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.
In a rather sad end to 2007, the venture firm behind mobile media startup 3Guppies, VantagePoint, has closed down the company. This is despite still having $8 million of an original $20 million (raised in April 2006) left to burn in the bank. VentureBeat reports that the company’s 40 employees were sent home last week, but will be paid through the end of the month.
3 Guppies was started after VantagePoint spent $20 million acquiring two companies: MoPhone, a mobile social networking company, and 3Guploads, a mobile content company (ringtones). However, the mobile ringtone market has been drying up over the last year as margins tighten and mobile phones become more open. One of the largest ringtone distributors sold to Bellrock Media last year under competitive pressure.
The two companies struggled to find a way forward under the leadership of MoPhone’s former CEO Bill Bryant. The combined company’s new offering was a simple addition of the two original startups. 3Guppies allowed users to share and store pictures in a free mobile locker as well as create your own MP3 ringtones and download video to any cell phone. The offering is similar to those of Juicecaster and Treemo. However, evolving the company beyond this combined service proved too difficult. Within a year Bryant was removed from his position, taking along money made from the original merger. Bryant said, “We couldn’t build other services on top of the technology, so we were stuck in the ringtone business.”
VantagePoint then realized the combination wouldn’t pay off to be the big hit they were looking for and pulled the plug on the operation. Seattle PI is reporting that VantagePoint is instead negotiating to sell its majority interest back to the management team. For now we’re putting it in the deadpool.
Update: The shut down has been confirmed. VantagePoint said, “it just was not a good idea to blast to the end of the runway and crash, but to taxi off gracefully.”
The growth of user generated multimedia doesn’t appear set to slow down any time soon and new company launches in this space don’t either. For those interested in combining photos, video, audio and text in one community the newest entry to the space is today’s launch of Seattle, Washington’s Treemo. Revenue sharing, Creative Commons licensing and a hardware recycling program are the key points of differentiation so far. People unhappy with the corporate influence on other sites and who are heavy mobile users are liable to like Treemo.
The company, known prior to launch as HyperMob, is made up of executives with extensive experience in mobile technology. Much of the site will be cemented if and when it builds up a critical mass of users, but there are some basic qualities that make it stand out now.
Treemo has all the standard content sharing community features but will differentiate itself with revenue sharing and a socially responsible twist. The site enables both desktop and mobile uploading and Oliver over at MobileCrunch has a review of the mobile angle today. Mobile is particularly important at Treemo as the site offers a mobile browsing application in xHTML and converts videos to 3GP mobile format.
Users can chose whether to allow advertising on video and audio pages and receive part of the revenue derived therein or decide to keep ads off their video pages. Company founder Brent Brookler told me that revenue sharing will start once a critical mass is reached and that the split will probably be 50/50. Beyond advertising revenue, some sort of premium service level (as yet unannounced) will be made available.
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