Treemo Becomes Mobile Media Distribution Platform with Widgets, Facebook Application
Mark Hendrickson
14 comments »
Treemo is a site where you can upload all types of media (photos, videos, audio clips, and text) from your mobile phone or desktop computer and share them with either the general public or just your friends. Until now, the only way to get your Treemo-hosted content distributed elsewhere on the Internet was to use RSS feeds, but the company has just released a set of embeddable widgets and a Facebook application that should help to spread this content much more effectively.
Of the three types of widgets, the first provides a channel of the last 24 media items you have uploaded to Treemo (we’ve embedded an example below), the second highlights just one media item, and the third allows anybody with a cell phone to subscribe to your content and consequently receive notices via SMS when you upload new stuff. The Facebook application will display your most recent Treemo uploads in your mini-feed and embed a channel player into your profile as well.
In addition to this widgetization strategy, Treemo is developing an API that will allow developers to integrate Treemo functionality into their websites. A Chinese website called 3GDODO has already soft launched with the API as a pre-release partner, and the API should be available to the public in the first quarter of 2008. Another partner focusing on citizen journalism will also leverage the API to solicit the distribution of niche content.
Other smaller upgrades include new language support for Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, and German, as well as a new homepage that does more to highlight the contributions of your friends on Treemo.
Treemo’s mobile social media competitors include JuiceCaster, Zannel (recently reviewed here), and Kyte. Whereas JuiceCaster requires users to download a client to their phones, Treemo is based completely in mobile web browsers using XHTML and WAP. JuiceCaster announced just this week that it raised $6M more in Series C, bringing its total to $15.3M. This past October, Treemo raised $2.55M in its first round, which was led by JK&B Capital of Chicago.
who pushed this post back to the top?
This is like the worst website ever. I used these guys a while back and omg their site is the worst. Why are you guys covering this type of site? Theres like 982034792347289347 better sites online
What I really would like to see, is the ability to upload my messages, my
directory and my calendar so that in case I lose my phone, or want to change vendors, I can just go to the site and upload the stuff I store there.
Jackie said it right! This site suckssssssssssss.
Mark, I can’t believe you gave them even a semi-positive review. Did you even look at the site or the content on it? Where’s Arrington’s review?
Hey now, those “summer MBA” students gotta stick together, bad site or no. You don’t like it? Don’t use the web!
Treemo? More like EXTREEEEMO!
Sincerely,
The Fake Angela Hayden
Lowercase Commenting Goddess
The link for Kyte should be http://kyte.tv in the text, right?
Smart guys at tremo, I admire these people!
fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
@Jackie, can you backup your claims for it being “the worst website ever”? You may have tried the site in the past but I think the whole point of the article was to review the new features they just rolled out like the channel player, facebook app and an API that powers a site in China and soon powering a citizen journalism site. Do you really know much about the up and coming mobile market? It’s a different game than the web you talk about that has “982034792347289347 better sites”.
@Josh, I’ll back them up.
Treemo’s content is, to be kind, smut. Pure, disgusting smut. The UI is horrible compared to other sites. Parts are only half there and it’s slow to load regardless of connection speed. I can’t imagine how dial-up users feel. The entire site is buggy (the first time I went there, I was shown bangcitymusic as the featured channel but the channel player said there was no content). Localizations are only half there and even the chinese site (which, incorrectly says “Treemo” in some places instead of “3GDODO”) which is supposed to be more “premier” than others doesn’t translate common, front page strings like, oh “Featured Channel” and, uh, “New”. Speaking of 3GDODO, what’s with that? Why is the site called “Treemo” but 3GDODO listed everywhere? And speaking of localizations, I don’t speak Chinese, but Spanish and German are horrible. Maybe hire better translators?
It really all comes back to smut though. Smut and a shitty mobile site.
You argue: “Smut is the mobile market though,” right? Then why the hell did this relaunch not include a better looking mobile site? What was the team working on? If this really is a “mobile social media” site, wouldn’t it care more about its mobile site? Redesigning the website doesn’t help content and doesn’t help mobile users. Flickr, Facebook, Google sites, etc have much better mobile sites and it’s most definitely not hard to fix.
And since I said the big “F” word, let me ask: Why is there a Facebook app? Looking through the users, I can’t imagine many of their users even know what Facebook is. How about focusing on your audience, the Cricket mobilers and AT&T fools who use cheap handsets? If you want to get fancy, how about designing the site for a product even your dumb users (which, granted, is probably 80% of the site) have heard of like, say, the iPhone?
That’s why this could be classified as “the worst website ever”. Not my words, but something I’m starting to agree with.
(Aside: Crunchbase should update the “Overview” of this company as they seem to have changed paths quite a bit since “[differentiating] itself with revenue sharing and a socially responsible twist”. I don’t see revenue sharing and there’s definitely not a socially responsible twist. Looking at the screenshot on Crunchbase, there used to be a “Get Involved” tab, which has been relegated to the footer now. Change of heart, eh?)
Another criteria for “the worst website ever” is not being able to stay online… Treemo wins again!
More criteria: Lying about why your site is down.
Current message on treemo.com: “We are performing some scheduled maintenance on the site.” If this is schedule maintenance, I’ll buy the entire Treemo team a few rounds of drinks.
I used to work with Jeff Yee from Treemo when I was with a russian mobile media producing and licensing company… And I’m really glad for him that he did it to TC
I’m a treemo user and I think it’s sweet. The functionality is as robust or better than other social networking sites, and where the “tree” shines is in the community of users. There’s genuinely good, creative and interested people there. Treemo is unique because there’s a robust urban community hanging out and some of us are sexy as hell.
When ya’ll haterz talk smack I suspect it’s thinly veiled jealousy cuz the tree is fat and living large.