Webslingers

By: Ken Schachter
Long Island Business News
July 4, 2003

In a North Shore street dappled with trendy restaurants and gift shops, two wireless insurgents are plotting a revolution.

In modest digs perched atop a Daniel Gale Real Estate office, David Harper and William Munch are making an audacious move to put bare-bones Internet power - literally - in the palms of mobile-phone users.

The two founders of Wireless Ink (www.winksite.com) are peddling tools that let users of mobile phones - actually any computer with an Internet link - build their own mini-portals like little homes on the digital range.

In a concession to the limited bandwidth on most mobile phone networks, the portals are the essence of text-based simplicity. Within minutes, users can build a site with features including a journal (blog in Netspeak), newsletter (zine to the cognoscenti), chat room, links, e-mail function, instant poll, guest book and upcoming events.

Uses can range from a window inside the world of 18-year-old Tangentgirl ("I'm blonde hair/hazel eyed, geek. That pretty much sums it up.") to a wire into Fuse, an edgy Cablevision Systems music channel that lets its techno audience make requests and comments via computer or handheld ("Vin diesel is da finest actor w muscles oh damn!" noted 21-year-old Gisela of Dallas).

"In the brave new world of the mobile Internet, we're at the cutting edge," said Munch. Part of the excitement involves the interplay of mobile phones with that other staple of modern life, TV.

The Fuse portal lets phones "interact with live TV," noted Harper. "Their concept is that their fans are their network."

But Munch and Harper are not limiting their net to the Clearasil crowd. The two-year-old company is promoting the portal's business collaboration tools. Wireless Ink already has built a site for the Huntington-based Chamber of Commerce Regional Business Partnership that lets members check events on a moment's notice, and a site is being prepared for members of the Long Island Software and Technology Network. A deal is in the works with an unnamed tech company to provide a mobile connection for its workers.

Building on the Fuse momentum, the community-building site also is being touted for its potential in promoting brands. "Coke could go out and offer it to their 100 million customers," Munch said.

To help blaze its trail, Wireless Ink, formerly named Wink Interactive, has tapped some faces familiar in Long Island technology circles for its advisory board: Yacov Shamash, vice president for economic development at SUNY Stony Brook; Francis Murphy, president of Emerging Technology Ventures Inc., a company that advises technology companies; and Lewis Knopf, chairman of the Long Island Software and Technology Network and former managing director of collaboration services at Reuters.

Also on the board is Richard Lippe, a partner in Mineola-based Meltzer, Lippe, Goldstein, who is spearheading a fundraising round from angel investors, including himself. In the latest round, $250,000 has been raised so far, bringing the company's funding thus far to almost a half million dollars. That could go higher as Harper and Munch seek an additional $150,000 in the latest round.

To marshal its funds, the company has "treated each dollar as its last," Lippe said in a letter to potential investors. Underscoring the lean-and-mean philosophy, Harper proudly noted that the Wireless Ink conference table used to be his kitchen table.

Also hovering in the ether around Wireless Ink is digital prophet Howard Rheingold, who stays in close touch with Harper and has promoted Wireless Ink on his Web site. Rheingold's book "Smart Mobs," (www.smartmobs.com) tells of how mobile and pervasive computing is molding new group dynamics, from online auction hounds to political demonstrations.

Still, the startup faces some thorny problems. For one thing, Munch, a marketing expert, and Harper, a technologist, must reach the inner sanctums of telecom giants like Verizon Wireless, Telefonica, AT&T Wireless, Sprint PCS, Cingular and T-Mobile.

The game plan goes like this: They sell carriers on their product. The carriers rebrand the software under their names. Mesmerized customers access the sites and increase their phone usage. Happy carriers watch their revenues spike. Ecstatic Munch and Harper are swept up in a technological wave as their company becomes a wireless-era Yahoo!

One competitor to Wireless Ink - though its feature set is far slimmer - is New York-based Upoc. That company offers SMS (short message service) communities for people with shared interests on wireless phones. Upoc offers promotional communities for the latest flicks (want to talk about "Charlies Angels: Full Throttle"?) and has snared a deal with Verizon Wireless.

Not surprisingly, nearly everyone wants a piece of the real estate on mobile phones, and Upoc's vtext service is far from the last word. Also vying for consumer time on Verizon phones is a community site called blah! and instant messaging services from Microsoft and America Online.

Key to the entry of Wireless Ink, however, is its persistence, Harper said. Unlike instant messages, entries on Wireless Ink remain and can be accessed later.

Once Wireless Ink cracks the telecom lineup, however, it will still confront a cultural issue: PC-centric Americans aren't used to pecking away at tiny mobile phone keys and viewing data on screens about the size of a Ritz cracker.

"The market outlook is that we're still at the early stages of wireless data adoption in the U.S.," said Charles Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research. "Only a limited percentage of the population uses these wireless data services."

According to newly released statistics from the Federal Communications Commission, only one percent of the U.S. telecom industry's $76 billion in revenue in 2002 was generated by data. Ninety-nine percent was gab.

Europe, Japan and Korea have been quick to warm to wireless data because their home Internet structures are less developed and people are more likely to spend time on public transportation instead of being stuck on the Long Island Expressway.

"It's really not the way people think about using their phones," said Golvin, who sees the most short-term potential for mobile phone messaging in urgent data feeds such as weather and stock alerts. "We have a tremendous learning curve to climb."

Still, some progress has been made. An estimated 11.9 million, or 8 percent, of the 141.8 million U.S. mobile phone users at the end of 2002 subscribed to a mobile Internet service, with 2.3 million more subscribing via data-only devices.

And carriers, who have been watching rates for wireless voice decline, are eager to promote "M-Life" style functions (photo phones among the latest) to bolster revenues.

Meanwhile, Munch and Harper are finding potential users in some unlikely places. "We're talking to a political campaign," said Harper. "People who donate money want to know the latest news." The company also is promoting the portals as business collaboration tools.

The company also is in talks with San Francisco-based Macromedia Inc., a software company best known for its Flash animation on the Web.

"We're moving from a text-based environment to a more dynamic interface," Harper said. "Next year you'll get full streaming video on your phone."

The message from Wireless Ink: Don't hang up.