Tattletech Hot Seat with Mathys van Abbe, MobyPicture
The Kimengi opening party turned out to be a good place to chat with Amsterdam’s entrepreneurs and after a vigorous Foozball game in which I was partnered with Mathys van Abbe, CEO of MobyPicture I thought maybe it was good time to hear from the man that is leaving TwitPic in the dust. First, you must understand that I was threatened if we didn’t win, and the rules kept changing throughout the game, but in the end, we did win and I was allowed to live another day. Tattletech decided to put an end to it all and just buy the foozball table, so now it safely resides in my possession and is under new rules management.
Tattletech: What does the famous Herman Melville whale has to do with pictures? Why Moby Pictures?
Mathys van Abbe: Moby Dick was a vicious whale, biting off captain Ahab’s leg in the famous Novel by Herman Melville. Captain Ahab then spent the rest of his life chasing this whale. I think life itself is Moby Dick, and we’re chasing after it! Mobypicture helps you share your chase. Note: we made the whale smile and not so vicious….
Mobypicture is about sharing your adventures with your friends instantly, distributing your content to many social sites and services. Services like: Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Wordpress, Blogger, Hyves, Tumblr, Livejournal, Bebo etc.
Also whales are social animals. Did you ever hear them sing to each other under water over great distances? They’re sharing their adventures and use sonar to find food.
TT: What is your view on privacy and content rights on social media sites? How does Moby handle content rights issues?
MvA: There is a lot going on at the moment about privacy and content rights. My personal view is that I think people should be aware about what they do with their content and what the implications of publishing things online are. Not just for themselves, but also for the people being photographed or put on video. I ask my friends if it is okay to publish the picture or video before uploading. Moby is implementing the Creative Commons licensing. So the users can decide about the rights themselves.
TT: You support sharing with quite a few social media sites and networks, among them flickr – what is the main criteria for selecting which services to share with?
MvA: From a business perspective we decide on the size of the user base and the willingness and capabilities to promote our service to their users. The viral growth when implementing a new service is immense. If one user on a new social site/service uses Moby, many will end up on our website, where we have a chance to convert these in new users. Adding Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and the important blogging platforms was a no-brainer. But we’re also adding smaller local sites and services if we want to grow our user base in a certain demographic. Right now we’re implementing a platform for MTV in The Netherlands. The VJs and the users will be both able to post directly to the MTV websites.
TT: What was the most outrageous photo uploaded that you had to block/reject?
MvA: Last week there was a user who, we think, just selected a folder on his computer containing regular images. This folder contained some compromising pictures and these appeared on the website. We turned the settings for these from public to private quickly.
We don’t have a very strict policy about the content you can publish, other than that you have to abide by the Dutch laws. You distribute this stuff to YOUR social sites, so there are some things at stake! If you haven’t confirmed your account yet, we don’t show your content in the public streams like the homepage and the group and event pages.
I mostly like outrageous postings like one of a guy about to jump from an airplane (yes, with a parachute), or one of Maxime Verhagen (Dutch Foreign Affairs Minister) posting a picture of him right after he’d been reprimanded by the Dutch Prime Minister for taking a picture of the Ministry weekly meeting. Or those of newborn babies, only minutes old… Or videos of the first steps of kids etc.
TT: What are your future plans for enriching the offering? Any new features in the pipeline?
MvA: Oh, there are so many. We are now testing the video and audio additions, which is about to go live. We’re adding groups and events, for everybody to start and maintain. There are a lot of new platforms coming up, like Facebook, YouTube, Brightkite and many more. We’re working on the new iPhone App and also an Android and Windows Mobile version. Moby is integrated using our API in many Twitter clients, like Tweetie, Twittelator and Tweetdeck. I’m also really excited about the location based additions. There’s so much coming in the next few months!
– JLH and SM
