Mobile Entertainment

Can you bring us up to date on the Zed StatiOn community product?

Zed StatiOn brings together the capabilities of IM but is also connected to the Zed mobile community, so users know at all times which contacts are playing, chatting, downloading a video or posting. They can also be connected with all their Yahoo, MSN, Google and ICQ contacts. But the big difference is the StatiOn widget option. Any person using LiveBlogTalk widget, for example, can chat with people who visit their blog. We have three options: visitors, free registered users and premium subscribers. Only the latter pay to receive exclusive mobile content. At the moment around 38 million web and mobile users access Zed every day.

What’s your vision of how community services will evolve on mobile?

So many online services are currently going mobile – from dating to multiplayer gaming to blogging to video and photo sharing. This is the start, but eventually we expect to see a merger between internet virtual worlds and mobile. The increasing penetration of 3G phones should make a big difference here.

‘Virtual worlds’... that sounds a bit like Zed City. What’s happening with that?

Zed City is a real time 3D online universe on the web in which users can create an avatar virtual alter ego that represents them online. It will be integrated with Zed’s community and offer mobile features like ‘Send2phone’, which sends content from Zed City to the handset. The objective is to launch this quarter.

How do you regard the threat of Facebook, MySpace etc?

We don’t think they will lead in the mobile space. In five years between 40 and 50 per cent of people will access the net from a mobile device. So companies like Zed will have an advantage. Remember, we have agreements with more than 110 operators and we know how to make portals or apps work across hundreds of devices.

In general, what’s the biggest overall barrier to progress for social networks on mobile?

Without doubt it’s data charging, although it’s good to see that operators are finally addressing this. There is also work to do in accessibility of services, and in marketing and consumer awareness. We must get to a stage were users start to see the phone as the main device for connecting to their social networks.