Bango — which offers a solution for off-deck mobile content sales — has issued a set of ” Golden Gongs” … the mobile content launches it thinks deserves recognition. Most if not all winners have connections with Bango (I’m not sure about Yahoo’s IM service) but it’s an interesting insight into what the company feels is successful.
1. Category: Most promising entrant
Winner: Channel 4
This broadcaster has its own mobile portal featuring entertainment news and reviews, plus topical content from its cult programs in a superb site developed by Volantis. The range of content has grown dramatically since the site’s launch in June which coincided with the start of Big Brother 6 series.
2. Category: Best user experience
Winner: Oasis official mobile site
This official mobile site from Big Brother Recordings & Sony BMG of the rock band, Oasis was developed by creative digital agency Graphico New Media. The site is easy to navigate, pages download fast as image sizes are adjusted for different handsets and a My Downloads section lets people re-download past purchases if there was a problem with the network or when they change to a new phone.
3. Category: Best use of mobile marketing
Winner: Sun Mobile
When London won the 2012 Olympic bid back in July 2005, The Sun newspaper commemorated with the Bull Dog ringtone, of a dog barking in time with the Rule Britannia tune from the Sun Mobile WAP site. We take our hats off to the Sun for a typically topical response to major news, and the ability to rapidly deploy a mobile service promoted through its own editorial.
4. Category: Most innovative service
Winner: GameOn from Image Semantics
This ground-breaking service provides multimedia, in-game coverage direct from the sports ground of every Premier League football game. The photographic and text content is delivered in near real-time providing the consumer with a compelling match-day experience covering all the events and plays in the game. This service sets a new level for rich interactive media on mobile that will be hard to beat.
5. Category: Most useful mobile service
Winner: Yahoo Instant Messenger
From the mobile Yahoo service, wap.yahoo.com, you can send messages via instant messenger straight to someone’s PC. We thought this was particularly useful if you need to get an urgent message through to someone and they are already on the phone. Instant Messenger plus multimedia attachments places an interesting future challenge to Multi Media messaging.
And there’s a wooden gong, going to “one lame duck” that (unsurprisingly) is not connected with Bango.
Wooden Gong: .MOBI domain name
.MOBI is at best superfluous and at worst obstructive to the growth of the mobile internet. There is no real value to users who access most sites without knowledge of the url in any case. To the content provider, this poses an unnecessary additional complication in launching a mobile service. Device detection is simple and widespread with internet sites, so the content provider can automatically render the most appropriate site to their users. Does the mobile industry still think of itself as a niche?
.mobi does seem to be a non-solution looking for a non-problem, and it has been suggested that the scheme is merely a way to get a broader walled garden…
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