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Boomtown comes to BOKU, thanks for visiting Kara

July 27, 2010

screen-shot-2010-07-27-at-105742-amLast week Kara Swisher from the Wall Street Journal came to visit our humble offices here in San Francisco.  She recorded a video checking out the premises, and then an interview with a couple of the BOKU founders, Mark Britto, the CEO, and Ron Hirson, the SVP of Marketing & BD.   Her article published on Monday, 7/26.

Part of her angle was to investigate the intricacies of the mobile payments world, looking at how the behind-the-scenes parts of social gaming works.  Flashy gaming companies like Zynga, Electronic Arts, Playfish and Playdom frequently get all the glory; however, since these are companies with whom we partner, and their customers use BOKU to pay for many of their online transactions, we’re glad to see them in the spotlight and want to see them grow.  But it was fun to have the WSJ’s ace tech reporter for Boomtown come and shine a spotlight on what we do.  So thanks for coming to visit Kara - you’re welcome here anytime.

The video interview is embedded below.  Let us know what you think (did our hair look ok?) in the comments below.

Posted by David | Mobile Payments

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1-Tap Mobile Billing for Android

June 2, 2010

We’re excited to announce the launch of our BOKU for Android SDK with 1-Tap™ technology.

We’re testing some cool features that can help you monetize your mobile apps.  Check out the benefits:

  • Seamless in-app billing
  • 1-Tap™ mobile billing in 60 countries and 198 carriers
  • No user registration or login necessary
  • Potential for increased revenue and conversion
  • Easy mobile integration - just drop in our SDK

You can learn more over here:

http://www.boku.com/android/

… and see what other folks are saying like this piece in Techcrunch:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/02/mobile-payments-startup-boku-launches-in-app-billing-library-for-android/

Let us know what you think and we look forward to working with you.

BOKU Team

Posted by Ron | Mobile Payments

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BOKU Named to Top 25 Technology & Innovation Awards

May 20, 2010

Talk about keeping good company!  BOKU was just named as a top 25 company for the Technology & Innovation Awards.  Looking at the other folks on the list, we are very honored to have been selected.  We’ve used many of the folks products and services on the list and count a couple as partners.  We want to wish all of the other folks congratulations and look forward to seeing you tonight at the awards ceremony.

From the Business Times Website:

Please join the celebration, as we honor the Bay Area’s most innovative technology companies,
led by the most enterprising entrepreneurs.

Our editors and judges selected 25 of the region’s most outstanding companies as finalists from nearly 300 nominees.    Winners in 12 categories will be announced at a gala awards reception.

This is your opportunity to meet 25 of the best and brightest technology companies in our
region – all fueling the growth of jobs and our economy.

The finalists are:
Adchemy
Aster Data
Bizo
Blurb
BOKU
Imperva
Jigsaw
Livescribe
Medallia
ON24
Pandora
Qualys
Riverbed Technology
Rocket Fuel
RockYou
Salesforce.com
Scribd
SlideRocket
Splunk
SuccessFactors
UnityTechnologies
Workday
YuMe
Zoosk
Zynga

Posted by Ron | Mobile Payments, events

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BOKU speaking at ThinkTomorrow ~ Today - Tuesday 5/11

May 5, 2010

ThinkTomorrow ~ Today

BOKU’s SVP of Product & Marketing, Ron Hirson will be speaking on Mobile Payments and BOKU’s growth and opportunity, at ThinkEquity’s ThinkTomorrow~Today 2010 Summit. He’ll be covering:

  • BOKU’s background
  • The Current State of Mobile Payments
  • Carrier considerations
  • Merchant adoption
  • Path to monetization on mobile for merchants

He’ll be speaking on May 11th at 8:45A.M. in Ravenswood

To learn more or to register, please visit the ThinkTomorrow~Today 2010 Web site. We look forward to seeing you there.

Posted by admin | Mobile Payments, events

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BOKU at Digiday:Mobile

March 8, 2010

Come on out to Universal City to hear BOKU at Digiday:Mobile.

Ron Hirson will be on a panel with:

Moderator: Meaghan Schaefer, CMO, edo interactive
Speakers:
Darren Cross, Director of Business Development, Fandango
John Trimble, Chief Revenue Officer, Pandora
Ian Wolfman, Chief Marketing Officer, imc²
Jeanniey Mullen, Global EVP, CMO, Zinio
Ron Hirson, SVP Product & Marketing, Boku

They’ll be discussing:

The Mobile Commerce Experiment: There is a slew of mobile commerce experimentation starting to pop up on mobile networks and devices. From Pizza Hut’s mobile app which allows consumers to place pizza orders to P&G’s microsite which allows customers to purchase products through the Drugstore.com mobile site, branded direct response campaigns seem to be picking up steam fueled by mobile commerce applications. When will we reach a tipping point in the consumer psyche in regards to making purchases through a mobile Internet site or an App? eCommerce was a huge driver in the growth of Internet advertising; is this the final piece of the puzzle for mobile?

Hope to see you there.

Posted by admin | Mobile Payments

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Visit with BOKU - Barcelona or New York

February 15, 2010

Hi. It’s a busy week for us at BOKU with folks attending MWC in Barcelona and Engage Expo in New York.

If you’re at either of the two shows and would like to meet up, please email bd at boku dotcom.

Hope to see you there,

The BOKU team

Posted by bokunews | Mobile Payments, events

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BOKU is excited to announce a new round of funding and the launch of Paymo!

January 19, 2010

Today is a great day for BOKU, and we’re excited to share our announcements with the everyone. The first piece of news to share is a new round of funding for BOKU. We received $25 million in a round led by DAG Ventures with participation from Benchmark Capital, Khosla Ventures, and Index Ventures. We’ll use the funding to expand into new markets, add redundancy to our systems, and continue to refine and improve our security and fraud prevention systems. We’re incredibly pleased and flattered by this vote of confidence from our investors - it’s both gratifying and a great way to start 2010.

Our second big piece of news is the introduction of our consumer-facing brand, Paymo. While we love the BOKU brand, after exhaustive and global testing we’ve determined that Paymo is a universally understandable brand, irrespective of culture, language, or background that resonates with consumers. So the Paymo brand is what customers will see when they checkout online using their mobile phones.

We’ve had a whirlwind experience as a company with a lot of exciting activity since our launch in June 2009 (only seven months ago!) Today is another thrilling milestone in an exciting tenure as a growing, active company.

We’ve also received a warm reception from bloggers, writers, and pundits in the online and traditional press, who have been spreading the word today. The list of who covered our news is below, and we’ll keep adding to it as we see more stories come out.

Thanks to our customers, our partners, and our investors for all your support and confidence. 2010 is going to be an exciting year!
-The BOKU Team

•    All Things D
•    MSN Money
•    TechCrunch
•    VentureBeat
•    Moco News
•    Washington Post
•    Silicon Alley Insider
•    Virtual Goods News
•    Payments News
•    Paid Content
•    Inside Social Games
•    Alt Assets
•    Wireless Week
•    Fierce Mobile Content
•    Nonstop Tech News
•    Telecom Paper
•    SF Business Times
•    Digital Media Wire
•    THE Paypers
•    Strategy Eye

Posted by bokunews | Announcements, Mobile Payments

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Mobile Donation to Haiti

January 14, 2010

Many of you are aware of the tragic 7.0 earthquake that hit Haiti on Tuesday.  The impacts to this already impoverished nation are staggering and help of any kind is being sought.  We wanted to let you know of a program where mobile payments can be used for donations and we’re reaching out to friends and partners to ask folks to donate to the American Red Cross Relief for Haiti via texting “HAITI” to 90999.

This will work similar to mobile payments in that $10 will show up on your mobile phone bill. Mobile donations have *no* carrier fees.   BOKU is not the provider of this service, we just want to get the message out about this opportunity to help.

More details can be found here:

http://newsroom.redcross.org/2010/01/12/disaster-alert-earthquake-in-haiti/

and here:

http://www.redcross.org/en/

Thanks,
The BOKU Team

Posted by Ron | Mobile Payments, security

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Happy Holidays from BOKU

December 31, 2009

What an amazing year. We launched in June and have since reached quite a few milestones:

  • 58 countries (Estonia, who knew)
  • Great funding partners (Benchmark, Index, & Khosla)
  • Management team brought together
  • 1000+ partners including the top gaming companies on the internet and social networks

We’d like to thanks all of our friends, family, co-workers, and partners for making 2009 a phenomenal year.  Here’s to an even better 2010.

- The BOKU Team

BOKU Chocolates

Posted by Ron | Mobile Payments

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Direct Payments vs. Lead-gen

November 7, 2009

It’s been a week since the Virtual Goods Summit.  A great show put on by Charles Hudson and David Sachs.  The last session of the last day had some interesting fireworks.  Mike Arrington from Techcrunch traded words with Anu Shukla of Offerpal around the lead-gen business (great summary by VentureBeat here: http://bit.ly/2YLHIl).

I thought it might be worthwhile posting our thoughts on the space as we’re partnered with many of the payments aggregators to provide direct mobile payments, which means our direct-payment button appears in some screenshots near the types of offers that are under review.

We have built BOKU as a direct payments company, in the same category as Paypal, VISA, and other major credit cards.  We are purely focused on mobile payments.  BOKU does *zero* lead generation, CPA, subscription offers, IQ quizzes or the like. We enable customers to purchase virtual goods and currencies directly (not indirectly) via their mobile phone.  The offers that are being discussed in the blogosphere are around those companies that provide subscription services after lead-gen offers like quizzes, IQ tests, or wallpaper downloads, etc.   **BOKU does not provide such services.**

BOKU does not target an under-age audience, and avoids entirely the use of any subscription offers and lead generation techniques. In essence, we do the same things that VISA and Paypal do.  Our direct payment system is highly secure, and in lock-step with the policies and standards of the credit card industry.

Overall, we think it benefits the industry to have a open discussion around keeping customers safe as it relates to this lead-gen business. We look forward to the results of the efforts of platforms (social networks), games and offer providers to ensure that in the end the industry that we’re all working for, keeps the customer safe and secure, as they are the core of ours, and any business.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions. ron [at] boku dotcom or press [at] boku dotcom.

To view how our service works, see this video here:

Posted by Ron | Mobile Payments, security, social networking

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