Mobiles

Looking for something fun to do on your mobile phone? Point your phone's browser to m.tapatap.com or click here to have the URL sent to your phone.

The company reached out to us recently to review their offer and we've had some fun playing with it over the last few weeks.

They describe themselves as:

"Tapatap is "Your Contest Community" offering infinite contests for fun and prizes. Create your own contests to share and enter your photos to win. Explore the community and see how your votes stack up. Tap enough points and take home some goodies! Our mission is to create social entertainment networks where you and the community are the fun. You create it, share it, and play it wherever you are across both the web and mobile devices."

Here's our assessment:

Tapatap is a new (and cool) twist combining gaming, photo sharing and social networking. At its heart Tapatap is an online "community" where you play contests to win prizes. The twist is that the contests are created by the community rather than by the company.

You can win prizes in 3 ways:

1. By submitting photos in contests - as a contestant, you can win prizes by winning the popular vote
2. By creating your own contests - win prizes by getting people to vote (tap) in your contests
3. By voting in contests - earn the most voter taps by voting in contests

There are daily, weekly and monthly prizes to be won and prizes can be cash or other items.

If you're intrigued, I would suggest you check it out online yourself and you'll understand how addictive the site is. Note: from the looks of the community, the site caters to the 13-25 set but I'm 35 and had fun...

Tapatap was founded by three entrepreneurs, Isaac Babbs, Andy Riedel, and Ken Scott, who wanted to create a fun and rewarding community that could be accessed from your PC or on the go. They raised $2.5M last year from Gabriel Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley.

Give it a shot and let us know what you think.

Admittedly, the U.S. telco industry is having a hard time catching up with the more advanced countries like Japan and South Korea. There are so many factors to blame - complacency, lack of radical innovation, government policies, etc.

Lee S Dryburgh, the organizer of Emerging Communications (eComm) conference, is urging the industry to wake up. Apparently, the core products of telco - telephony and SMS - are in peril.

The cost of voice transmission will reach near-zero although this is not the only telephony service killer. Voice will become just another mode within a multi-modal offering. The multi-modal offering (be it device/client/site) will itself be integrated with content sharing, commerce, search, discovery and possibly most prized of all-"relationships" (what we call "contacts" today). It makes no sense then to imagine much of future for standalone discrete audio streams known as telephone calls, rather voice will become a supplement. SMS will be replaced by instant messaging long term.

To borrow the words of Charles Dickens, it is the best times and the worst of times for this industry. How the leading and emerging players respond to these opportunities/threats will dictate the outcome of the game. See full article.

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Despite Google's relentless PR campaign to position Android as the benevolent leader of "openness" in the mobile world, some executives and of course competitors are wary about its vile ambitions.

At the Mobile World Congress, Google mobile platforms group manager Rich Miner reiterated that the Android is harmless and will not bite anyone. In short, it's not the enemy. The Internet giant did not even set up a booth at this prestigious event, perhaps to emphasize its unbiased stance.

But that is not enough to convince a business executive who accused Google of "a land grab" for customers and advertising dollars. On top of that, rivals keep saying the open source model will not be secure enough for mobile consumers.

Naturally, every company entering any market is always eyeing for profits. Otherwise, it's not a good business decision. What is unfortunate is if these backbiting would deter the development of an open platform.

via NYT
See full article.

Related Entries:

It's Not GPhone, It's Android - 06 November 2007

Android's $10 Million Bribe - 14 November 2007

Android's $10 Million Bribe Deferred - 04 February 2008

LiMo Foundation Announces Upcoming Release of Mobile Linux OS - 04 February 2008

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