The moment cellphones started coming with cameras and video, anyone who owned one suddenly had the ability to grab candid shots of any moment. This opportunity has spawned a variety of websites which offer people a chance to send a photo text message to a special email address or number which will publish that photo to their account automatically.
Built for competition, Moborazzi is a community made for those who can’t live without their camera phone. By clicking and sending the photo to the specified email address, it is then uploaded to your account and displayed for others to view. Although the website is less than a year old, Tom Boilard has continually worked to build Moborazzi into what he hopes will become a widely used service.
What inspired you to launch Moborazzi?
Just about everyone has a mobile phone these days and very few know what to do with the photos they have taken with their camera phones. Most will just delete old photos to make room for new. I developed Moborazzi to make it easy to get the photos of your phone and have some fun with them at the same time.
How has it grown since your launch in April?
Moborazzi has not grown in users as much as I hoped since it’s public launch. I attribute this to simple exposure. No one really knows Moborazzi exists and I do not have the marketing budget to execute a targeted go-to-market campaign. My initial goal was to gain the attention of investors first, obtain some capital, and then use a portion of the capital for going to market but it turns out to be a chicken and egg thing, the investors want to see traction first before they will consider investing. This has not discouraged me in the least though. A real creative marketing partner would definitely help. I am a technical person with a bit of marketing knowledge but my brain likes to do one thing at a time so if I focused on marketing then Moborazzi would suffer technically.
Before Moborazzi, what other web applications have you built?
I started programming the web back in 1997 when I was marketing a software product I developed called SoftMC, a program for controlling live sound gear. I am the founder and developer of Renovators.com and Mobleo.net. I am also one of the architects/developers of one of the leading mobile phone music applications utilized by several major mobile phone carriers throughout the world.
What have you enjoyed most about developing Moborazzi?
I enjoy conceiving of an idea and the thrill of making it come to life. I enjoy setting goals for myself and reaching them. But most of all I enjoy the flipping of the switch and watching what happens when the public can reach a site that I have created for the first time. I simply enjoy the challenge of it all.
I also enjoy battling with the funded competition. There are many companies in the same niche as Moborazzi some with over 7 million in funding. They definitely have a leg up on me in the marketing area but technically I believe that Moborazzi can go toe-to-toe with any of them and I enjoy that.
What separates your website from the competition?
There are many sites out there today that allow you to post a photo from your mobile phone to the web for the world to see but Moborazzi is much more than that. Moborazzi is about sharing special moments in life as they are actually happening.
Photos taken with your phone and posted to Moborazzi are broadcasted to your friends phones instantaneously (if you choose to do so) so they share in the moment. Your friends can comment on the photo by simply replying to the photo they receive. They do to have to open their browser and go to the web to comment like on most other sites. These comments initiate a two-way conversation with the person who posted the photo using the photo as context and Moborazzi saves these conversations along with the photo for posterity.
Moborazzi also offers a much better photo browsing experience compare to it’s direct competition. Using Moborazzi’s Dynamic Timeline you can view your personal photos on a draggable timeline where you can drag by day, month, or year. This makes it very easy to browse and locate your photos in relation to time. It’s very easy to use and unique to Moborazzi.
Moborazzi has a full-featured Facebook application where the core functionality of Moborazzi is available on Facebook and centers around your Facebook friends.
I also believe that Moborazzi offers a better overall web experience with better search and privacy features etc.
If you were to retire tomorrow, do you feel like you’ve done everything you have wanted to do?
Hmmmm interesting question. Not yet. I’m not sure if I will ever retire completely. To me what I do is not a job it is fun. I have so many ideas and not enough time to develop them as it is.
Do you have any goals that you’d like to fulfill before Moborazzi reaches the one year mark?
I believe that I have reached the majority technical goals I have set for Moborazzi sans the iPhone application which I am developing now which should be complete before the one year anniversary. If all goes well it should be released sometime this winter.
The main goal now is to gain exposure and build traction. I would like to find a creative marketing partner who is as dedicated to Moborazzi in a marketing and business development sense as I am technically for a share of the company.
Do you have any advice you would like to share with others interested in launching an online service of their own?
Don’t be discouraged by the size of an idea. Just break it up into small reachable goals and start on your way. Nothing happens overnight it all takes time. I find some of the more fun and interesting goals require solutions that I have no idea how to accomplish. I just approach these goals with confidence knowing that I will reach them and I don’t give up. Also make sure you are having fun or don’t bother.
Also, I believe the days of launching a website and gaining traction through organic traffic generated by the search engines are long over. If you are launching a serious web business you will need some capital to get it off the ground. This is exactly what Moborazzi is facing now. I believe we have a great product but we have no capital to go to market.