First post...

Well, finally I got "caught in the web", and I am now a proud member of the bloggers community...

First, let me tell you a little about myself: My name is Ofir Leitner and I am the Founder of GamearraY, a start-up company backed by JVP Studio. GamearraY develops a platform for user-generated mobile content (currently specializing in games as the name suggests...). Our platform empowers users and let them personalize and customize games, share them with their friends and play them both online and on their mobile (And we have an underlying technology that allows us to work cross-platform on all Java-compliant devices).

My motivation to start this blog was the current discussion regarding next generation mobile content. Operators are talking about it, Aggregators are talking about it and content providers are talking about it. Problem is no one know *exactly* what "it" is...

One of the events that made me understand how "burning" this issue really is, was the Orange Partner Camp at Cadiz that took place in October 2006 (in which GamearraY was a finalist in their innovation contest).

Just by looking at the sessions list, it was clear that the Orange Group (like other operators) is putting real efforts on finding the next generation mobile content. The sessions included among the rest: "Let's talk about user generated content", "Let's talk about Communities and Web 2.0" and "Let's talk about next generation content services". Not to mention the abundance of sessions on gaming, animations and videos.

Since mobile content is suffering from some stagnation, it is now clear to everyone that something has to change. Whether it is the content itself, the business model, the value chain or whatever else. In any case, even after finding the "formula" to make it all happen, the challenge is still the market acceptance, and as we know, this takes time... So now is the window of opportunities for all of us out there to get it right.

Even though it seems nobody has the solution yet, there are a few prominent directions that appear to contain the answers. These include changing the business model to ad-based (and free for the users themselves), user-generated content, web/mobile convergence and true mobile communities (it really boggles my mind why this didn't happen yet). In addition to these that can apply to all content types, each and every content category has its new developments as well. For gaming, multi-player and social gaming seems to be two of the most promising directions nowadays, and some people (including myself) are also talking about the first mobile MMORPG, or maybe the more accurate term should be MMMRPG (or M3RPG in short. And don't bother, I already registered that domain :)

Anyway, since I just got started and there's so much happening out there, I will try over the next couple of days to update this blog as frequently as possible. I also appreciate any comments since "we are all in this together", "2 brains are better than 1", "add your own cliche here" (We spoke about user generated content - didn't we?...)

But seriously, let's keep this discussion rolling, there are many angles to cover and they are scattered all around the globe... I am sure we'll all have fun in the process (and don't forget to tell your friends...)