Mixipix is one of the companies looking to inject some fun into picture messaging, with its range of cartoons that you can personalise, and then send directly to a friend’s mobile phone.
The company’s been around since 2002, but has been more high-profile recently due to its deal with UK operator O2, and also the launch earlier this year of its Mixipix mobile portal. I posed a few questions to MD Lesley Keen to find out more.
What is the appeal of animated cartoon messaging for mobile users?
Think of it as ‘enhanced’ rather than cartoon messaging. It’s easy to see that a picture is worth a thousand words. However an animated picture message can be much nicer than a blurry pic taken with a phone camera.
Not only is a mixipix mCard itself a much stronger message (think of receiving a few words scribbled in haste with a pencil on a piece of paper versus getting a nice big colourful birthday card …) It also means that the recipient gets something as a keepsake, which they can use to customise their own phones as wallpaper, a screensaver or a caller ID, whatever their phone supports.
What’s special about mixipix - what are your key features?
The main thing about what we do is that the images are rendered on demand to fit the receiving device. Translated into simple terms, this means that the whole phone compatibility issue just goes away. You don’t need to know what handsets your friends and family have. We do it all for you.
Our messaging service also features a direct send to other mobiles without having to downloading the content or an application to your own phone first, then sending it on. It’s just as easy as sending a text message, but with added value and fun.
The other key feature is that users can create and send their own unique mobile animations - again, not something you can do unless you can render the content on demand in real time.
It gives us real flexibility to make sure the recipient gets the highest resolution animations on whatever phone they have - and allows us to do clever things like create enhanced messages on your handset and send them to your friends.
How many people are using Mixipix right now? Got any stats to share?
Our main service right now is the O2.mixipix.net messaging service - stats are confidential here I’m afraid, but let’s just say we have an average 10% conversion rate from pageloads to sends, which is pretty good and we have a return rate over 25% so people who try the service are obviously enjoying it.
In terms of the messaging stats, over 70% of all sends are to other people (and this percentage is higher still in those who are frequent users). Some people however, still send messages to themselves. For the wallpaper and personalisation we think.
You’ve launched a Mixipix WAP portal. How important is that?
It’s essential. You need to be able to provide services on the go (with our WAP service you can literally send a cartoon saying you are on train, from the train itself…)
Anecdotally you will hear the ratio quoted of 10 times more throughput on WAP versus web - not surprisingly, since the phone is in your pocket all the time and the PC isn’t. We’re making getting to the WAP site and sending messages as simple and as fast as we possibly can. The fewer clicks the better. The response so far has been great.
What trends have you noticed in people using the site, and what they’re sending?
Well, from our experience by far the most enthusiastic users of this kind of messaging service are teenage girls and young women. The most popular content on the site is without a doubt what you might call sentimental self expression - in other words things like ‘you sexy beast’ and ‘I love you’.
While we get spikes with seasonal content around Halloween and Christmas, etc. romantic content remains pretty constant throughout the year. We’ve tried more edgy content for occasions like Halloween, but it seems that anything with bears, kittens or lovehearts hits the spot.
How do you see the service evolving in future?
We have lots of stuff in the pipeline - some of it of course is in our secret stash so I can’t reveal all, but content customisation from the handset is in the works already. We have learned an enormous amount from how people have used the tools to create their own animations through the web version of the service.
This has helped shape what we believe is the right level of interactivity and customisation through the handsets themselves, where the interface is more fiddly, the screen is smaller and people tend to spend less time on one task.
More information: www.mixipix.net
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