Spotlight: Conversational Marketing (CM) Summit App
posted by Michael Arcand
We’re pleased to announce that Mobile Roadie is powering the official CM Summit app. CM Summit: Marketing in Realtime is a two day conference produced by Federated Media and targeted at executives in the digital marketing and publishing arenas. The conference is taking place next week, June 7-8, 2010 during NY’s Internet Week. However, one of the goals of the team using a mobile app is to keep the community engaged throughout the year. We hear this often from our customers who are involved in annual events of various types, whether they are conferences such as this, or music festivals. All want to keep people engaged throughout the year so they are not “out of sight, out of mind.”
With the CM Summit app, users will be able to access conference information such as speakers, sponsors, and agendas. It will also help conference attendees to keep track of everything going on during the event, as well as in the industry itself. It includes information on attendees who participate in the interactive portion of the app, as well as Twitter streams, news, and even pictures and videos from the conference. Even if you can’t attend the conference, using an app like this could be the next best thing to being there. The app is available for free on both the iPhone and Android mobile platforms, with a basic version also available on the web to BlackBerry Opera users.
Download it here: http://road.ie/CM-Summit
Spring Apps Round-up
posted by Michael ArcandWhile we have dozens of apps that get approved each month using our CMS, we don’t often get to showcase a variety of these projects. In an effort to share some of the great apps that we see every day, we thought it might helpful to showcase a few of these apps, and also inspire some of you to see apps in a variety of businesses. These examples just go to show that in almost any business imaginable, a mobile app provides a great way to interact with customers and push information directly to them.
PCMS - The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society’s app is the best way to follow PCMS concerts, get to know the world’s top chamber and recital musicians, and access unique content including videos, podcasts, and recordings.
Media Temple (mt) – (mt) Media Temple, Inc. is a web hosting and virtualization service provider. Existing users can also manage their hosting accounts, get support and buy domain names.
Heartland Church – Heartland Church in Tracy, California is a member of the Christian Reformed Church in America. This app is designed to help you connect with the church and to provide you with resources that will impact your life.
National Arts Festival – The National Arts Festival is an annual celebration of the best in South Africa’s rich and diverse arts world. Download the app to stay up to date with all the latest programme information, news, pictures and video from the Festival.
HealthiYou - The Video Toolkit for a HealthiYou app from HealthiNation provides video tips, important health alerts, and helps you get ready for your next doctor’s visit.
Condley Banking – The Condley Banking app from The Condley and Company Banking Services Group keeps users current with community banking news, both locally and nationally by featuring access to their blog, as well as Google news items related to community banking in and around Abilene.
IvanExpert - IvanExpert is the Mac support resource for small businesses and home users in NYC, and this is their official app. App users can access news, tips, and tricks on all things Apple, Mac, iPhone, and iPad, as well as info on events in the New York City area.
We’re Hiring: Senior PHP/CSS Dev, Senior Designer & Communications Manager
posted by Nicole JordanMobile Roadie is a fast growing LA start-up focused on providing the industry’s best self-service platform to let anyone build and maintain their own iPhone or Android App in minutes (Blackberry and iPad coming soon.) Leading verticals include: music, authors, churches, hotels, conferences, wineries and athletes. Some prominent apps we power include: Madonna, Taylor Swift, Ashton Kutcher, Fader and Random House, with many A-list apps soon to launch.
Two areas we’re focused on staffing are dev and marketing. Think you’ve got what it takes to join in on the fun?
Communications Manager
(No recruiters or international candidates, pleasAnde. only apply if you’re local (or willing to relocate on your dime – we are a start-up after all.)
Mobile Roadie CMS Integrated with Brightcove
posted by Michael Arcand
Part of the Mobile Roadie advantage over any other App platform is the extent of technology offerings within our content management system to create a premium feature-rich app. It’s no secret that video is becoming a preferred consumption format of mobile content which is why it’s we’ve taken steps to work with the best providers out there to deliver a quality video experience.
Brightcove’s online video platform is the most widely-adopted software for publishing and distributing professional video on the Web. More than 1,500 customers in 45 countries, including the world’s largest news and entertainment media companies and Fortune 1000 enterprises, rely on Brightcove for video content management, player publishing, video syndication, advertising and analytics. Founded in 2004, Brightcove is a Software as-a-Service (SaaS) business with offices across North America, Europe and Asia.
We integrated with Brightcove through their Brightcove Alliance program. This partnership takes advantage of Brightcove’s web-ready HTML5, H.264-compatible video platform and brings it to the unique Mobile Roadie CMS. What we’ve done is built an integration with Brightcove to enable iPhone app customers to build and manage mobile apps that are fully integrated with their platform. Users can pull in video content from Brightcove which can then be re-organized and customized to fit the design and layout of the mobile app.
One customer who’s already seen great success with this unique partnership is Big Machine Records, who recently launched the Taylor Swift iPhone and Android apps. These apps were popular enough to the top of the charts, with over 350K downloads in the first two weeks, along with over 665K Brightcove-powered video views. This is a powerful statement for the consumer’s acceptance and use of mobile video media. Currently many other customers, including several other major music labels, are working with Brightcove and Mobile Roadie to launch mobile video apps in the near future.
So stay tuned, there’s so much more to come in 2010!
Music Matters App w/First Ever BlackBerry Web View
posted by Michael Arcand
The official Music Matters 2010 app was officially released on April 27th, in plenty of time for the three-day conference taking place in Hong Kong this week. Of particular note with this app is that it is the first one with a BlackBerry-optimized web view. This means that smartphone users BlackBerry and other select phones, who normally can’t access apps because they are in the iPhone or Android stores, will be sent to a webpage that simulates the app experience for them, right in their browser.
Music Matters 2010 is an Asian-themed music conference, focusing on new business opportunities as the world’s economies continue to move into positive territory. The three-day sessions will include face2face sessions, high-powered discussions, keynote presentations and in-depth analysis along with networking events including Asian music showcases, parties, lunches and sector-themed breakfasts. The event will culminate in the first ever Music Matters Live music festival, featuring up and coming independent bands from around the world.
Our own co-founder and CEO Michael Schneider will be speaking during the Music Matters conference on a panel at 11:00 a.m. on May 28th. Discussion for the panel will focus on mobile apps and other new technology in the music industry. He will also be presenting and demoing the official app to the conference delegates on the first day of the conference.
Scobleizer Interview at Smash Summit
posted by Michael ArcandRobert Scoble caught up with our very own Co-founder and Creative Director, Brock Batten, at the Smash Summit in San Francisco. Robert has recently joined the Mobile Roadie family with his very own app, and wanted to take a moment to talk with Brock about the app and do a little live demo for his video channel on YouTube.
One of the major features, as Brock points out, is that any changes you make in the back end information for a Mobile Roadie app gets updated instantly. The idea is to focus on the user experience and create as robust an experience as possible. Using Facebook and Twitter integration in the apps enables our customers to have their users spread the app virally.
Cost was also discussed, and the realization is that to build an app from scratch could cost upwards of $20,000, which is a turn-off for many who would like an app. Using software as a service, Mobile Roadie eliminates this problem.
Robert mentions during the video that he’s happy with the back end CMS system that allows him to easily log in and make changes. His app is also integrated with his YouTube and Twitter accounts, as well as providing the Fan Wall, which fans can use as a type of chat room as well.
It seems that Robert Scoble, long-time tech blogger and lover of all things tech, has found his app home with Mobile Roadie. If it’s good enough for him, what are you waiting for? $500 set-up fee and $30 a month for the CMS services … it just doesn’t get any better than that.
App Verticals: Wineries Need Apps Too!
posted by Michael ArcandIt seems that everyone is going mobile these days, as more and more business owners realize that is where their customers are at. When Mobile Roadie started out, we were focused on the music industry and what we could offer them in terms of a mobile application platform. At the time, we were limited to iPhone apps. Today, Mobile Roadie continues to expand our platform beyond the iPhone as well as beyond the music industry. From conference and event apps to book authors, we continue to offer what we think is the most flexible mobile CMS platform available.
Now, we’ve found another industry that has taken the mobile market to heart and is quickly adapting their marketing strategies to reach their customers in the mobile marketplace: wineries. Two such recent entries into the mobile arena which utilize the Mobile Roadie CMS are V. Sattui Winery and Benziger Family Winery, both located in sunny California. As you will see in the pictures below, each winery brings its own unique flair and ambiance to their app, thanks to our extremely customizable CMS. After each set of pictures, you’ll see for yourself what the wineries have to say in recent press releases about how they are using the apps and why they chose Mobile Roadie.
V. Sattui Winery
“We used Mobile Roadie at the recommendation of Chris Oggenfuss of Oggenfuss Wine Marketing,” adds Tom Davies, the winery’s President. “This app is a tool to make our wines more accessible to consumers. This is just going to be one more way for V. Sattui Winery’s customers to connect with us. It’s important for us to continue to be on the cutting edge of all the latest mobile media and social media trends. Whether it’s clicking onto the shopping page or viewing videos or linking to information or buying tickets for events at the winery, this app makes it easy,” Davies said.
“This app has amazing functionality and seamlessly integrates with social media tools such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter,” explains social media consultant Chris Oggenfuss. “By using push notification, Sattui can augment an opt-in marketing campaign and target customers geo-specifically. Essentially this app provides a mobile platform for e-commerce and a branded experience.
Benziger Family Winery
“In the same way we combine innovation, creativity and quality in our wines, we want to carry this over to technology,” explained Benziger Family Winery’s Vice President of Marketing, Mark Marinozzi. “To be on the upside of the technology upsurge and improve communication with our loyal customers, while also continuing to promote and improve this industry is a priority for Benziger Family Winery.”
The App is powered by Mobile Roadie, the leading self-service App platform company. With a user-friendly and customizable platform, Mobile Roadie provides an easily updated content management system, allowing the winery to update all content in real-time. This function is essential for Benziger Family Winery App administrators to keep App users frequently updated.
So, you still don’t think your industry needs an app? Why don’t you get in touch with us and see what we can do for your vertical!
Case Study: Twilight in Forks App
posted by Michael Arcand
After the wild success of the Twilight series of books and first movie to hit the big screen, the small town of Forks, Washington, was plunged into the spotlight as a major tourist phenomenon. People just couldn’t get enough of the town that was the setting for the Twilight phenomenon. Now, anyone can get a glimpse behind the scenes at the city of Forks, thanks to a recently released documentary, “Twilight in Forks.” And when the filmmakers decided to build their mobile app they chose Mobile Roadie.
I recently had the privilege to speak with the film’s producer, York Baur, and the director, Jason Brown for the scoop on what how the app is working for them and where they plan on taking it going forward.
Why did you decide to build a mobile app?
York: It’s an interesting scenario for us. It was done as an independent film and then we did a licensing deal with Summit for distribution. Of course, there was, and continues to be, a huge slipstream effect around our movie as a part of the overall Twilight saga, which as you know is wildly popular. So, that’s very helpful but at the same time you can’t rely on that alone. You have to create your own buzz as the filmmakers. That’s really what led us to the decision to try an iPhone app alongside of the some of the other social media things we were doing as well as traditional PR. So it really was part of an overall viral promotional campaign that led us down the road. We’re happy to say that it has been one of the more successful aspects of that campaign.
It has been very successful. Can you share with us some of the success that you’ve had?
York: We’ve had 38,000 downloads at the moment. And that’s without any promotion around the app specifically. The MTV article is really the first formal promotion around it. The rest was us tweeting and facebooking about it and it was carried virally.
Why did you choose to go with Mobile Roadie versus other options when deciding to build an app?
Jason: The traditional path of a customized solution, in my view, has a couple of drawbacks. It takes a while and it’s usually expensive. On top of that, there’s typically a lot of revisions. So when we came across the Mobile Roadie platform, both from the phone interface side along with the back end content management side, it just seemed like it was tailored to do all of the things we were going to design into our own app, and a few that we thought would be nice but didn’t want to [spend] our time figuring that out. They had already did that for us. [It gave us] the level of customization for our title, on top of a pretty rich set of attributes that were friendly, easy to use and easy to update. We’re using the iPhone app almost [to distribute] deleted scenes or additional content that you would traditionally find on the DVD. We’re actually going to do all of that through the web and specifically through the iPhone.
York: I’m a data junkie. I have a background and a career in marketing, in particular online marketing. You can feel good about things but they are difficult to manage and correlate and to know where you should place your next investment of time and energy. So the back-end and the ability to see data in real time was a crucial element of our decision as well.
Are you seeing a lot of interaction with the fans using the app, are they engaged?
York: Yes, and that’s really exciting to see, quite frankly. Globally, what’s interesting about it too, if you look at the distribution of the app, it’s not just a U.S. app. Our film, of course, is not just a U.S. film. So the interactions are interesting to watch because they really span a wide range of demographics and geography. We were surprised at the level of interaction, not only on the posts on the fan wall, which has been fun to watch, but also specifically on things like the photos. You wouldn’t think that people would take the time to comment on a photo on a device like the iPhone, which is principally a content consumption, not a content creation device. It’s not the world’s easiest thing to type on. And yet a ton of people have commented, multiple times and multiple people have commented on each individual picture. That’s been great for us to see, not only because we’re hitting the mark, but it gives us real time feedback of what fans are drawn to. As filmmakers, that’s worth its weight in gold because it helps shape what you do next and how we go about it.
Jason: One of the things York’s talking about that is crucial to how we shape all of that content is the feedback. That’s one of the greatest things about the iPhone. You know people took the time to download the app, sign up to be on our list and comment on a photo. They’re engaged, right? So, when we put something out we get feedback right away and we can tell what they like. In essence, it gives us almost an instantaneous way, to have a little sandbox, to interact with the fans. You can do that on the web and on Facebook and on your own website, but they have to decide to keep going back. But the great thing about the iPhone and mobile applications in general is that they have it with them.
What are your favorite overall features of the app?
York: I would start on the user end of it first. Certainly the CMS and the data are great for us, but if you look at it from a fan point of view, there are a couple of things that are kick ass for the fans. Number one, the fact that it plays music at all, but particularly that it streams music when you open it. We’ve received a lot of very positive feedback about that and, of course, you can favorite a song based on that. The second thing, which you guys just added here recently, is the offline photo capability, because the photos have been a much bigger deal than we would have anticipated, given that we’re a video offering, not a photo offering. The offline photo thing is crucial, because waiting for that stuff can be like watching the grass grow. So, once you’ve gone through that once, the fact that you can now pull it up and show your buddy or look at something that’s special to you again in real time without having to hassle with that, that’s a huge aspect of it.
What are your plans going forward with the app? Do you guys make use the push notifications?
York: You know, that’s something we’re going to roll out here in the next week or so. So we haven’t even done that yet, and we still see this great adoption and participation.
Jason: Well sure, a couple of things. You asked earlier why we picked Mobile Roadie. It’s because we don’t want to write software, we want to give the fans what they want. Mobile Roadie did a great job of allowing us to do that. In fact, I put the whole thing together in one day, no training. I never even had to contact support.
York: I had the same experience. After Jason set the app up originally and worked through the approval process and so on, I went up there and added some additional stills. And again, no training, no muss, no fuss. And that is something we’ll continue to do. It’s very interesting to see the great petri dish for testing content. If you look, for example, in the photos, you’ll notice I didn’t group them in any order. Well, what’s really interesting, if you’ll look at the responses, is the number and enthusiasm. If you look at the last picture up there, you see that’s Bella’s truck, the real Bella’s truck, from Twilight. That got some of the largest number and most enthusiastic comments, even though it’s the last picture up there. So clearly people are drawn to certain things, and that gives us as content producers the ability to test what is the most germane to the fan base, and that’s worth its weight in gold.
What would you tell somebody if they are looking to do a mobile app? Is it worth it?
York: Totally. There are going to be 65 million smartphones sold in the U.S. alone this year. So if you’re not thinking about this as a way to get the word out about you and your content, your band, your film – whatever it might be – then you’re missing the boat. It’s certainly not the only mechanism, but it’s becoming a huge mechanism, so you have to pay attention to it. Then, to echo the points Jason made earlier, Mobile Roadie is easy, good and affordable. And that’s a pretty hard combination to find out there, particularly because, like us, I doubt people want to be in the business of writing software.
That wraps up our case study for this week. We certainly wish the Twilight in Forks app continued success and can’t wait to see where Jason and York take their app from here.
Scoble Dishes on His New Mobile Roadie Apps
posted by Nicole Jordan
We’re pretty excited to announce that Robert Scoble has joined the Mobile Roadie app family. I caught up with him just before his trip to Israel to find out more about why he decided to upgrade his existing app with one built on and powered by the Mobile Roadie platform. Robert joins a growing number of online influencers experimenting with apps to give their audience a more holistic view into what they’re up to, and another direct way to connect. He’d taken note that we were investing in the early adopters in the tech industry in a way that others weren’t by supporting several well-respected tech people and conferences.
“[Mobile Roadie] has an idea of events and community which the other’s don’t,” he told me. And then he shared a few comments about the breadth of capabilities of our CMS and vision as a company versus alternatives who are just offering “a template with lame content.”
Oh stop. We’re blushing. OK, keep going. We don’t mind.
“I never used my app. With Mobile Roadie it’s the completeness that I like. My content behavior is spreading out. I used to be a blogger but now i do a lot of content across many platforms like Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, that collectively make up what my brand is. With my app, I can see Twitter faves, people who write to me on Twitter, show videos, blog content..It gives a more complete picture of what I do.”
When I asked him why he wanted an app in the first place he said, “I want to see what it can do. I have a personal brand and don’t need an app to survive but I already use my mobile phone so much to interact with celebrities and bloggers and people who write content I care…everything is changing due to mobile and Twitter and Facebook and I wanted to explore what that meant and how my audience would react to it. When you have a committed audience that wants to interact they are going to consumer more of this type of content in this format.”
So how’s it going, you wonder? Well, Robert called it an “awesome app” and said he’s hearing a lot of praise from people who’ve tried it. We’re thrilled.
Being the curious company we are we pried a bit into how he was envisioning using the app. Robert said he isn’t entirely sure yet and wants to see what happens and how his audience consumes and engages with the content. He knows videos will be something to watch since “it’s easier to find videos on that app than on YouTube… I can see why my video views are already doing well.” He’s also looking forward to playing around with the Fan Wall, where anyone with the app can post comments, and virally push them to Facebook and Twitter.
Given Robert’s highly social nature and his very active audience, we’ve no doubt he will turn the use of his app into an example for the rest of the industry to follow.
Mobile Roadie App Links – Now Shorter and Prettier!
posted by Michael ArcandMost of our clients are already aware of the Mobile Roadie App directory, which helps to showcase your apps and links to the app store right from your app page here on Mobile Roadie. However, what you may not know is that Mobile Roadie also has an automatic URL shortening service that we’ve implemented for all of our clients as well. You’re probably familiar with other URL shortening services like Tiny URL or Bit.ly, but those are hard to remember and have to be manually generated each time. With the Mobile Roadie URL shortener, we take care of all of the work for you, all you have to do is use it! Here’s how it works…
The service simply takes the lower-case name of your app and add it to http://road.ie/ … like this:
Madonna’s app can be found at http://road.ie/madonna
The Taylor Swift app can be found at http://road.ie/taylor-swift (note the hypen between the two words in the app name)
So, your app can be found using this shortened URL: http://road.ie/your-app
You can use these shortened URLs in all of your correspondence, since it is so easy to remember! They are perfect for Twitter, Facebook, e-mail and even print marketing, encouraging your contacts to download your mobile app. We’re also updating your fan wall widget and all viral messages to use this new format. It’s a win-win situation that we’ve designed to help maximize our customers’ use of their mobile apps. So go for it, check it out, and pass on YOUR new app URL.
