Thumbplay Archive

Tonight the nextNY group held a business development session named, "The Business Development Discipline: Practitioners’ Roundtable". About 50 people attended the session where a variety of business development topics were discussed. Most of the discussion was around business development for "major" startups and large companies.

The evening’s speakers included:

• Chris Phenner – VP of Business Development, Thumbplay (left side of camera)
• Dan Rosenberg – VP of Business Development, Rave Wireless (right side of camera)
• Matt Milner – VP of Social Media, Hearst Corporation (right side of camera)

I was able to tape the first hour of the discussion and part one (30 minutes) is below. The other half of the discussion will be posted on Tuesday morning.

Earlier this year, the nextNY group held a workshop on hiring for startups. If you plan to do any hiring for your startup, the videos are a must watch.

NY-based Thumbplay has announced a partnership with MTV today to manage its mobile personalization offerings for several MTV properties including: MTV, MTV2, MTV Hits, MTV Jams and MTV Tr3s.

Thumbplay noted regarding the partnership, "(We) will power personalized content for MTV Mobile, including ringtones, applications, games, wallpapers and more. Fans will now enjoy the flexibility to purchase MTV-branded content a la carte or via subscription-based credits. In addition to expanded choice, MTV fans will also enjoy an online content locker that automatically backs-up purchased items to their account. MTV will promote the new service with marketing on-air, online and via MTV Mobile’s WAP sites. "

In our analysis of mobile monetization, we noted that Thumbplay has revenues in excess of $100 million a year. Earlier this year MTV partnered with Mzinga on mobile content distribution.