Mob4Hire wins Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) Meffys Award

The summer has been so busy that we forgot to blog about this significant award we won in London ... a Meffys Award!

We were in the Innovative Business Model category, and we're happy the judges from 45 countries saw the value in what we do. For content publishers and developers, we save from 65% to 90% off functional and usability testing costs while at the same time helping to produce apps and content that will be more successful and viral when released. For our Mobsters in the community, they make between $20 and $50 an hour for their work. And, for us, we are a broker, earning a transaction fee on helping put the community together with state-of-the-art collaborative tools.

The Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) unveiled the winners of this year’s coveted Meffys awards at a sold-out gala dinner in London. The Meffys, supported by Dolby, Buongiorno, Symbian, 7digital, MTS, Quickplay Media and Vodafone seek to honour the most influential players in the mobile entertainment industry from across the world.

Rimma Perelmuter, MEF's Executive Director, said

"Congratulations to Mob4Hire for its Crowd-Sourced Mobile Testing which demonstrates the importance of understanding mobile user experience and behaviours before launching new applications.

MEF is proud to celebrate a diverse $36 billion mobile media industry which continues to innovate and thrive. This year’s Meffys winners highlight the industry’s true coming of age with an array of content-focused applications, cross-platform media and mobile commerce offerings. The Meffys have become the global standard for measuring success and serve as a window to the industry’s future."

The winning entries of the seventh annual awards once again provided an insight into the wide range of innovative products, services, applications and projects which are shaping and defining the evolution of the mobile media industry.

Thanks to everyone involved at MEF and the Meffys Awards for your recognition of our hard work! For more information, see the Meffys website: http://www.meffys.com/about/2010-highlights

Winners of some of the other categories include CBS Mobile, Motally, Taptu, Popcap, Shazam and Zed Group.

New Report "Impact of Mobile on Network Operators" illustrates cost-effective global mobile market research tools

When doing market research with Mob4Hire, I can't think of ANYWHERE you can get this kind of high-quality global access to mobile users with respect to SPEED OF RESULTS and INEXPENSIVE COST OF PANEL SAMPLE.

Want to run your own survey? Contact info@mob4hire.com.

In collaboration with Dr. Hayes from BusinessOverBroadway.com, we recently released our new report "The Impact of Mobile Apps on Network Operator Customer Loyalty." 26 pages jammed pack with insights, figures and data about how users view their network operators performance as it relates to their mobile app ecosystem.

Highlights and other info from the report can be found here: http://www.mob4hire.com/services/global-mobile-research

We've received great feedback on the report, so thanks everyone! Binding mobile apps to network operator customer churn provides some great insights. Looking at some of the best practices of global mobile leaders like Vodafone and Zain (both companies identified in the report) should help network operators get ahead of the curve in terms of what they need to do to compete in this new mobile app world.

Of course, for Mob4Hire, the other important aspect of this report is how market researchers can use our crowd to create extremely cost-effective global panels of people living a mobile lifestyle!

In this study, we offered $2.50 for each qualified Mob4Hire Mobster to complete about a 20-minute survey. Our system sent the initial email blast on a Monday morning to about 18,000 qualified mobsters. 4,000 respondents completed within 48 hours. On day 5 we notified the qualified respondents again and got another 1,000 completes by the end of the weekend. Total sample size was 5000 respondents representing 111 countries, 204 network operators and 179 distinct mobile handsets.

So, in addition to getting global results within a week of the survey start, the cost was extremely reasonable. Total sample cost of the survey was only $16,125. Crazy!

Other companies reference in the report? Tigo, Mobitel, Sun Cellular, O2, Zain, Globe Telecom, Ufone, Vodafone, Warid Telcom, BSNL, Tele2, Telenor, Indosat, Mtel, Dialog, Smart Communications, Movistar, Airtel, Mobilink, 3, Claro, Telkomsel, T-Mobile, Reliance Mobile, Orange, AT&T Mobility, Rogers Wireless, Idea Cellular, MTN, XL, Telcel, Safaricom, Apple, RIM, HTC, Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, LG, Motorola

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Mob4Hire wins spot in Silicon Valley Telecom Council Innovation Showcase at CTIA Oct 2010

We are super-pumped to be one of the 16 companies selected out of over 100 entries to participate in the Silicon Valley Telecom Council Innovation Showcase at CTIA Enterprise and Applications 2010 in San Francisco in early October. To be specific, you'll be able to find us at: "Telecom Council Innovation Showcase Booth 908C"

Thank's to the Telecom Council (and the broad range of judges) for recognizing Mob4Hire's innovative business and opportunity!

More information can be found on their site: http://telecomcouncil.cvent.com/EVENTS/Info/Summary.aspx?e=75f325c4-d299-4eab-807e-95020abe6008

Here's the LinkedIn event: http://events.linkedin.com/Telecom-Council-Innovation-Showcase-CTIA/pub/381844

And for you Facebookers: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=119157021465436

The Telecom Council is working with CTIA Enterprise & Applications to promote innovation, startups, and entrepreneurs in the wireless industry by highlighting them at this year’s Fall CTIA show on the show floor and with stage time. Over 100 wireless entrepreneurs from every segment of the ecosystem applied to be included in this showcase. Applications were judged by a prestigious Council member panel based on standard Telecom Council criteria – innovation, momentum, viability, and management. Together with our judges from AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Marvell, Huawei, Qualcomm, Motorola and others, the Council is proud to bring 16 forward-thinking companies to the CTIA Enterprise & Applications audience at booth 908.

See you at the show on Oct 6 to Oct 8, 2010!

Mob4Hire 3rd Annual "Customer Week" brings team together in Calgary

When you're a micro-multinational doing business with a virtual team like Mob4Hire (see: http://tinyurl.com/2dasekt), you look for opportunities to bring the whole team together to discuss Big Important Things. And, of course, there's nothing bigger or more important than our customers! So, for the 3rd annual "Customer Week," we took a bit of summer down-time to do some strategic planning a few weeks ago in Calgary.

Pictured here is 90% of the Mob4Hire team huddled in some boardroom space at Calgary Technologies Inc.; from left to right around the table: Bruce, Allen, Dean, Dac, Randy, Richard, John and Paul (taking the picture is Stephen).

The five day sessions included reflecting on a year of developing and releasing Mob4Hire version 4.0 in April (and all the subsequent enhancements since) as well as "what did we learn from our customers?" to continue to make Mob4Hire the largest mobile testing and market research community in the world.

As you probably know (and unlike all other testing communities we're aware of), Mob4Hire allows for both "do-it-yourself" projects as well as having us manage projects on the Mob4Hire platform on your behalf (which gives us the unique perspective of being customers of our own platform) and we continue to make great strides in our usability and value that the community can provide for you!

There have been more than 350 projects posted in Mob4Hire so far, so we're beginning to see some real activity heating up on the platform. As most startups that have been through this growth phase, we're PASSIONATE that Mob4Hire solves your problems quickly, inexpensively, and with a great deal of value and quality.

So, while we're super happy with version 4.0 community platform, the growth and size of the community (we're at 48,000 Mobsters and over 1,400 mobile development companies registered!), and the progress of our business, just wait to see what we've got in store for the next year!

We're listening ... send your comments to support@mob4hire.com. And, thanks for being our customer!