We have just launched a major upgrade to our web presence at www.jumbuck.com.  Our main objective in this upgrade is to more clearly separate out the information on:

• Our consumer offerings – our traditional and new communities, along with applications and other developments
• Our partner offerings – the services and value we can add to our carrier, media and other partners
• Our corporate information – the information of value to our investors

And as part of this we have freshened up our look and feel, and started upgrading all our content.  More to come, but an important first step in communicating our new focus and direction.

Around the announcement of our results at the end of September we touched on two themes.

The first of these was the sharpened focus on managing our mature communities for their free cash flow.  While they, along with many of their competitors, continue to come under revenue pressure from ‘free’ alternatives in our evolving Social media world, they are still generating significant revenue and free cash flow for Jumbuck.  We will continue to support these products where they generate clear margins in mature markets, and exploit potential for profitable growth in emerging markets.

The second is the introduction of Premium Social Messaging – a new approach to building communities that cuts to the heart of monetisation.  This is a fantastic opportunity that has captured our attention, and that of our partners.  It plays to Jumbuck’s core strengths from the mature businesses – our carrier relationships, moderation and compliance management, and understanding of community dynamics – and directly addresses the pain points consuming the time and effort of many of our partners.

Through a mix or our sales and business development efforts over the past six months, and focussed pursuit of Launchpad style investment opportunities, we are within weeks of bringing the first community showcases to market – built around the first release Jumbuck Heroes version of the platform.  I look forward to introducing them, and more clearly highlighting the power of the Premium Social messaging positioning, in future posts.

In parallel with extending their successful services business, and integrating their platform into the new Jumbuck Premium Social Messaging offering, Insqribe have been pushing the boundaries of their iPhone development skills.  Their first result on behalf of Jumbuck is First Light.

First Light brings together everything you need to get started in the morning. The alarm wakes you with your music or a choice of 1000’s of radio stations from around the world. It helps you plan your day by showing your calendar and the local weather; and keeps you up to date with your friend’s action on Facebook and Twitter.

You can find it here.

Ukraine Technology Services Team

As incoming CIO of Jumbuck my induction included meeting our Sales team at Mobile World Congress in sunny Barcelona, followed by visits to our European locations in Oslo, Köln and Zhytomyr. Zhytomyr is located in the north of the west of the Ukraine, in Eastern Europe and 140km west of Kiev. The historic city with a population of approaching 300,000, is home to the Ukraine arm of Jumbuck Technology Services (15 people) and part of the European moderation team (25 people). Read the rest of this entry »

MyLevel Screen Shot

Any business monetising communities today can’t avoid the social media phenomenon – and that includes Jumbuck! While we have a great set of foundations within our carrier relationships globally, and are getting traction direct with consumers through our new offerings, we need to broaden our horizons.

That was one of the attractions of the MyLevel concept when Clinton Shepherd introduced it to our Launchpad program last year.  Read the rest of this entry »

Our stand at MWC - with Eda and Boris

Back in February it was incredibly exciting to be at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona – and even more so to showcase our new strategic direction to the world.

Harry Campbell and his One API team at GSMA were most generous in providing us with exhibition space. We were able to showcase, to the 60,000 or so MWC attendees, our One API services in Canada, as well as some of our latest mobile web offerings like jmbPETS and the location based services from Insqribe. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to 2011 at Jumbuck – we are looking forward to an exciting one!

There is no doubt 2010 was a challenging year for all involved with Jumbuck, but one from which we emerge quietly excited about the foundations we now have, and the potential to re-establish our position in the global mobile entertainment world.  So what is driving this optimism? Let’s take a quick look at what is getting us excited:

Read the rest of this entry »

As I outlined at the AGM, the Direct-to-Consumer acquisition world requires additional sales and marketing commitment, but also brings wider revenue opportunities. And these new opportunities are larger in the Smartphone arena.

Within Jumbuck, our chosen approach to this is to maintain our traditional chat and interaction offerings across both Smartphones and Feature phones, while adding richer functionality through experiences tailored to the web browsers on Smartphones. This can be seen clearly in our recently released mobile web version of Mobilove which can be found at jmblove.com (this works best on a mobile browser!)

Read the rest of this entry »

It has been a while since my last musings, and here at Jumbuck the team has continued the transition we talked about through our year end presentations – both on the product and organisational front. A lot of this transition work is now starting to bear fruit, and is providing us the enhanced set of levers we need to effectively monetise communities we chose to operate – across both the on-deck and off-deck worlds. These are currently in flirting and dating, but with new categories very close.

Read the rest of this entry »

As I said in my last post we have been awaiting the release of our year-end results to address some of the questions and feedback this column has prompted. I am delighted to announce that the results are now finalised and were released publicly last week.

First, let me reaffirm Jumbuck Entertainment’s strategic direction. We are passionate about the mobile space – in particular the increasing power of devices and the convergence of mobile telephony and social media. As a business we have many of the critical assets needed to effectively manage and monetise our unique communities globally, and are committed to acquiring those we don’t.

Read the rest of this entry »