Kyte iPhone App

Posted by: Gannon Hall    Under: Product | Mobile Devices | Hey Kyte Fans,

We have some exciting news to announce: Kyte Mobile Producer for the iPhone is now available free for download from the Apple iPhone App Store!

Now you can use your iPhone to share photos on Myspace, Facebook, or any website, blog or mobile phone. You can instantly broadcast pictures as you take them, or create slideshows from your iPhone's picture gallery. You can even chat with your audience real-time! We’ve put together a short demo so you can check out a few of the cool things you can do with the app:

Happy Kyting!

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Kyte Platform 101

Posted by: Gannon Hall    Under: Product | Mobile Devices | Partners | Company | Hi Everyone – Robert Scoble’s provocatively titled post in TechCrunch yesterday, Why Kyte.tv will kill Qik and Flixwagon in cell phone video space, has caused quite a stir. As of this morning there are 129 comments, and we’ve been getting tons of direct email and website inquiries. We’ve got some exciting product announcements coming this summer, but given all the activity on the topic I thought now would be a good opportunity to provide an update on the Kyte Platform and some of our plans for the future.

The Kyte Platform Overview
Kyte’s strength doesn’t lie in any one feature (although I do believe each of our core capabilities are “best of breed”) - rather, our greatest strength and our competitive differentiation lies in the sum of the parts that constitute our platform:

• Production – We make it very easy to produce live or on-demand video content both online and on-the-go.
• Distribution – Kyte is not a destination. Our distribution model is about enabling content creators to reach and grow as large an audience as possible. This includes embedding the Kyte Player in their destination, reaching users on social networks through our social network applications, reaching mobile users through our mobile web and mobile application offerings, and providing enterprise-class development APIs for deep integrations.
• User Engagement – This is the chat component that Scoble loves so much. We support text, video and audio chat both online and via our mobile applications. Chat is a big part of what keeps users engaged with a Kyte channel.
• Analytics – Currently we provide basic analytics on content distribution and show views. Soon we are releasing the first version of the Kyte Dashboard, which will provide comprehensive analytics reporting and visualization.
• Monetization – Currently we support sponsored ad serving, including pre-roll video and post-roll display ads. Partners can also support ecommerce initiatives by integrating affiliate links for anything from music sales to merchandise. Support for third-party ad server technology and reference integrations are coming this summer, as well as various integrated e-commerce modules.

Kyte Mobile Offerings
Based on some of the comments to the Scoble post I think there is some confusion around our current mobile offerings. It sounds like some are downloading our J2ME app and thinking it is our live streaming s60 app. Let me try to clarify:

• Kyte Mobile Producer (S60) - This is our live streaming and one-click upload app for S60 3rd Edition mobile phones (Nokia N95, etc). This is currently in private beta: http://www.kyte.com/beta. If you’re going to compare our mobile live streaming capabilities with other vendors, this is the app to check out.
• Kyte Mobile (J2ME) - This is our Java mobile edition app. While it currently supports some video production, due to the limitations of Java on most devices the video quality is far inferior to that of our S60 Kyte Mobile Producer app. Also, it does not support live video streaming. Where Kyte Mobile for J2ME excels is content consumption and interaction capabilities, such as browsing, searching and viewing Kyte shows, Kytefeed channel activity updates, and multimedia chat (including video).
• Kyte Mobile Web - Kyte Mobile Web delivers Kyte content to (almost) any web-enabled mobile device, including the ability to search and browse Channels, watch shows and chat with other viewers.
• Kyte Mobile via Email - Users without a Java-capable or Symbian phone can still produce shows on the go. Simply emailing video or pictures to a unique Kyte Channel email address instantly produces a show. This means basically any Internet capable camera phone can be used to produce on the Kyte platform.

I should also add that in addition to live mobile streaming via Kyte Mobile Producer, we currently support live webcam streaming. This is available now to the general public and Kyte partners.

Who is Kyte for?
While our main focus is B2B, anyone can use Kyte, from individual consumers to major media brands. Let me try to explain.

There are basically two types of Kyte users (and by “user” I mean any individual or business that uses all or part of the Kyte platform):

1. Content creators – This is anyone from an individual consumer who wants to create a free Kyte channel to share video with their friends and family, to a major recording artist with hundreds of thousands of daily show views who wants to monetize their brand and grow their audience. This type constitutes the bulk of our users. Examples include everyone from Scoble, to Arianna Huffington to 50 Cent to storm chaser Klipsi. For commercial content producers such as these, Kyte is an end-to-end technology platform for the production and distribution of branded digital content.
2. Platform integrators – These are online publishers, social networks or mobile carriers who want to integrate our technology using our APIs. Our website www.kyte.tv is an example of what can be done online using our APIs. Other examples include O2’s O’chutney social network and bestfootballtricks.com.

Many partners, such as Spin.com, and Philippines news outlet ABS-CBN fall into both camps, in that they are both content creators and technology integrations.

So, the Kyte Platform is for anyone who wants to produce and distribute digital content to an online and mobile audience.

Our business model is built around commercial applications of this platform – this is how we make money. For the media and entertainment industry our platform solves a host of business problems around branded content distribution and monetization. This is why we’ve seen tremendous growth in this area and is part of the reason why Steamboat (Disney) and others invested in us.

For mobile carriers we provide the opportunity for competitive advantage and increased ARPU through mobile social networking, user generated and premium content. It is no coincidence that our strategic investors include Telefonica, NTT DoCoMo, Swisscom and Teliasonera.

I hope this helps clarify what the Kyte Platform is all about. Stay tuned for some exciting product announcements this summer.

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Kyte Mobile Auto Update

Posted by: Gannon Hall    Under: Product | Mobile Devices | Tips |

Worried that you might not be running the latest and greatest version of Kyte Mobile? Don’t be. Whenever we release a new version you will be prompted to download it when you launch Kyte Mobile and make a network connection.

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New Kyte Mobile Web Features

Posted by: Gannon Hall    Under: Product | Mobile Devices | Tips |

The Kyte Mobile Web application gets better with every release. Here are some of the highlights from the latest version, just released Monday:

• Kytefeed - now includes relevant chat messages, channel moderation alerts, and new trackbacks.
• Search - now you can search for Channels.
• Notifications - more AJAX-based notifcations for new shows, new slides (LifeStreams), live viewer count.

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Kyte Mobile Web on the iPhone

Posted by: Gannon Hall    Under: Product | Mobile Devices |

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