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Interview with Ken Thompson – CEO of Swarmteams Ltd.February 10th, 2007 at 11:59 pmBelow is an interview with Ken Thompson – CEO of Swarmteams Ltd. We hope you find the interview informative and useful. Please visit their website and check it out! www.swarmteams.com. You can also view a Flash Demo at: http://home.swarmteams.com/static/demos/SwarmteamsWebDemo2A_new/SwarmteamsWebDemo2A_new.html. TechAddress: Tell me a bit about your company, what it does and what’s your value proposition? Swarmteams: Our company is called swarmteams and our value proposition is to better connect groups. www.swarmteams.com. Mobile Group Messaging We have 4 products in the swarmteams family: “Swarm-it!”, “Swarm-pro!”, “Swarm-web!”, and “Swarm-api!” The individual value propositions are summarized in http://home.swarmteams.com/products. The benefits from each product are shown in the table below: An Individual(swarm-it!) An Organization or Enterprise (swarm-pro!) A Website or Web Application Owner (swarm-web! or swarm-api!) TechAddress: What makes your company stand apart from your competitors? Swarmteams: The four fundamental differences about Swarmteams are: TechAddress: What are some of the main features? Swarmteams: Swarm-it is for individuals in public communities All the features of swarm-it plus TechAddress: Who’s your target customer or audience? Swarmteams: Our end users are: Individuals, Communities/Networks, Distributed Enterprises. However, we reach these through hub organizations such as Virtual Community Owners, Membership Organizations, Information Publishers, Mobile Network Operators, Media Subscription Organizations, Distributed Enterprises, and eParticipation Organizations. We reach these hubs through partners, Mobile Phone Operators with large mobile phone user communities, Web Application developers who wish to include mobile group messaging in their apps., and Consultancies who work in various community spaces such as business and not for profit. TechAddress: Any new things in particular that you’re working on right now? Swarmteams: Just about to release ‘Smart Messaging’: If the system has to reach you and you have SM switched on it will check to see if you are present on your instant messenger by pinging its presence server. If it finds you the message will be pinged to you. If it does not find you then the message will be texted to you via SMS on your mobile phone. Then the Swarm Directory: a public directory of joinable tagged Swarms. Public swarms can either be free to join or by subscription. Among other things it’s a great way for people with content to ‘repurpose’ it for SMS and groups. TechAddress: Where do you see your company heading in the future? Swarmteams: A major area for us is the release of the swarmteams api, which will allow web developers to build mobile group messaging into their applications. This is particularly relevant to social software, CRM and team applications. Our research has indicated that helping these applications break-out to mobile is a HUGE MARKET. The current approach is to load the application on the mobile phone - this restricts it to high end phones in good coverage areas with constant download and upgrades to the phone software - we believe most people won’t want this. Our solution is that the web application sends text messages to the users phone which they can reply to our use to jump onto the web if their phones support it – that’s where we come in with the off-the shelf API. TechAddress: Any negative feedback or criticism regarding technology and services? Swarmteams: Most of our reviews have been very positive – here are all the ones we know of: http://home.swarmteams.com/newsitems/index/1 We have had some problems with the reliability of our SMS delivery - we offer global coverage through external providers and delivery responses can be patchy. We have addressed this by building in a portfolio of SMS providers with duplication of cover for key regions. We have built an SMS heartbeat which pings each of the providers to let us know their current round trip times. If it goes out of limits we can switch suppliers for a region. The second feedback we sometimes get is, “This is neat but what’s it for?” Because our ideas are so novel people sometimes don’t get it - like the early days of social software. We are building some wizards into the website to show people what it can be used for. Also some case studies are now being published: http://home.swarmteams.com/newsitems/index/2 TechAddress: So what would you say is the guiding principle behind your company? Swarmteams: For groups to work better. In today’s fast moving environment, groups need to learn from nature. TechAddress: What is the mission of your company and what are you bringing to the market that is innovative? Swarmteams: We think we are the only ones [in the mobile group messaging space] with a business model for organizations (with full supporting services) and not just individual consumers with all the commodity pricing pressures. TechAddress: Where are you in terms of funding and your lifecycle? Swarmteams: We have just released first versions of the product. Next 3 months is getting reviews and customer pilots. Will need to be generating revenue and/or using external funding early 2007. So we are keeping our eyes open for innovative funders who understand how we have positioned ourselves and see the potential.
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