Mobile media has grown into quite the solid commodity, with a rich marketing environment full of available options and strategies for highlighting the pleasant aspects of the mobile content for consumers to pick up. The consumers themselves form a very profitable market base, who respond positively to marketing strategies that focus on the way mobile media provides venues for self-expression and individuality. Along with others, these factors have come together over the last few years to transform cell phones from basic work-related necessities into personal items important for reasons beyond the mere “making calls” aspect. One such strong category of mobile media is ringtones, which have in turn progressed from indicators of incoming calls and messages to extensions of the phone owner’s personality.
Newer, more diverse and more creative approaches to distributing mobile media have become the norm of late, affording more interesting and more varied options for the increasingly tech-savvy market base. Mobile content providers have taken it upon themselves to go beyond the old means of text-message marketing – sending a smattering of text messages and sample tones to users, with attached notes that tell them to send an order message to a particular number to receive more information and tones – and instead use the Internet’s vast potential to their advantage. As a result, while the text marketing continues to be a first line of sales strengthening, websites providing download information, varied payment terms and interesting features have become the new wave of mobile media marketing.
Mobile17 is one service that offers more than the usual set of options and features for its users. Instead of merely structuring a ringtone-by-order service that simply sells prefabricated ringtones, it capitalizes on its users’ creativity and personalities by giving them the freedom and the tools to actually create and upload their own mobile content. Initially launched as SmashTones in 2005 [the blog supporting it currently has the same name, although the website bears the moniker Mobile17], the service allows users to create ringtones and wallpaper at no charge, making it extremely budget-friendly without sacrificing flexibility.
Users sign up, specify the phone model they wish to create content for, and proceed to upload the graphic file they wish to turn into wallpaper or the MP3 clip they wish to trim into reasonable ringtone length. Mobile17’s system allows users to specify the desired portion of the song or clip – users enter the start time and end time in seconds – to be turned into a ringtone. While this is certainly of somewhat limited functionality for some more particular users and more sensitive songs with precise timing, it would more than likely be enough for the average consumer who wants to use the chorus from a certain song as a ringtone.
Mobile17 processes the request and the uploaded material, and sends the mobile content to the phone number indicated by the user. No fees apply, except possibly for SMS/MMS reception and sending fees stipulated by the user’s service provider. As a result, the main inconvenience at this point is not a wallet-based one but a watch-based one: most sent content takes a few minutes to be received, but users have sometimes had to wait for about an hour before receiving their content. Still, all things considered, you get what you pay for. Ultimately even this seems to be a small hiccup, as it has not prevented SmashTones/Mobile17 from being spotlighted in Sarah Lane’s weekly “Damn Good Downloads” segment, and in such publications as The Boston Globe and Popular Science.
Related posts:
- Mobile17: An Extra Ordinary Way to Personalize Your Ringtones Mobile17.com is a website created by its founder Ben Guild...
- “Makeownringtone.com” is What it Promises Mobile media has emerged as a very solid, viable and...
- Reasons to Make Yours Tonemine While some reports suggest that the mobile media market has...
- BongoTones.com – Download Free Ringtones Easily Courtesy of a professional redesign from a Denver firm, the...
- Ringtone Downloads are the Latest Craze among the Youth Technology has led our generation in an era full of...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
