SNW INTEVIEW -- Sep 6 -- Qik, Kyte and Next2Friends allow users to stream live video from their
mobile phones. Great for capturing that special, or highly embaressing
moment, and streaming it live while its happening. - Mark Brooks
What is Next2Friends founding story?
Next2Friends has been around for about two years now. We formed a UK Limited company just a year ago. The company was originally out of the US, called Genetibase. They were the leaders in the research and development of the initial product. We then picked up a seed-funding round from a UK venture company called DropJaw Ventures. That took us from August of 2007 through our beta development stages, in which we received phenomenal success and feedback from our user community. That enabled us further to go out and raise multi-million dollar funding in May of 2008.
Why do people really need streaming video from their mobile phones?
The networks are investing heavily in high-speed networks. They obviously want to capture and recoup some of that investment. Our friends, our family, our co-workers, our colleagues are becoming more and more mobile these days and have a need and a desire to be in touch with their friends and their colleagues to share real time information from their places of interest.
Who would you regard as your closest competitors?
We think we are much more then having one possible competitor. We think that with the services we offer, there is no clear competitor in the space. I think that going forward, we’ll continue to differentiate ourselves, and I think that the television broadcast networks will potentially be competitors of ours.
Tell me what makes you stand out. How are you different?
Well, it’s our unique set of propositions. We have built a technology platform based on the concept of straddling both the Internet and the mobile handset and bringing that to the masses. We have a solution portfolio that allows our customers and members to be connected, for it to be accessible, and for it to be a compelling set of propositions for them in their day-to-day use of the mobile handsets.
How does your company generate income?
We have a multiple revenue stream model. What we don’t want is to be considered a one trick pony, and what we don’t want to be is yet another casualty along the long wave of social network companies who have failed to monetize their technology. We have a suite of online media advertising for the site and for the mobile. We have a number of revenue sharing opportunities for our corporate clients, but also for our members as well. We want our members to not only enjoy the solutions in the environment that we offer, but also offer them the potential to generate their own revenue from that.
We are launching a new set of services over the forthcoming few weeks and we already have our first paying customers.
What do you think your service is going to look like in 2010?
I think we will continue to evolve our mobile applications. Rich media from the handset to the Internet in real time is obviously becoming a big focus for the industry. We are well positioned to leverage and exploit that. We will extend the mobile handset base in terms of support and additional apps that we can put on there. We will not be going down the MMS and SMS routes because I think that’s going to be a dead business model. I think the richer the media, the better. The handset providers are certainly enabling the marketplace to be able to support that, and with the rollout of faster networks, we feel that we’re really well placed to continue the exploit that growth.
