Thumbplay News

NEW YORK, January 22, 2008– Thumbplay® (www.thumbplay.com), the largest and fastest growing mobile entertainment content destination in the U.S. (Nielsen Mobile, Q3 2007), today announced that it has been chosen by AlwaysOn as one of the OnMedia 100 winners. The OnMedia 100 signifies the top emerging technology companies that are creating new business opportunities in the creation of marketing tools, services, venues, and advertising, branding, and public relation campaigns. Thumbplay was specially selected as one of the top digital media, marketing, and advertising companies by the AlwaysOn editorial team and other industry experts spanning the globe, based on a set of five criteria: innovation, market potential, commercialization, stakeholder value, and media buzz.

Thumbplay and the other OnMedia 100 Top Private Companies will be honored at the OnMedia conference scheduled to occur on January 28-30, 2008 at The Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York City. This two-and-a-half day executive event will feature technology CEOs from Silicon Valley leading presentations and high-level debates with the global advertising and media establishment, about disrupting user behavior and creating new opportunities in the worlds of media, advertising, marketing, branding, and public relations.

Fifty of the top CEOs from the OnMedia 100, including Thumbplay's CEO and founder, Are Traasdahl, will present their market strategies to a panel of industry experts in a "CEO Showcase."

"The OnMedia 100 winners have excelled in key strategic areas in the advertising, marketing, public relations, and promotion industry," said Tony Perkins, founder and CEO of AlwaysOn. "We congratulate them for their success in introducing new tools, services, and venues for marketers to have at their fingertips and for use to take their business to the next level in innovation."

The OnMedia 100 was selected from over hundreds of companies, nominated by a panel of industry experts in the online ad service, technology, community platform, mobile advertising, marketing, and Web analytic sectors from around the world.

With more than 75,000 pieces of mobile entertainment content under license, including ringtones, wallpapers, games, videos, voice tones and text-based services, Thumbplay has built a strong consumer following and gained broad recognition as a leader in the direct-to-consumer mobile content space. During the last quarter of 2007, Thumbplay announced deals to integrate its mobile entertainment content catalog into the Web and mobile portals of AOL and MSN Mobile, as well as iLike and Qloud, two of the Web's leading social music discovery services.

A full list of all the OnMedia 100 winners can be found on the AlwaysOn Web site at http://www.alwayson.goingon.com.

"We're pleased that Thumbplay's extremely successful model for the direct-to-consumer marketing of mobile entertainment content has been recognized by AlwaysOn," said Are Traasdahl, Thumbplay's CEO and founder. "I share this award with the rest of our management team, which has leveraged its track record of building significant businesses in mobile, online, media and technology sectors to provide millions of U.S. consumers with the best available mobile entertainment content discovery experience."

About AlwaysOn
AlwaysOn ignited the open-media revolution in early 2003 by being the first media brand to launch a community blog network. In 2004, AlwaysOn continued to lead the industry in innovation by engaging its bloggers in a social network. AlwaysOn is also revolutionizing the media business by applying its open-media principles to its executive event series (OnMedia NYC, Venture Summit East and West, OnHollywood, The Broadband Digital, Stanford Summit, and GoingGreen) and quarterly print "blogozine". No other media brand has dared to create such open interaction with its readers and event participants.

About Thumbplay
Thumbplay, Inc. is defining the mobile entertainment experience for U.S. consumers. As the largest and fastest growing mobile entertainment content destination, Thumbplay gives consumers access to the broadest and deepest catalog in the industry, spanning audio, video and gaming content from the leading music labels and artists, game publishers and media companies. Its innovative delivery and marketing platform makes it easy for users to discover, manage, store and share mobile content online and on their wireless devices.

Headquartered in New York City, Thumbplay was founded in September 2004 by Are Traasdahl and Evan Schwartz. It is backed by Bain Capital Ventures, SoftBank Capital, i-Hatch Ventures, Redwood Partners, New Enterprise Associates and Meritech. More information can be found at www.thumbplay.com.

Labels: press-release

posted by Thumbplay at 4:52 PM