IPhone usage drives traffic for mywaves.com

By Gabrielle Kalika

July 30, 2008

Riding mywaves

Mobile video Web site Mywaves' unique visitors surged in the second quarter of this year due to the ever-increasing use of Apple's iPhone to access the mobile Web.

The site at http://m.mywaves.com offers free, short-form videos, of which an estimated 255 are watched every minute by the 300,000 daily unique visitors. The Mywaves mobile site experienced a 25 percent growth in traffic for the second quarter, which can be directly correlated to the considerable jump in iPhone usage.

“Better phones, networks and free video entertainment all make for a better consumer experience,” said Susan Cashen, vice president of marketing at Mywaves, Sunnyvale, CA. “In addition to consumer traffic we’re seeing a similar uptick in industry interest in going mobile.

“From content owners like the networks, MTV, Sports Illustrated, all pushing to get their content in front of mobile consumers  in as many channels as possible, to handset manufacturers looking to pre-load phones with differentiating direct-to-consumer apps that help them compete, and brands showing far more interest in exploring new ways to connect with the mobile consumer,” she said. 

Music, celebrity, comedy and sports videos from content partners such as MTV, Sports Illustrated, Playboy, CBS, Fox, SpikeTV and VH1, continue to be ranked as most popular with the mywaves global user base.

“We’ve seen a real spike in interest in the professional content that’s core to mywaves great, fun, short-form video from the likes of MTV, Sports Illustrated, Fox and the like,” Ms. Cashen said.  “We’ve seen a 30 percent increase  in video views in quarter 2 over quarter 1 and our content plays a big role in that boost for us.”

The mywaves service is available for 3G, EDGE, EV-DO, WiFi, and WiMAX networks.

It is a free, ad-supported service that claims to have amassed the largest mobile video audience in the world, while offering advertisers the ability to interact with mobile consumers via video entertainment.

“We attribute growth to our content:  Professional programmed video, short-form, very entertaining for our mobile consumers,” Ms. Cashen said. “We’re growing our content offering and that helps keep our users engaged and coming back to watch/enjoy more.”