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Last night I attended an absolutely hilarious opening. No it wasn’t a joke, but there were lots of jokes present.

It was the launch of a new mobile “service” called Comedy Twist Mobile.

You can visit the website at comedytwist.co.za. And with that we have a problem number 1.

The website isn’t live and the launch was held last night to the media. That’s bad. Even though the official launch is 1 September 2008, surely if you hold a press conference, comedy event and big fancy “Howzit” type party, you make your website live, even for a second to preview. We got nothing.
There was a glimmer of potential when the host of the evening plugged in his cellphone and visit the WAP site, which we were never given the URL for. Oh well, no preview.

I’m jumping ahead a bit. Let’s go back a step.

What is Comed Twist

The basic idea behind Comedy Twist (CT) is comedic content supplied to you on your cellphone wherever you are. To quote from the flyer I received:

“It’s a new digital content platform, offering high quality video and audio material for an extensive variety of South Africa’s talented comics - all for mobile phones.”

Phew, that’s fairly intense. They are doing a lot. Or are they?

From what I can see CT is trying to duplicate the success of sms subscription services that already exist with one exception, they offer video and audio and ringtones all about comedy. It’s a relatively good twist I think (maybe that’s where the name came from “twist”). The country needs comedy, I love comedy and I want to try this service.

Enter issue number 2.

Premium Content

This is a very strange choice. I suppose that many social media, content producing, user generated content websites have struggled in the past with monetizing good ideas. But Comedy Twist think they have a solution. Make people pay for content.

In my opinion this could be the downfall of the entire concept. The prices for what seems to be “On-Demand” content:

Video - R10

30-50 second live joke

Audio - R5

30-70 second live joke

Ringtones - R15

15-30 second looped funny ringtone

Video Discount Basket - R5

15-30 second live jokes

This brings up my next question: What does “Live Joke” mean? Anyways, that’s besides the point.

You do have another option, you can subscribe to the service which has a “revolutionary” one-click-opt-out. Nice selling point, but not new. You can SMS “comedy” to 38370 and a video will be sent to your phone every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Three videos.

Target Market

This seems to be a good idea, decide who you are targeting. Comedy Twist is targeting LSM 7-10. My immediate reaction is that’s where the money is, they will pay for the content. But then my research tells me that LSM 7-10 have cellphones, they have cellphones that are able to receive video but they a) are not interested in SMSing a number to subscribe to a service that is going to bug them every other day of the week, comedy or not and b) LSM 7-10 have trouble visiting WAP sites on the their phones and by that I mean that many don’t actually know how. This is not an insurmountable problem, but it will take a fair amount of marketing, above and below the line and a lot of education.

That is not to say that LSM 7-10 wont be successful if targeted correctly and with money behind the project (I can’t say how much money is behind the project) so who can tell how it will go.

It just leads me to wonder about the approach. I know alot of kids (in their teens) who spend hours and hours playing games with others on their mobiles, blowing cash to interact, chatting on Mxit and using other free and subscription services. Why? Because they know how and they know that LSM 7-10 Mommy and Daddy will pay for their usage. Simple. To get to the money, go through the children. It’s worked well so far.

Almost a potentially great mobile social network

I don’t want to go on about this but Comedy Twist had the potential to be a cracking social network on the mobile platform. People love to laugh, people love jokes and love comedy. Even more so, people love to laugh at themselves, their friends and other people making fun of other people. This could have been used VERY effectively to create a social network around laughter, jokes, pranks and anything else in the genre.

It will survive

Why? Because some of the funniest people in South Africa are on board for the ride. Trevor Noah to just name one that I saw at the event. The man must be the funniest guy I’ve had the pleasure of seeing live. The comedians will save this ship from a certain premium-content go-slow.

I just received a very interesting email.

Here it is:

Hi Nic,

Thought this might of interest to you. If you access the Internet via your
mobile, and you are a Vodacom subscriber, I’m sure you’ve run into some
difficulty especially with sites like Twitter.

The Internet Society of South Africa released a statement strongly
condemning Vodacom’s actions. The full statement is below.

Let me know if you need some additional info. ISOC-ZA’s past chairman Alan
Levin is the official spokesperson for ISOC-ZA on this, and his contact
details are below if you want to chat with him.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Cheers,

Sentient Communications CC

ISOC-ZA strongly condemns Vodacom behaviour

On Wednesday, June 25, 2008 Vodacom claimed to revolutionise Internet
on the cellphone. They falsely claimed that millions of Vodacom
customers now (effectively) have the same experience of the Internet
on their cellphones as they do on a PC. In reality Vodacom have broken
the Internet for these millions of customers. This came without any
warning and ISOC-ZA is united against this sort of behaviour.

Various applications that include instant messaging, banking,
specialised mobile applications such as email, Youtube, Twitter, Fring
and at least a dozen others, are no longer working. In technical terms,
Vodacom installed a proxy service that was not sufficiently tested.
As one blogger so correctly pointed out: “Vodacom is essentially using the
public as subjects for an alpha test of their technology” (Flint.za 25 June)

The technology that Vodacom is using is not standards compliant and,
considering Vodacom¹s position as a dominant ISP, it should behave in a more
responsible fashion. Furthermore, some of our members have claimed that
Vodacom block many applications that it feels may threaten its business.
While we have no direct evidence of this, we appeal to Vodacom to disclose
what it blocks and intercepts on its networks.

Happily, some users have worked out how to bypass the new Vodacom changes
and ISOC-ZA urges all mobile Internet users to make use of this should they
too be unhappy with Vodacom¹s actions.

There are a number of bypasses freely available on the Internet, and are
simple to affect.

For example: If you use a Nokia phone then the following should work:
Access:

Tools
Settings
Connection
Access points
Vodacom
Options
Advanced Settings
Remove the Proxy server address

About ISOC
The Internet Society is a global not-for-profit membership organisation
founded in 1991 to provide leadership in the management of Internet
related standards, educational, and policy development issues. It has
chapters in over 90 countries around the world. Through its current
initiatives in support of education and training, Internet standards
and protocol, and public policy, ISOC has played a critical role in
ensuring that the Internet has developed in a stable and open manner.
It is the organizational home of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF), the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the Internet
Engineering Steering Group (IESG) and other Internet-related bodies.

I’ve removed names until I can do a bit more background research and chat to a few more people. But I just tried to access twitter mobile…it didn’t work. This doesn’t look promising for Vodacom and their mobile internet tactics.

As many people know the mobile industry is big business, especially here in SA and in the broader African market.

I’ve been making some inroads in to trying to undestand the mobile market as fully as possible recently.

I am lookingt at the mobile market as someone heavily involved in the media industry and trying to find a place for the media in the mobile market. I am not considering the mobile market from the point of view of a startup, website, portal, communication idea or gaming company. I am looking at the mobile market from the perspective of an organisation that produces weekly content that goes in to a newspaper.

There are some things that I have noticed and some problems that I have seen with the theory that mobile is going to be the next big thing very soon.

Lets begin with three quick points:

1. Communication is actually THE mobile market
2. Social Networking is the up-and-commer
3. Gaming is already making a mark - a massive one - on the market
4. The service providers are the ones making the money

And now let us go through the barriers to entry that I feel exist for media in the mobile market.

1. Newspaper content is a push market
2. Mobile users want to own their content - pull it towards themselves
3. Understanding of extensive mobile web surfing is low in higher LSM’s
4. Portals are non-exist, with the exception of service providers

The basic barriers that I have listed above make it extremely difficult for media organisations to make a valuable stand in the mobile market. Users are looking to interact with one another and content. This means they want to create the content, interact with it, send it to their friends, invite their friends to interact with eachother and their content. This is difficult as a media organisation when you are producing the content and pushing it to the market.

I am interested to know if you agree with these barriers? Do you think that media is stuck in a “push” business model? Or are they making inroads in to the “pull” of content creation, distribution and user interaction?

Mobile, for the last few years, has generally been accepted as the next big thing. But if that is the case why is there no hype, no blogging and why are many of the articles outdated? Is there no one out there who is willing to step in to the role of the punter?

I have just read through 50+ Tech feeds that I subscribe to and out of those a single article from ReadWriteWeb focused on mobile.

There is no media talk, no thoughts or opinions and no strategies emerging as a result of mobile being the next big thing and I just don’t get it.

It could be that I am looking in the wrong place, but it seems as though people are either plotting and keeping their secrets close to them or there is no one with a clue. I am interested to get in to this a but further. Let’s see where it goes.

Today is my last day working at Financial Mail and I can now announce that I am starting a new job at M&G Online on the 19th of May.

My official job title is business manager: mobile and recruitment. But I am sure that more regarding my actual day to day activities will come out as soon as I move in and get involved in the team.

Working with Matt and Vince is definitely going to be one of the great things about my new position. The job is innovative and in a market that is about to burst and is still fairly unconquered in the media sphere.

Obviously moving in to a new market and media house is a big leap for me and one that I am cautiously approaching (with some level of excitement). There are some nerves which should be expected but overall I can’t wait to sink my teeth in to the challenge.

Financial Mail was a phenomenal place to work and to gain some extremely valuable knowledge and experience. The people were sterling and I learned more than I thought I could in a year. But for my career, my brand and the moves I’m trying to make in the industry this is definitely the right move for me at the perfect time.

Things are hotting up in SA, the market is about to explode and I am itching to bury myself in it.