The Push Ringer

Just got the word about a cool new mobile personalization service called “Push Ringer”:

Push Ringer reverses the common ringtone model. It enables a caller to push an outgoing ringtone to the receiving phone allowing the caller, not the called person, to set the tone. The chosen Ringer is transmitted to the recipient's handset and temporarily overrides the phone's pre-set ringer. The ringers can comprise audio, video, animations, avatars or flash files. Closing the loop, if the called person likes the ringtone, the service also enables him or her to instantly buy a copy of the ringtone for his or her own phone. Emotive's Push Ringer moves beyond traditional mobile personalization by both adding value to the ringtones users purchase for their own phones and providing content recommendation and impulse-purchase opportunities to the users' friends, family and coworkers. This new technology represents a vastly more active, expressive and compelling form of call personalization than exists in today's ringtone market which is otherwise showing signs of leveling off at only about 6% of mobile subscribers, worldwide, The Push Ringer leverages rapidly emerging broadband wireless telephone and wire-line VOIP networks.

[via Mobile Tech News]

This idea was actually presented here, at Xellular Identity, long time ago by Assaf Katan. Interesting how ideas spread around. So here is Tom Sella's comment given to Assaf at the time, that still should be taken into consideration:

"well, considering most (ok, i'm a nokia nut, so strike that "most" and read as "nokia", since that's almost all i've used for the past 10+ years) already have profiles (with timed activation) and groups to which you can assign a ringtone, and yet, most people (i know) don't bother with them, i'm not so sure you'll be able to find a justifiable market size to support such an application.

that, coupled with the fact that the phone maker actually manages the ringtone app (with the possible exception of the smarter phones), i have to say i'm a nay-sayer."

Comments

[Ricky Cadden]

I recently read about this service as well, and nearly emailed it to you, Xen, but I figured you were probably already aware.

Personally, I'm not sold on it. For one, I don't really see the point. Why would I want to pay for a service that I don't get to enjoy? I suppose you could argue the same for Ringback tones, but I think those are different, as I've commented before, they can be VERY useful, especially in a business setting.

However, the Push Ringer just doesn't seem like anything other than a prank tool. What's to stop "that guy" (we all have one in our contact list) from pushing a questionable ringer to your phone at an inopportune time?

What if my phone is on silent? Is that setting overridden, as well?