Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Foneshow uses "dumb phones" to change radio.
By Erica Naone
Foneshow, one of the companies that demonstrated today at Venture Summit East in Boston, is using the low technology in many people's pockets to challenge the radio industry. Foneshow allows people to listen to radio programs by calling a number from their cell phones. Text messages let them know when new shows are available. The technology is simple, since the show is going out over the same voice channel used for a regular phone call. Foneshow identifies the numbers calling to hear a show and uses that information to save a listener's place in case the listener has to hang up and call back later. The company makes money by including advertising in the notification text messages, and by sharing revenue from interactive ads inside the radio programs with the programs' producers.
I tried out Foneshow, and was taken by its simplicity. So many things are being designed for iPhones and other high-end mobile devices, yet I'm always interested by companies that aim for the "dumb phones" that are carried by far more people. In addition to indie shows, Foneshow includes content from the likes of NPR and the New York Times.
In today's presentation, CEO Erik Schwartz described Foneshow as one effort to adapt radio to coming changes in the market. Like the newspaper industry, he said, radio is having difficulty measuring the effects of advertising, which is undermining its business model. Schwartz, however, is confident in the face of the radio industry's anxiety. "There's nothing I like better than a 20-billion-dollar-a-year industry that thinks it's doomed," he said.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Comments
mobilefan28
04/16/2008
Posts:1
Lexy uses a single phone number, you don't know what you're going to get when you call. Foneshow has a dynamic phone number allocation system. Foneshow SMS's you when the series updates with what the show is about, how long it is, and a 2. customized number (on a user by user basis) to access that SPECIFIC content. There are no ugly voice menus before the program starts.
The dynamic number system also allows Foneshow to scale with publishers essentially limitlessly.
There are essentially 3 approaches here.
1. Single fixed number and then playlist or voice menu. (what we refer to as voicemail hell). Earkive and the late Fonpods use this approach. IMO there's too much friction in this approach.
2. Fixed number per series. This is the approach Cellecast and Phonecasting use. This obviously does not scale well.
3. Finally, dynamic number allocation. This is the big difference between Foneshow and our competitors. It's instant access combined with unlimited scalability.
Eriks
05/27/2008
Posts:1