Piczo rocks! Yesterday we announced that Piczo is deploying on the ANTHEM platform. We love Piczo and are happy to be serving them in the mobile space. Given their strong presence in Europe, this may hint at our upcoming carrier deployments in that region. While the U.S. is our backyard, and it is a very important social networking market, the trends we are seeing point to a worldwide phenomenon. Social networking is not a “fad” – it is an evolution of personal communication. Facilitators of this evolved communication, like Piczo, are seeing huge unmet demand in the mobile space. Ask any carrier what search terms they are seeing, and among the top 10 across the board are the most popular social networking sites like Piczo.
Now look at the market opportunity: The internet is comprised of fewer than 500,000,000 internet-connected PCs. Compare that to around 3,000,000,000 mobile phones in the world, and the opportunity for social networking providers if they focus on the mobile space increases dramatically.
Just “going mobile” is an important strategic move for any social networking provider, but much will depend on how they do it. Throwing up a WAP site and calling it a day is not enough if you want to be integrated into the mobile communication experience. What Piczo and many other social networking sites we serve realized is that the closer they can get to the mobile consumer, the better, and the ANTHEM roadmap includes carrier access and deep device integration that WAP cannot provide. Further, our distribution footprint is so large now that we offer turnkey access to the mobile market that would literally take years to build carrier by carrier.
We are basically a gateway provider, doing our work transparently in the background, but an important part of our relationship with SNS providers is philosophical: IF you believe that mobile access to your social site is going to be predominantly mobile one day, then deploying through Intercasting Corp provides a path to deep customer involvement. If you do not believe that mobile is terribly important, then churning out a WAP site is fine in the near term. I’ll tell you what though – if you DO NOT want your site to be an integral part of the mobile communication experience, then you should look at the number of mobile consumers in the world and then revisit your long-term strategy. Also, spend some time trying to navigate various mobile phone decks and use some WAP applications and you will realize that discoverability, rediscoverability and usability are key issues.
At any rate, we are happy to welcome Piczo to the ecosystem and look forward to bringing them to mobile subscribers through our growing list of carriers around the world.