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TMZ.Com Comes To Your Handset

There's a collective shiver going down the spines of celebritantes everywhere.

Word's out today that celebrity news-and-gossip site TMZ.Com will now be available via AOL's mobile portal.

Of course, TMZ's content has been mobile for some time - but a distribution platform like AOL's could dramatically increase reach and frequency.

“TMZ is already a hit on mobile, setting a new ad-supported trend on that platform. Distributing this timely content on sites such as AOL’s popular mobile web portal will allow even more consumers to easily access the latest entertainment news from TMZ,” said Brett Bouttier, Senior Vice President, Digital, Warner Bros. Television Group.

Somehow we think Lindsey, Britney and Paris aren't exactly happy about that.

Read all about it, here.

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Macmillan To Sell Books On Mobile

Amazon's Kindle may be getting all the attention at BookExpo America, but Macmillan's the latest publisher to make a push on mobile.

According to Bookseller.com, six hundred-plus titles from Pan Macmillan will be made available for MPS Mobile's Global Reader, a worldwide mobile content distribution service, by the end of this year.

Sara Lloyd, head of digital publishing at Pan Macmillan in the UK, tells the pub: "While the mobile content market is a nascent one here right now, it is growing rapidly elsewhere and it is an area which we are keen to experiment in and learn from."

Titles from across Pan Macmillan, including Picador, Macmillan Children's Books and Boxtree, will be involved in the deal. Users will be able to purchase books at the same price as other digital options, or by the chapter.

Global Reader is available on Web-enabled mobile devices, including the iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia, Samsung, Motorola and Sony Ericksson Smart phones.

Read - and I do mean read - all about it, here.

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Nokia To Reposition Itself As Internet, Mobile Content Company

The 135-year-old company that turned itself from a rubber goods manufacturer into the world's #1 mobile phone producer is about to transform itself again.

Nokia has been moving into digital content for some time, what with its global mobile advertising network, its new mobile game store and social networking site and all. But now, the company says it's shifting focus again, this time to digital services, in a bid to take on the likes of Google and Microsoft.

"Success in the future will require mastering and integrating a complex set of technologies and services," Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo recently told investors and reporters. "It will involve partnering with others where it makes sense, and bringing all this together in products and services that improve or enhance our customers' lives...The link created between our devices and our mobile services will enhance our already strong brand, our market share and ultimately our device margins. Expanding into services also is giving us an opportunity to work together in new areas with our operator customers, as their businesses also change."

To get an inside look at how Nokia transformed itself before, and how it may attempt to do it again, in this exclusive excerpt from a special Q&A interview in BRANDING UNBOUND the book with innovation guru Gary Hamel. Hamel, you may have heard, was just named by the Wall Street Journal as the world's most influential business thought leader. You'll want to see about what he says about Nokia and mobile, here.

And to read more about Nokia's announcements, click here.

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Nokia & Spike Lee Say 'Lights, Cameraphone, Action!"

Director Spike Lee wants to make you a director. And he says you've already got the equipment.

Today's New York Times is reporting that Nokia and Spike Lee are teaming up to direct a short film comprised of YouTube-style videos created by people using their mobile phones.

The film will have three three to five minute acts, and the theme is loosely based on the concept of "humanity."

Contributors can upload their content - video, music, photos and text - to the Nokia Productions website for review by Mr. Lee and assistant directors who will help meld the entries into a longer work.

"I'm interested because its a great collaborative effort," Mr. Lee tells the times. "Within five years, new movies will be made with devices like these."

In fact, Nokia says that based on surveys of 9,000 consumers, that by 2012, one out of every four consumers will create, edit or share entertainment with friends, instead of getting it from traditional media outlets like television or movie studios.

Actually, this has all been going on for some time.

We've all created movies and shared them online. And the whole movie-made-by-mobile phone is an old standard. As far back as 2005, Ithaca College ran a contest to win $5,000 for best movie made from a camera phone.

Still, a great way to get consumers thinking about their phones in new ways.

Read all about it, here.

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USA Today: More Full-Length TV Shows Coming To Mobile

It appears mobile consumers are done "snacking," and are ready for a full meal.

USA Today is reporting that a growing number of TV networks are offering full-length TV shows via mobile, instead of those much hyped snippets and "mobisodes." Much of this is just through live mobile TV, or through accessing on-demand episodes.

"If you are on your lunch break or if you are sitting in your car waiting for your kid at soccer practice and want to watch a chapter or two, you can do that," Sprint's Aaron Radelet tells the pub.

"Enough consumers watch mobile video for those lengths of time and enough consumers are interested in name-brand programming that this level of mobile viewing could be just as big an opportunity as clips," says Nielsen Mobile's Nic Covey.

I personally have never understood the whole snacking concept. I don't want capsules on "Lost." I don't want mobisodes based on "Lost. I want "Lost."

In BRANDING UNBOUND the book, I look at the growing demand for full-length TV fare via mobile. But far more interestingly, I also look at how TV shows are increasingly using mobile to interact with and engage viewers with the show. Reality TV does this better, with voting. But as I show in the book, History Channel, ABC-TV and others are really innovating the space.

And let's face it. Only 7% of U.S. mobile subscribers ever watch video on their handsets (so what is that, 25 million people?), while hundreds of millions of viewers actively use mobile to interact with on-screen television programming - 74 million for "American Idol" alone.

The real power of mobile TV isn't watching via mobile. It's watching via TV, and interacting via mobile.

Read the USA Today report here. And see how it's transforming marketing and media, here.

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Mouse House Calling: Radio Disney Goes Mobile

Radio Disney's letting its listeners' fingers do the walking.

The Disney radio network, available to 97% of the US, this week launched a Radio Disney Mobile website and text messaging program that enables listeners to listen to Radio Disney, request a song, or send a shout out by sending an SMS message to the shortcode 347639 (DISNEY).

They can also access Disney's mobile site and a listing of the top 30 songs currently playing.

This is a natural for Radio Disney, with its 27-million cell phone-toting 'tween listeners.

But Disney's not alone. In BRANDING UNBOUND the book, I look at how many radio stations and networks have long used mobile to create listener interaction and responsiveness, as well as to facilitate promotions and contests.

Still, people pay attention to anything Disney does in the mobile space. Despite recent setbacks like its failed U.S. MVNO, Disney's still a digital leader.

And this is just another way its keeping up with its increasingly mobile audience.

Read all about it, here.

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'Surviving High School' Certified Mobile Hit; Will Ad Dollars Follow?

Vivendi Game's blockbuster "Surviving High School" is a serious hit on the mobile platform.

The question: Can it also attract some serious ad dollars?

As this week's Ad Age reports, "SHS," is a kind of digital-age update on those "choose-your-own-adventure" games, where players choose whether they want to play jocks, nerds, recluses and other high schoolers stereotypes.

Players can effect the storyline, and game play is expanded with new episodic content that's added weekly.

"Customers can download new content each week," Maria Pacheco, VP-marketing for Vivendi Games Mobile tells the pub, "and as they do so they get entrenched deeper into the game."

Apparently, the game's popularity has spawned numerous forums, Facebook and MySpace groups and a slew of online communities. Factor in the weekly episodic content, and it makes for an ideal ad venue, right?

Not really. As I point out in BRANDING UNBOUND the book, mobile advertising's kind of drag. Citing stats from Nielsen Mobile, Ad Age points out that 90% of mobile phone users feel ad placements on handsets is simply unacceptable.

So what about things like product placements?

"Gamers don't mind them, and even enjoy the added authenticity they can bring to the gaming experience," Pacheco tells the pub, warning, however, that people can "react very poorly if it detracts from the experience."

But think deeper.

Just because the mobile experience may be off limits to advertising, all those other experiences - the Facebook and Myspace experiences, as well as the Surviving High School website, for instance, may provide suitable ad venues.

Indeed, Vivendi has tapped into something with a MySpace page for the game, where anyone who adds it to their top eight friends becomes eligible in a sweepstakes to win a Motorola Razr, as well as have their likeness digitally reproduced and introduced into the next episodic content as a character.

Response was so great, that according to Ad Age, the game had 10,000 friends in just a couple of days, and more than 650,000 downloads of game-related content such as art and wallpapers.

Now this sounds like an interesting proposition for truly integrating mobile, online, and - who knows - maybe even TV content.

Time will tell if "Surviving High School" graduates into something even bigger.

Read all about it, here.

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Business Week: Mobile Content Marketers Bypassing Carriers

A growing number of mobile marketers could care less about mobile carriers.

Business Week is reporting this week that while  80% of content for mobile phones is currently purchased from carrier Web portals the picture will change considerably within five years, when  carrier portals will account for only 25% of all content purchases, according David Kerr, an analyst at Strategy Analytics.

According to the pub, growth in revenue from so-called mobile content—ringtones, mobile games, wallpaper, music, and video downloads—slowed to 15% in 2007, citing CTIA-The Wireless Association statistics. In 2006 content sales surged 90%, to $1.9 billion, consistent with the pace of earlier years.

It was inevitable that'd come to this - why go through ISPs to sell ads to online consumers?

But bad news for carriers who stand to lose a chunk of revenue it's been trying to build out for years.

Read all about it, here.

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Associated Press Serves Up Mobile News Service

The Associated Press is reporting on the Associated Press.

Looks like the AP has launched a mobile news network for iPhones and other smart phones. According to Marketing Vox, it's a non-profit (insert your own joke about the state of the news industry here) designed to enable newspapers to distribute content via digital devices.

The AP was among the first to start reporting from within virtual worlds such as Second Life, so this is a natural extension for the digital age.

Read all about it, here.

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'Car & Driver' Zooms Into Mobile 'SlideShow' Content With Verizon

The term "car phone" just got a whole new meaning.

Auto enthusiast pub "Car & Driver" has launched a new mobile "Car & Driver SlideShow" for Verizon customers, according to IntoMobile.

Using technology from Verizon and Viva Vision, the offering features automotive photography from the famous pub. For $4.49, car aficionados - and they have to be just that to be interested in such a service - can view more than 100 images per month of the latest concept cars, speed vehicles and more.

Somehow I think Sports Illustrated - or celebrity gossip rags - could get a lot more mileage out of this kind of thing.

Read more about it, here.

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