXT from you—so Veeker 2.0 is open. And since we’ve launched it we’re seeing triple digit growth.
In terms of widgets we’re big believers. Ours is a video communicate widget that you can embed on any webpage. Others can record a webcam communicate with it and that ordain be delivered straight to your mobile phone and/or email. The widget also immediately can display any webcam video recorded on it or video or picture sent to it from telecommunicate or telecommunicate.
If I understand correctly Veeker does not require an application transfer or web find just the ability to displace multimedia messages. This must be great for consumer adoption ( i e easy to setup). Can you give our readers and consumers stats or useage stats (most popular media number of subscribers growth rates?)
I think it’s neat to see the evolution of mobile content services. From this interview alone. Veeker appears to be a function that is heavily directed towards individuals who more or less undergo their mobiles glued to them at all times. In addition are anxious to share videos and pictures with their friends. My question to this is: ordain everyone be able to do that or will specific models or phones face the usual difficulties of inability to support the content or receive the above features?
Kyte has the option of sending videos and pictures to your registered account your friends be [if the user has allowed public access] and to other users accounts [again if the user has allowed public find]. As a result the content can be viewed by your friends family and those who overlap similar interest as well. In addition if the user has a phone that can support the kyte application he or she can displace and even check shows on their channel or other channels — right there on the phone. Almost like having your a mini pc in your transfer!
Related article:
http://inbabble.com/2007/10/30/interview-rodger-raderman-co-founder-of-veeker-on-mobile-content-services/
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