The tone of some of the statements coming from Peter Chernin are alarming. I wonder what the poor users of Myspace are going to be subjected to in the coming months.

From what I see, Jamba/Jamster is a typical mobile content vendor, it only SELLS product to customers. The trend amongst these customers in Europe is to look for alternatives to the shop fronts of companies like Jamba and the mobile operators – free download sites, mobile UGC sites and mobile social communities.

Jamba’s bullish turnover is built on massive TV/ marketing budgets [a BIG cost of aquisition], it will be a lower cost when you sell the service into the Myspace crowd of course. But I was expecting News Corp to actually announce a creative approach to the mobilisation of Myspace, instead what I see is a platform to sell mobile products only to the same users – to exploit the short term gains.

In the USA you may not be aware that their has been a backlash to the sales practices of the mobile content vendors. We even have a regulatory decision against Jamba and its partner Mblox in the UK for misleading sales practices related to mobile content subscriptions : http://www.icstis.org.uk/pdfs/mbloxoralhearing.pdf

Selling subscriptions [repeat downloads] to customers when they thought they were only agreeing to a single download purchase has caused the industry to suffer badly in the UK and Europe. I have seen big falls in company turnover due to regulatory action related to this [an example is Monstermob in the UK].

I can fully expect that in the USA the same effect can happen in the future where one vendor creates a problem related to subscriptions and the knock on effect will cause waves amongst the whole of the market.

On a positive note, I do believe that News Corp trying to shake up the walled gardens of the mobile operators [carriers] is a good thing. The situation in the USA must go off-deck to allow for mass services to operate in the market and for the carriers to benefit from their position in the value chain but also to increase the market size.

On a final note I do not think that Peter Chernin understands mobile customers/users. If he thinks they are buying something they do not need and his job is to help make these same people want that same product he is in for a very short journey with his customers. He makes me think that the whole exercise is marketing only and whatever you put in front of the customer he/she will buy.

I do not see Long term relationships being built with Myspace customers if this is his strategy.

PS The product inventory in Jamba is so poor as well…

I use this app, and convert and send ringtones wallpaper. http://www.tonethis.com/

Also I love using opera mini and google maps best tools around.

myspace is really strong, but wonder how helio is doing? is myspace strong enought to get them a crap load of customers?

The main take away was that EVERYONE in the mobile industry is working to make the carrier happy, not the consumer. And carrier happiness seems to be measured simply by how many more $2.99′s they can get from the subscriber.

It’s laughable that you have to spend more money on a ringtone than if you were to buy the actual song – READ: YOU HAVE TO PAY TO DO MARKETING FOR THE MUSIC INDUSTRY. I could go one for at least six more paragraphs :)