LightPole delivers dynamic content to mobile users

Current mobile information offerings don’t really take advantage of the two-way nature of phones or relay information about transient events or changing opportunities, said LightPole, a San Francisco company launching a new mobile content service on Tuesday.

LightPole hopes to address that shortcoming, but it will have to get past at least one significant hurdle to gain wide usage.

LightPole’s content publishing system and Java-based client let users find information about nearby restaurants, events, and shops, and also potentially feed content back to publishers.

As an example, a phone customer could find himself with two hours to spare in lower Manhattan, said Doug Klein, CEO of LightPole. LightPole could feature a service from a company that does salon bookings in Manhattan. The phone user could check LightPole to find if that booking service has any salons nearby with openings during the two-hour window, and then book an appointment. Later, the user could add a review of the salon.

While companies such as the booking service could devise a browser-based offering for mobile phones, that’s a difficult and potentially expensive undertaking. “They want to provide a way for users to get access to content in a mobile fashion, but they might not have the resources or the money to develop a mobile application of their own,” said Marcus Colombano, chief marketing officer for LightPole.

Because the many phones and browsers have different-sized screens and operating systems, browser-based content often looks different on each phone. LightPole does the work to make sure its Java Micro Edition client works well on many phones. “Our system gives our content publishers the effect of reliable delivery with standardized display and delivery. They don’t have to worry about browser issues or device issues,” Klein said.

In addition, LightPole’s client can use a handset’s camera, phone book, and GPS, which many mobile browsers cannot access on their own.

The setup could be attractive to publishers because many of them can use systems they already have in place, such as structured data feeds, to link their existing content into LightPole’s back-end publishing system, Klein said.

LightPole is launching with eight customers. One is Hotspotr, a Wi-Fi hotspot location service. Users can access the mobile version by clicking on a link on the Hotspotr site to get the LightPole client sent to their phone via SMS. Once they have the client, they’ll see a bookmark to open the Hotspotr service. Clicking the link brings up a list of nearby cafes with Wi-Fi, based on zip code. Users can map a location, save it in a list of favorites, and share it with a friend. Users can also add a comment about the location.

LightPole users can make phone calls directly from numbers that appear in the client and send e-mails to friends about locations.

A service like Hotspotr’s is better than simply using Google Maps on a mobile phone, Klein said. “Points of interest that are hyperlocal or transient in nature won’t always show up in search,” he said. “Our publishing partners are interested in events or services that won’t show up in search.” As an example, the owner of a coffee shop might want to offer a special deal on a given afternoon when the shop happens to be empty as a way of drawing customers. LightPole can support such a dynamic service that might let users find one-time deals like that.

Other initial services on LightPole come from Yelp, Yahoo, Mappyhour, Bathroom Diaries, Platial, Zvents, and Heyday Books. End-users will have one LightPole client on their phones with multiple bookmarks of the various content feeds they use.

LightPole displays advertising on content pages, splitting revenue with publishers. Content publishers don’t pay anything to distribute content via LightPole.

The startup faces a hurdle that has continued to plague most developers of third-party mobile software: Phone users rarely download new software to their phones. That means the individual content publishers that sign on to use LightPole will have to encourage their users to download and use the client.