April 20th, 2008Viigo’s platform play: A third way for delivering mobile content
The great debate in mobile content has long been browsers vs apps with a clear set of tradeoffs between the two. Browsers is absolutely where the desktop computing is going but browsers on the mobile are inconsistent, underfeatured and messy. Apps on the mobile can be a lot more rich but here the hardware and OS fragmentation makes this strategy just as painful.
Toronto’s Viigo software used to be known for one simple app, the Viigo reader (get it here) one of the best rss news readers for the blackberry (and windows mobile). This week they’ve (pre)announced their second generation “tango” platform. Tango is a third way to deliver mobile services.
Similar to rss itself (and a first glace similar to Yahoo’s mobile strategy as well) Viigo will be offering an xml-driven cross-device content platform to anyone who wants to be on their “deck”. Viigo provides a cross platform client (basically a browser alternative built like a rss reader on steroids). Without much extra work, content providers can push straight rss content to the client wich Viigo bundles with sponsorship (they have a current deal to distribute the National Post on mobile this way) or, with Tango, the content provider can implement stuff thats a little more interactive like restaurant recommendations and travel bookings.
Take your own look at some example tango apps here.
Another interesting wrinkle is the revenue model. Viigo will split advertising and other revenues with the content providers – but with out a dime going to the mobile carriers.
Will Viigo have as much or more luck than the Yahoo’s, googles and apples (mozillas, operas, BREW etc.) of this world in creating the [holy grail of] a standard platform for the mobile world? Something tells me this is more of an interim play, more of an AOL than the Tim Berners Lee of the mobile internet. That said, if they can keep building on their loyal client base, Viigo may be just the thing a lot of publishers are looking for – a viable way to monetize in-demand content over mobile. At least until that distant day when the mobile web finally does get its standardized $h*t together.
Viigo’s Tango platform is scheduled to launch this June.
Corrected:Mark Ruddock of Viigo tells us that they definately are building carrier partnerships which would include revenue share.
