Opinionated comments on mobile phone industry news

In line with the ongoing trend of mobile-enabling popular blog, media sharing and social network services, Umundo adds its own spin with focus on video sharing to existing services. Hence, it's more like a gateway service, similar to ShoZu, than a media sharing service in its own right. Supported services are as of yet Google, Yahoo!, iTunes and Myspace.

Compared to ShoZu it's an e-mail based service, so there's no need for any special software in the phone like with ShoZu. Videos can be sent via e-mail or MMS (both to an e-mail address). This is definitely a trend. It's so easy to send a photo or video you've just recorded nowadays, that there's really no need for any special software unless you are editing your published content etc from the phone. For end users this is very easy to learn.

It seems to be the norm nowadays to call new services "Beta", instead of releasing them when ready. Users probably don't care (as they are all free), and there's a long line-up of other startups that want to do the same thing, backed by lots of investor money.

As always I'm wondering what's the point with a free service that you don't even need to register to, but I guess it has to do with Web 2.0 or something ;). Apart from external funding, maybe Umundo gets money from the services they support, but they are also free, sort of.

Of course from a brand building point of view a free video sharing service is golden these days, so they could easily add premium services to the brand later, provided the money lasts. The good design of Umundo's home page strengthens that hypothesis. A pure technology startup would probably spend more time and effort on securing the technology than creating hype, but in this market the hype is the most important as the technical complexity is very low.

Interesting with the services popping up everywhere for media sharing from mobile phones is that they are all completely without operator or phone manufacturer endorsement, and from startups. This is another clear trend, and I'm convinced operators (and phone manufacturers) will less and less be involved in developing mobile services and phone applications. It's even turning 180 degrees: Lately phone manufacturers have released support for browsing, IM, blogging and media sharing by incorporating others clients, including e.g. ShoZu. It seems supporting only OMA standards is more and more pushed to the side, and the industry is increasingly focusing on what the market wants at the time. That's of course good. What's not so good is that operators haven't fully endorsed this yet, and continues to meander along with services like push-to-talk, IMS etc that have no direct connection with actual user needs and that take "forever" to standardize.

I could for some reason only select United States and Ukraine via the web site. It seems like an error, but maybe the service is tested only there.

umundo

Update: Regarding building in support for popular services, just spotted this:
Stay entertained with Sony Ericsson’s 3G K618: a vibrant blend of work & play., 08 August 2006 - Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications: About Us - Press Room - Press release - Sony Ericsson
One click of the dedicated camera button and the 2.0 Megapixel camera is activated, which comes complete with 2.5x digital zoom and Mobile Blogger. This application allows the user to post (or blog) their images directly to their own blogsite, giving friends and family the chance to go online and view the shots.
Who's made this application and whether it's at all an application (instead of sending to a specific email address) is unknown at this time. If it's an application (which the announcement implies) it's most likely written in Java ME.


(via Textually)