Cosplay, Mobile and Portal Mash up :)

We were at the NUS Digital Media Forum Series and I had the nice opportunity to share about the portal business and how businesses can leverage off a portal to connect with their customers.

I cited a recent initiative by Minitoons, a Singapore owned gift and lifestyle retail store and how they took a relevant route of building an online game platform to drive retail sales, brand awareness and create stickiness for the community. Fans and gamers can buy their characters at the retail outlets and also purchase 'spells' to put on their online 'friends and foes'. The website to check out would be Voodoominis.

Well, personally the highlight was a great presentation on 'Cosplay and Singaporean Fan Culture' by Dr. Thang Leng Leng and Dr. Elizabeth Maclachlan from NUS and "Social Networking and The Mobile Internet...." by Mr. Hisham Isa from Buzzcity.

Buzzcity recently did a survey in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, North America and Western Europe and the results were definitely interesting to further understand the behaviour of mobile users. You can view the report on the Buzzcity website.

Mobile is certainly an 'old yet new' market to explore. While telcos are grappling on how to drive usage of their mobile services, behaviourial adoption would be something that everyone needs to learn and study. The survey by Buzzcity is certainly a timely one.

Some snippets:
> Nearly all (91%) members access the site and the mobile internet primarily via their mobile, most are not actually on the move when they log in, with an average 80% accessing the site while at home, at work or at a desk.

> The most cited reason for logging on to myGamma was to communicate with friends, with 75% wanting to "meet" their friends in the chat rooms, take part in networking activities or leave messages for one another.

> 35% of members have made a purchase online, with South Africans and Thais being particularly prolific buyers

Interesting stuff that companies can leverage from.

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