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Zokem is a mobile communications and lifecasting startup that enables users to automatically share their daily activities to their friends’ mobile phones, to the Internet and to social networking services, such as Facebook and MySpace.
Zokem takes people’s activity information from mobiles to the Internet, not the other way around as most of the existing services do. Zokem offers its users a completely new way to communicate and keep in touch with friends and family by automating many of the normally manual messages between people, where the content is created by people simply living their lives.
Zokem aims to provide its service to all users no matter what device or service they are using. Therefore, Zokem has built a native mobile application to all major platforms (Symbian, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Android, iPhone and Java), and it is integrated with all major social networking services to enable its users to share their lives automatically through one single channel. Users may also define what information they want to share with different services and friend groups, as in real life.
Zokem is one of over 200 startups from Finland participating in the BizSpark program. All startups, building their own software application, earning less than $1M/year of revenue, and that are privately-owned, can participate to BizSpark program.
“BizSpark has been an uncomplicated and easy partnership with nothing but pleasant surprises. It has helped us with tools that start-ups usually lack, and for young companies, like Zokem, there is only an upside in the business. BizSpark is also a good launching pad for being noticed globally.” Zokem CEO Ludovic Gaudé comments.
Startups get a MSDN premium subscription for three years, for each of their developers. Each subscription includes all of Microsoft’s Visual Studio and Expressions Studio developer tools, and all the platform software (Windows, Office, SQL Server, SharePoint, Exchange, etc) that they need to build and test the application. The majority of startups are also building web-based applications, which they’ll host themselves or though a hosting service provider like Nebula Oy in Finland, so BizSpark also provides free server licenses to put those applications into production. The production license allows unlimited use of Windows Server, SQL Server, BizTalk Server, SharePoint Server and Systems Center during the three-year membership.
Startups can enroll on the BizSpark program site. There is also a list of organizations (BizSpark Network Partners) any of whom can enroll you in your own country, or you can contact Microsoft directly.
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I thought after first glance that this is an acquisition article, because it says “and MySpace” under the Zokem logo.
As a social community tool this service actually scares me (maybe I am just the wrong target group). I installed it last night to see what it was really about. At first I just didn’t get it, why people would want to automatically feed to e.g. facebook their whereabouts, who they are calling, when they have a meeting etc. So enough for the test.
BUT… without realizing it, today I noticed my phone automatically connecting to Zokem, apparently the app is running in the background, and worse, logging all my customer phonecalls, calendar entries, and feeding them to the world :!
Thanks god the default privacy settings were set to NOT sharing, so no harm done, but I got pretty scared seeing my complete call feed on my profile (“called to 040123456″ 5 minutes ago”).
Conclusion, this is not for me, but I can think of many vertical uses where this app could actually add a lot of value. Think feeding your calls and sms history, as well as calendar entries to a CRM system for example. Or to a service that tracks and optimizes phone costs, vehicle/employee tracking or whatever professional use one may think of where data derived from your phone could be made useful.
I am not telling this couldn’t work for social networking, I just feel it will take time for people to trust the control of their lives on an app.
On the other hand, the service has been very nicely deployed, so congrats for that!