After the boom of MySpace and YouTube, it's come clear the existence of the teen market and more importantly how big it is. Umundo is a product which exemplifies this market and mashes together three things the youth really appreciates: cellphones, online video clips, and MySpace.com.
The idea is quite effortless and mostly self-explanatory. Take a clip, MMS or e-mail it to video@umundo.com, and collect it later by entering your phone number or e-mail on the homepage. That's all there is really to it. No registration, after you collect the clip it's yours and then you can with literally a click do whatever you want with it.
Two most important uses I can think of with Umundo is posting clips to Google, Yahoo, iTunes and MySpace (copy/paste code for MySpace; Umundo makes it really easy) and also the RSS functionality: subscribing to your friends' clips. Whether this market will appreciate the RSS' functionality or not is questionable, but I'm sure the MySpace 'pre-integration' will go places.
Although when you have such a transparent and easy-flowing system, there are of course a few problems that face you right in the eye. Marshall Kirkpatrick identifies that since there are no accounts, the ability to delete a video is in-existent (while it is possible to delete a whole feed; as in all video clips from a specific phone number). And in a world of cell-shame, where an inappropriate clip is taken then passed on, and so on, no delete function is an extremely bad thing that could cost this service. Also, the fact that there are no strings attached (no pun intended) to a specific phone number makes it hard to remember which number belongs to whom in the RSS feed. For example, is 0211394845 is Joan or John — only way to check it would be to go into your phonebook, etc. etc. — why even bother?
Umundo, I think will be an interesting service to watch, and it's success or failure will be heads-up to many other companies who are about to or already are trying such a thing. I'll also mention that Valley-based, yet-to-launch Adazab is doing the same thing.
