ShoZu

ShoZu

ShoZu is a company that provides mobile social media services for consumers who want to interact with their online social networks, personal blogs, photo sharing sites and other Web 2.0 properties from their mobile phones. Handsets equipped with ShoZu’s technology allow users to upload photos, video clips and text to the destinations of their choice as well as receive content from their preferred sites without complex navigation. The company provides enabling technology for mobile social networking and sharing of user-generated content.

Media Publishing Service

Share-It, ShoZu’s mobile-to-Web media publishing service, offers one-click uploads of photos, video clips, descriptions and tags from the phone to 25 online social media sites such as YouTube,Facebook, Kodak EasyShare Gallery, Vox, WordPress and the BBC. Uploads take place in the background, leaving users free to make phone calls or take more photos during the image transfer process. Images up to 10MB can be transmitted at full resolution without compression to accommodate video clips up to 10 minutes in length as well as allow users to get print-quality photos from high-res camera phones.

The technology is an alternative to MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service), which compresses the image and limits photo and video files to 300KB (1/30 of 10MB), so what others see is only a thumbnail version.

Content Feed Service

Unlike MMS or other uploading methods, ShoZu’s technology also can download social media content to the phone so that users can have two-way interaction with their preferred social media sites from the handset. These feeds, which ShoZu calls “ZuCasts,” include files such as the latest Buzznet celebrity photos and Webshots’ editors picks of the day. Files are sent in the background without any manual intervention.

In October 2007, ShoZu expanded these download services to allow users to request that new content posted by designated friends on social media sites like the Flickr photo sharing service be sent to their ShoZu-enabled phones. These “personal” content feeds were designed to further bridge the gap between online and mobile social media.

Photo Widget for Personal Websites

In the fall of 2007, ShoZu took mobile content sharing a step further by launching a widget called ShoZu Slideshow enabling consumers to share their latest mobile photos and videos in real time through a “virtual photo frame” posted on their own personal websites, profiles or blogs and/or those of their friends. Users or their friends copy and paste the widget into the site of their choice. Images taken with any media-capable mobile phone appear automatically in the “frame” whenever the user sends them to a special Web address by email, MMS or ShoZu’s Share-It service if the phone is equipped with ShoZu technology.

Mobile Advertising

ShoZu’s ability to exchange content with consumers’ mobile phones also provides a mobile advertising alternative that eliminates random push advertising. The company is able to embed promotional messages in “ZuCasts” sent to the handset on user request. In adition, because the company can track user behavior across social media sites, it can target advertising to consumer habits as well as as age and gender.

History

ShoZu was founded in 2001 in London, UK under the name Cognima. The company started as a technology play that built the functionality to transfer media through unreliable networks to minimize redundancy and error. The first application of the technology was to synchronize address books between PCs and handheld devices. The company decided to apply the technology to mobile social networking with the rise of camera phones and social media.

ShoZu is funded by Atlas Ventures, Crescendo Ventures, TLcom Capital Partners and TTP Ventures. The company raised $21 million between 2001 and 2005, including an initial $1.74 million in seed funding in February 2001 and a first round of $7.27 million in May 2002 (both under the Cognima name) followed by $12 million in July 2005.

References

1. [http://www.shozu.com/portal/tour.do?operationwhyuse&tourmodetmimg ]
2. Granelli, James. “Cellphone cameras starting to click.” Providence Journal. January 14, 2007.
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5. “ShoZu Creates Cell Podcasts.” Red Herring. August 8, 2006.
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7. “ShoZu Streamcast Ads.” DailyWireless.org. January 9, 2007.
8. Orloski, Andrew. “Cognima demo self healing, self updating mobile phone.” The Register. February 28, 2003.
9. “Ex-Symbian exec launches mobile software biz.” The Register. May 24, 2002.
10. “Cognima closes $12m funding round for mobile imaging.” Mobile Europe. July 5, 2005. [http://www.mobileeurope.co.uk/news_wire/111255/Cognima_closes_$12m_funding_round_for_mobile_imaging.html.]

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