Recently, I came across a technology, JuiceCaster, which can enhance your mobile networking experience. I had the privilege of interviewing the founder and CEO, Nick Desai. Also, the firm just launched JuiceCaster 5.0, which is a major re-design of the Website, player, and mobile app. I am proud to say that I am one of the first sources to announce this launch. After reading this interview and if you are interested in getting this application, then you can sign up at JuiceCaster.com or just text “join” to 84462.
1) What is your background?
Nick is a mobile industry veteran, serial entrepreneur and visionary. Nick is co-inventor of Juice’s flagship, award-winning mobile social broadcasting application called JuiceCaster. For Juice, Nick has recruited a world-class management team, raised $10 million in investment capital from global leaders Qualcomm, Citizen’s Communications and 21 Ventures. Nick has led strategic positioning and business development for JuiceCaster, getting JuiceCaster distributed on 10 leading carrier decks worldwide.
Prior to Juice Wireless, Nick was a consulting partner at Sennari Games, which built Jamdat’s hugely successful bowling game. Nick was also a mobile strategy consultant to Vibe Magazine. In 2002, Nick joined Lemko Corporation as a principal member of the founding team. Lemko is a highly successful market leader in IP based cellular infrastructure solutions. Prior to Lemko, in 1998, Nick was Founder and CEO of Zkey.com – a multi-award winning market leader and early trailblazer in consumer mobile applications. Zkey was the first mobile address book and email WAP site available in the US, launching in 1999.
Nick is a frequent invited industry speaker and author. Nick holds an MS in Electrical Engineering from UCLA and a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from UC Irvine. Nick lives in Redondo Beach, California.
2) What is JuiceCaster?
JuiceCaster is an award-winning social broadcasting application for the mobile phone. JuiceCaster lets users easily capture and share pictures and videos form their cell phone to any other phone user or to their favorite online social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and more. JuiceCaster also lets users watch, comment on and rate pictures and videos from their friends or the world right on their cell phones. Use JuiceCaster to stay in touch with existing friends and to make new ones.
3) How does JuiceCaster fill a need in the social networking industry?
JuiceCaster fills the need of bringing social networking to our most important networking device – the mobile phone. JuiceCaster doesn’t just do this with a watered down web experience. JuiceCaster is BUILT for the mobile phone users. It’s designed with the understanding that when interesting things happen in our life, we are out living life. That is when we want to capture and share pictures and videos with our friends and family, or with the world. That is when we want to see the latest from our friends. JuiceCaster makes that an easy to use reality for all camera phone users.
JuiceCaster is the perfect complement to your online social networking life. You can make sure your Facebook and MySpace profiles are as up-to-date as your life by posting pictures and videos in real time from your phone. While being incredibly EASY to use, JuiceCaster has ALL the integrated features that a user wants for mobile social networking.
4) Give me some examples of how people build relationships using JuiceCaster.
I’ll give you two examples. Let’s say I have a cute dog. And I take pics and videos of my dog doing cute stuff at a park. And someone who I don’t know sees those pics and videos. And they have the same type of dog or they come to the same park. Now, they post pics and videos of their dog as comments to me. Now, we become JuiceCaster friends and perhaps friends in real life.
This scenario, be it with cars or with dogs or babies has happened many times on JuiceCaster already. Could this happen just online? Yes. But the phone adds the dimension of “real time” – as in I am at the park now, doing this thing with my dog now. That creates a sense of urgency and a greater personal relevance to other people who go to the same park.
Another example is my close friends who have an incredibly cute kid. Every time that kid does something cute, they take a video and post to their web site using JuiceCaster. Their family is all over the world. They can see and comment on the videos. Beyond the obvious connection of my friends with their far flung family, other family members, united by the videos of my friends’ kids, are reconnecting with each other, on JuiceCaster.
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