Palo Alto-based SayNow is a neat little tool that's feeding the MySpace beast. Musicians drop a widget or link into their MySpace page that allows fans to leave a voice message. But this is also a marketing tool for the musician: users who leave a shoutout are opting in to receive updates from the artist via text or voice messages on their cellphone. What's more, the artist gets a live view of his subscriber stats (and how many fans actually listened to the message) in his account. There's no reason why you couldn't use the widget on Bebo, hi5, Friendster, Multiply, Piczo, Tagworld or elsewhere, but they're targeting MySpace right now and I think that's the smart choice. They're also doing some clever MySpace marketing - creating a profile page for the company itself as a way to hook into the community.
SayNow is funded (although they won't disclose the amount) and the execution is top notch. They're also signing up the right acts - featured artist Terra Naomi, for instance, shot to fame a few weeks ago after posting her track "Say It's Possible" to YouTube. This is one occasion where doing deals with mainstream artists would be a big turnoff - the up-and-coming bands on social sites are an ideal match. The company hopes to make money by inserting ads in the messages sent to subscribers.
Mobile and MySpace are a potent combination, and SayNow isn't the only player here. Supcast is also bringing voice and text messaging to MySpace. Meanwhile Where, Umundo, Abazab, Mojungle and even Photobucket are adding cellphone photos and videos to America's number one social site. And while MySpace is crippling the functionality of Flash-based services in reaction to the recent MySpace hack, it doesn't seem to be limiting this market's growth.
All the early signs suggest that SayNow will be a success - good idea, well-executed and great positioning in this market. The only unknown is whether MySpace will continue to throttle the economy that's growing up around it.
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