Issued by: Thumbtribe Mobile Solutions


For many South Africans their first taste of the Internet will be via their cellphones – not surprising in that there are five times as many cellphones as there are computers in the local market. What's more, over 90% of new handsets entering the market are enabled for mobile Internet access.

However, to date most of the mobile Internet usage has been directed towards international sites, given the lack of freely available content from local publishers. Up until now technical barriers, and uncertainty about business models have discouraged publishers from embracing the channel.

Mobile solutions provider Thumbtribe is targeting this opportunity by helping print and online publishers bridge the technology gap to reach this growing audience.

Thumbtribe successfully introduced the Mobizine platform late in 2006, a handset application now carrying over 40 local brands, included amongst them leading magazines YOU, Huisgenoot, CAR, Getaway, Men's Health and online publishers such as Independent Newspapers' IOL.

Now Thumbtribe has introduced Mippin, a new mobile Internet platform, to the local market. Mippin (derived from Mobile Internet Platform) makes it possible for publishers to reach a far wider spread of South African users.

Accesible via a cellphone's browser Mippin offers consumers a single destination for users to discover the best of South African and International content. Consumers can choose from over 1 000 content brand channels (“mipsites”) and also personalise their experience by adding favourite sites, local weather and horoscopes to their home page. Sites are categorised for easy reference - with rankings based on popularity and liking.

Mippin also provides a number of options to share your favourite content – email an article to a friend, or add to social network and media sites Twitter and Facebook. Adding an article to Facebook will show up in your profile and be shared with your network of friends.

Thumbtribe is working with local publishers to increase the depth of locally relevant content within Mippin – all existing Mobizine customers will be migrated and new partners added to increase the variety of content offered.

The only requirement from publishers is that they make their content available via an RSS 2.0 or Atom feed and the Mippin platform takes care of the rest. A publishers site will be available directly on its own URL for direct promotion, as well as being listed in the major content categories accessible from the Mippin home page.

In addition to offering a brand extension, Mippin offers a number of opportunities for publishers to commercialise content through mobile advertising – a market forecast to grow to R1.5 billion by 2011 (industry estimates). Local advertisers can target readers via banner and or text advertising options, as well as create their own branded channels within the environment.

Thumbtribe have recently appointed Russell Atkins, previously GM of Mobile for 24.com, to head up its Media division and build platforms such as Mippin in the local market.

Comments Atkins, “Thumbtribe aims to empower local publishers, content owners and brands to embrace the mobile channel – I'm very excited to be a part of this vision. To date it has been very challenging for publishers large and small to deliver their content to mobile devices – requiring specialised resources to build and maintain sites. By using readily available, existing technologies like RSS feeds, Mippin takes away this sweat. And on the brand side, there will now be many more targeted environments to connect with consumers.

“Local consumers need an easy way of discovering quality mobile content – content that is freely available, and not exclusive to a particular Operator portal. Advertisers are also seeking new channels to reach audiences, particularly in hard to reach Youth segments – Mippin will allow them to reach prospects, irrespective of what network they choose.”

Try Mippin on your phone!

The only requirement to access Mippin is a WAP-enabled handset with a colour screen – simply type in mippin.com into your cellphone's browser or SMS ‘Mobi Mippin' to 32978 (once off SMS cost of R1) to receive a link to your phone.

Visit our PRESS OFFICE: Thumbtribe is a Mobile Solutions consultancy specialising in mobilising brands.- more....

[3 Mar 2008 16:15]

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