Agreement Includes ZuCast Media Delivery & One-Click Image Uploading
3GSM World Congress, Barcelona, Spain, 14 Feb 07 - ShoZu Inc. today announced an agreement with Azteca Interactive, the mobile and interactive arm of TV Azteca, to distribute TV Azteca content to mobile phone users in the Mexican and Latin American market through ShoZu’s ZuCast media delivery service.
TV Azteca, one of the two largest producers of Spanish-language TV programming in the world, is part of Grupo Salinas, the $5 billion Mexican group that also owns Iusacell and Unefon, two of the country’s four mobile service operators; Banco Azteca, Mexico’s fastest-growing bank; and Grupo Elektra, Latin America’s largest white-goods retailer.
The TV Azteca network of websites offers photo and video sharing, blogging, and a variety of other community services to more than 1.5 million active registered users in Mexico, as well as to Spanish speakers in the U.S. and other Latin American countries. The new partnership will enable community members to subscribe to multimedia ZuCasts of TV Azteca content in categories such as news, sports or telenovelas. These video clips will be delivered to the phone automatically, with the potential to extend the service to include related items such as ringtones and wallpapers.
In addition, users will be able to upload photos and video clips captured on their mobile phones to the Azteca sites with a click, embed any image in a blog, and exchange site message postings directly from the handset. This strategy will help the conglomerate’s interactive division further build its presence in the mobile channel.
When the services go live in May 2007, users will be able to download the ShoZu client software to supported phone models at no charge from either www.shozu.com 
or www.tvazteca.com .
“Every major media company is searching for ways to further its content distribution capabilities in new media and to allow users to view content on their terms. TV Azteca believes the ZuCast service is an innovative and user-friendly solution that will enable more people to see TV Azteca content on their cellphones. As well, the ability for community members to upload photos and other content to our sites will help to build loyalty and open new sources of revenue,” said Tim Parsa, Senior VP of New Media for TV Azteca.
“This agreement not only extends our reach into Latin America but also opens the door to a wide variety of opportunities even beyond the Azteca community, including introductions to the mobile operators in Mexico through Grupo Salinas’ connections and the possibility of doing business elsewhere in the Americas through other Grupo Salinas properties,” said Dean Wood, Senior Vice President, Commercial for ShoZu. “At the same time, it increases our overall market traction and again demonstrates the power of the ShoZu platform for enhancing Web 2.0 services such as photo sharing and social networking.”
ShoZu’s ZuCast media delivery service provides automated, zero-click delivery of videos, photos, music, games, news and other user-selected content directly to the mobile phone. ShoZu’s proprietary data replication technology allows files to be downloaded invisibly in the background without the need for users to open a mobile phone browser, perform complex multi-click navigation sequences, wait for pages to load, interrupt phone calls, start over in the event of a dropped connection, or sync to a PC.
The company’s Share-It service enables users to upload photos and video clips captured on their camera phones with fewer clicks, at higher resolution and to more Web destinations than any other method. Users also have the unique ability to add titles or tags after uploading, exchange comments between Web and phone, and upload any image to multiple destinations for a single data fee. Current destination options include online communities such as YouTube, Buzznet, Flickr, Kodak EasyShare Gallery, MSN’s Windows Live Spaces, Textamerica, Webshots, Pikeo and Moblog.uk; personal blogging sites Blogger, TypePad and WordPress; citizen-contributed photojournalism sites such as CNN, the BBC and Scoopt; and any FTP or email address.
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