• 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.

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.

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).

Our Ukraine operation is led by recently appointed head, Andrey Vdovichenko, and Yuriy Sorokin. The development team currently supports our PowerChat (English) and LiveChat (European / Latin American languages) platforms, boasts extensive technology and industry expertise, and holds close associations with Zhytomyr State Technological University, one of highest acclaimed technical universities in Ukraine.

As part of the transformation of Jumbuck from three separate operations to a single, unified Jumbuck, a critical part of my role is to align the geographically distributed Technology Services operations of Ukraine, Norway and Australia (now including Insqribe) around a distributed Agile approach to software development, on a unified and optimised platform supporting rapid release of new functionality and new communities globally.

An exciting opportunity in a highly dynamic industry. I personally have very high expectations as we tune and motivate a high performing Technology Services team.

Ed Young, CIO, Jumbuck Entertainment

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.  From our very first introductions to the concept we were excited by the potential of:

• Direct exposure to Facebook with a retro style platform game concept updated to suit the dynamics of today’s social networking environments – and approaches to monetisation;

• A platform in which we saw significant potential to extend and integrate into our communities by modifying the graphics and approaches to game play;

• Introducing fresh talent and thinking into the organisation.

As our first investment of this nature, I have to say we are extremely happy with the results.  The first release, that is now live on Facebook, is true to Clinton’s original concept – it can be found at http://apps.facebook.com/mylevel/.   A range of extensions and derivatives are in planning.

But, for now, we look forward to a new era of learning and opportunity in a new environment!

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.

We’ve become big fans of initiatives like One API. It solves a major issue in the mobile content business, by allowing companies like us to set up billing for a service once (through GSMA) and have that automatically apply to users of multiple One API carriers (in this case the Canadian operators Telus, Bell and Rogers). Visitors to our booth – and there were a lot – shared our enthusiasm as they were able to see actual, proven experience with cross-carrier billing. that is otherwise lies in larger initiatives like WAC – which also got a lot of play at the show.

We had all our Sales team there, and I must say that the reaction to our new JMB offerings was very well received. While the business of transition has had its challenges, our presence and track record with existing products, our extensive carrier relationships, and practical demonstrations of new capabilities were extremely well received – and provide strong validation of our efforts.

And it was also great to be exposed to the 1,500+ Exhibitors and return with first hand exposure of developments in the whole Application landscape, mobile advertising space, and the manufacturers. Much food for thought we are now chewing through with results announcements behind us and our Smartphone Wrappers being rolled out globally. Rather than list them all here – we will keep you updated on our Twitter feed on the left here and @jumbuckcom.

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:

• In late December we completed the acquisition of the assets of Insqribe. This brings new skills to Jumbuck, and a technology platform that will accelerate the extension of our mobile communities into the application space (iPhone, Android), and into context and location based services.
• The first of our new mobile web based communities will be formally launched taking us from the world of romance to that of pets – of the furry four legged and related types. Pets are regarded by many as extended family, are things people obsess about, and lend themselves to mobile communities. Our beta release is at www.jmbpets.com – have a look, and send us any comments you have (noting it is designed for a mobile web briowser) – including suggestions on a name.
• We haven’t forgotten our carrier based relationships, and are working with renewed enthusiasm with many existing and new carriers on our new communities and offerings. This includes adding Orange to our carrier list in the UK, extending our reach in Latin America, and opening new doors into Asia-Pacific.
• The organisation has been reshaped and we enter 2011 with renewed focus in key areas with the formal addition of Katherine Rossetti as Marketing Director, Andrew Glen as Product Director, and Ed Young as Chief Information Officer. These appointments complete the new ‘One Jumbuck’ leadership team post transition from the three product based operating entities of a year ago.
• Our first Launchpad investment, myLevel, is progressing well and we expect to bring the first release of this to market in March. This will start within the Facebook environment and migrate to our broader mobile communities as it builds momentum.
• And lets not forget we have been busy upgrading our existing romance properties to be competitive in a D2C world – and this program continues to enhance the revenue generating capacity of these established communities.

From our efforts last year we now have the foundations in place and we are committed to deliver on our mission of managing and monetising mobile entertainment communities globally. I look forward to keeping you updated as the year unfolds.

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!)

From the front page users can:

• enter the full product through My Mobilove;

• browse a selection of users and their profiles through Top Pics;
• explore the range of offerings in the MobiStore, which will be extended to include gifts, rewards and links to games in addition to links to our other products;
• read latest tips, Q&A and up-to-date content in the Love Box area.

While only live for a couple of weeks, we are getting a very positive response to this ‘window’ into the core product offering, and the wider monetisation options it opens up through transactions and advertising. This is first release functionality, and the first or our real mobile web offerings. The second mobile web offering, due in a couple of weeks, will be our first completely new community outside the romance area entirely. I look forward to introducing it to you here!

Some of the vital foundations we have been working on include:

• Rolling out capabilities like SMS based alerts uniformly across all our products to keep our users up to date on things of interest to them;
• Building the single identity and billing management system we need to underpin our own virtual currency across our product suite – supporting enhanced rewards for our loyal user base, and enabling wider gifting and purchase functionality;
• Trialling our voice connect service for those who want to move beyond our group and 1 to 1 text chat services.

And there are many more in the pipeline.

Close observers will also see we are updating functionality and the ‘look and feel’ of our primary products, and are beginning to roll out a much richer experience for smart phone users – starting with Mobilove in Australia and the UK.

While in their own right these are little steps, they all contribute to increasing the average revenue per user and opening our ability to harness direct-to-consumer acquisition initiatives effectively. We are excited that much of effort over the past months is now beginning to come together, and provide exciting foundations for renewed growth as we prepare for 2011.

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.

In our annual reporting we openly discuss the transition from ‘on-deck’ to ‘off-deck’, the impact it has had on us, and the hindrances to our effective reaction in the past. In our Investor Presentation we go further, setting out the specific steps we are taking to directly tackle these issues – including substantive restructuring of the organisation, changes to revenue models, channels and products. Add to this the emerging fruits of our Launchpad program, internal R&D and skills acquisition initiatives and I can assure you there is real momentum building across the organisation.

Our revitalised business and new strategic direction was reinforced in London a few weeks back when our global sales heads spent three days together. Their focus was how to translate our revised business model to market. The team – (from left to right in photo above) Andy, Brian, yours truly, Leif and Boris – left the meeting feeling motivated and united. With more than 80% of our revenue coming from Europe and North America, we have access to huge opportunities on the international stage. This is a core competitive advantage for Jumbuck and we see this as the best use of our resources.

This was the backdrop to our recent asset rationalisation. We reviewed the resource and skill commitment needed to realise the full potential of both CarBuddy and OZtion – and concluded the valued customers and broader stakeholders of both would be better off if they were in aligned with more focussed Australian brands. We see Car Advice and carsales.com respectively as excellent fits on this front. Importantly, the divestment of these non-core assets strongly positions Jumbuck to focus on the main game ahead and build long-term shareholder value.