Rebranding next step in mobile content provider's evolution

December 19. 2011 1:17PM

Rebranding next step in mobile content provider's evolution

Beginning next week, Exclaim Mobility will rebrand its corporate image as Snap MyLife, a move President and CEO Jiren Parikh said signifies the next step in expanding the company's offerings.

Exclaim Mobility began as a photo hosting and printing software company for feature phones, but was essentially written off by investors by the late 2000s.

In 2009, Parikh, using his personal finances, took over the Princeton company from within, and launched the subscription-based Snap service for photos. Since then, Exclaim Mobility has grown rapidly, from five employees to now 80 full-time employees and 16 contractors. The service has more than 500,000 monthly subscribers, and Parikh said it is adding more than 2,000 new subscribers daily.

Snap MyLife takes its new name from that of its flagship product, which allows smartphone users to upload photos, video and music from personal devices to a cloud server that can be accessed from other devices or shared.

"What cloud-based computing has done for a lot of services has really accelerated the life cycle of having products become a commodity," said John Williams, chief financial officer of Unity Mobile, a cloud-based company that provides tools for mobile website building. "They can be priced cheaper because it gets to the market so fast, and there's such a lower barrier to entry now for companies to start providing competing products, I think we are seeing pricing become more commoditized than we have in years past."

The growth of Snap MyLife is based on two strategies. Parikh has been developing relationships and acquiring other companies with software that can be integrated into the Snap MyLife platform, including the Oct. 31 purchase of cloud security application company SmrtGuard, which has been rebranded Snap Secure.

"Right now, security really resonates," Parikh said. "The reason that (applications) sell is not the socialization or the messaging and the fun stuff, but really, the utility components on the back end."

The other strategy, which Parikh used to drive subscriptions before it moved into smartphone platforms, was to create partnerships with mobile service providers to integrate the product into the carriers' billing platforms — and do marketing in-house.

"We're not really interested in their app stores," Parikh said. "The problem with apps is there's so many out there, and being highlighted or being on top of the heap only works so much. To really build a very scalable business, we found you have to invest heavily in marketing and advertising to bring users to our application."

As services like Snap MyLife grow, and consequently add more data to cloud servers, other New Jersey industries prepare to handle the storage and interconnectivity needed to expand mobile and wireless businesses.

"Consumers are now demanding ubiquitous connectivity to be able to access content anytime, anywhere and on any screen — whether it be an iPad, a smartphone or the television in their homes," Eric Shepcaro, CEO of Telx, said in an e-mail.

Shepcaro said the need for higher-quality cloud servers is a key driver of data center growth in New Jersey. Williams cited studies finding if a user cannot access mobile content within two to three seconds, they will move on to another application or website.

"Mobile devices, especially smartphones, are great for collecting and displaying information," Shepcaro said. "Cloud provides the opportunity to move resources as required based on demand, performance or other established reasons, and more mobile content will continue to drive both cloud and data center services."