Virgin Mobile Wants Greater Share of Prepaid Mobile Market

Presumably first quarter financial results will show continued growth in uptake of prepaid wireless plans in the U.S. mobile market. Virgin Mobile USA

hopes to capitalize on the trend, as it has cut its unlimited calling plan from $80 to $50 a month.

Two of Virgin's other monthly calling plans also get a price cut. The 300-anytime minute plan was cut to $30 from $35. The 400 anytime minutes plan was reduced from $50 to $40.

Text-only plans also are offered: the new Texter's Delight plan costs $15 a month for 1000 messagesa month. An unlimited texting plan is available for $20. Those plans include photo, instant messaging and video messages as well as SMS. Voice calls cost 10 cents per minute.

Virgin has also introduced a Pink Slip Protection (PSP) program. To be eligible for PSP, customers must be a Virgin Mobile USA customer for two consecutive months prior to losing a job, and become eligible for state unemployment benefits within 12 months. Virgin Mobile will cover the costs of a plan including taxes and surcharges for up to three months.

IP Voice Innovation Lags Text, Despite GoogleVoice

One is hard pressed to point to new voice apps, beyond integrated text messaging, find-me, follow-up or visual voice mail, that have become mass market IP voice applications. Dialing from a directory or "click to dial" are helpful, but the bigger changes so far are a simple switch to VoIP in place of plain old telephone service.

The next trend is IP voice on mobile devices, where it has to this point been seen in a "voice from PCs or telephone adapters" scenario.

Contrast that with the pace of development in text-based communications, ranging from text messaging to instant messaging to email to blogging to tweeting. One is tempted to conclude that voice innovation is hampered in part because of its relative complexity, relative incremental cost and an underlying shift in the direction of text communications (messaging) overall.

That isn't to say such voice innovation will not occur; simply that it apparently is harder than innovation in the messaging arena.

http://symbianapplications.info/battle-of-the-google-voice-iphone-apps-voicecentral-vs-gv-mobile/

Online Video Viewing Up 2%, Streams Per Viewer Up 7%

Online video viewing was up in March 2009, says Nielsen Online. Unique viewers grew 1.9 percent year over year. Total streams viewed grew 8.7 percent year over year. Streams per viewer grew 6.7 percent and time spent per viewer grew 12.6 percent.

The central question here is whether linear TV can survive a shift to online viewing. So far, the evidence suggests that the rush to online video “screens” hasn’t necessarily hurt linear TV. At least not yet.

We'll know a bit more once all the first quarter 2009 reports are in, but as of the fourth quarter 2008 there was a net addition of  441,000 subscribers to multi-channel TV services, compared to the start of 2008.

Still, there is no shortage of thinking about how long this can continue.

Building an Ad-Supported Text Messaging Business

Many observers think communication service providers have got to create new revenue streams in partnership with business partners, rather than basing 100 percent of revenue on end users who pay for communication capabilities.

As always is the case for a developing business based on partnerships, partners will differ about the relative values they are bringing to the relationships, as well as relative revenue splits. Ad-supported text messaging campaigns are no different.

“For advertising-supported SMS, the net revenue per message is $0.004, and the carriers dispute this, but that’s the reality of the business,” says David Oberholzer, Limbo VP. “The model isn’t completely solid, and it’s unrealistic to think the CPMs (cost per thousand) we’ll be able to charge will go up dramatically, so it’s unrealistic for carriers trying to impose these types of per-message fees.

“Even relatively small carrier fees will drive out innovation to other platforms, and that’s already happening—look at all the advertising in iPhone apps,” he says. “If carriers raise costs, then that will be exacerbated.”

All of this will get worked out over time, but the issue illustrates the problem: a new and somewhat experimental new business requires nurturing and some degree of give and take between ecosystem partners.

Windstream is Using Twitter for Customer Support

Windstream now is using Twitter to communicate with customer having service issues. "Sorry for the trouble you're experiencing. you can dm or email me and I can check on that for you," Windstream tweets back to a customer.

http://twitter.com/windstream

Toblerone Runs Social Mobile Campaign

Kraft Foods' Toblerone is sponsoring a "Play it, Forward it, Share the Gratitude" mobile promotion that encourages consumers to extend gratitude to loved ones by uploading mobile video and text messages and have them broadcast on digital walls in Greenbelt and Bonifacio High Street in the Philippines.

There is a Web site for the Toblerone ‘Play it, Forward it’ promotion with brand information, details about the promotion, upload and entry forms, desktop widgets, contact details and tallies of uploaded videos, texts and votes.

Consumers can send their thank you videos and text messages to the mobile phones of families and friends from the Toblerone campaign site.

Customers can use bar codes on the candy’s packaging to retrieve discount mobile coupons as well. Social apps supporting the campaign also are available on Facebook and Friendster.

The campaign is powered by TMSfactory.

http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/advertising/2805.html

Working Americans Use Social Networking; Not Much for Business, Yet

Of 10,000 working American’s surveyed by Compass Intelligence in late November 2008, nearly 60 percent said they were active on a social networking site, but most are not yet using social sites for business purposes.

The most popular site, according to research, is FaceBook, with nearly 35 percent of respondents being registered members of this site.

http://is.gd/hrUr