CTIA: UIEvolution to design mobile MySpace

LOS ANGELES--Application interface designer UIEvolution has perhaps one of the most eagerly sought after content contracts in the industry: MySpace’s mobile portal.

MySpace is rated is the number-one destination on the Internet, with millions of users putting up personalized Web sites and using the wired portal as a community communications and content swapping tool. So far, however, MySpace’s penetration into the mobile Web has been limited to deals with specific carriers like Helio for a mobile Web portal and messaging services.

UIEvolution consumer products studio director Travis Beaven said its deal with News Corp., which announced plan to make MySpace fully mobile at CTIA Wednesday, would be a much more comprehensive portal design with a unique downloadable application rather than a Web page optimized for a WAP browser. Beaven said he could not share any details about the new portal design, but he said UIEvolution has already begun development work on the application for News Corp. and has already shared its first live prototypes with MySpace officials.

UIEvolution has developed some of the more comprehensive applications portals for carriers and content brands in Japan and was the architect of the ESPN sidebar application that powers much of the sports-intensive content on Mobile ESPN’s handsets.
Beaven said rich portals built as specific downloadable applications are starting to gain cache with bigger brands as the carrier content decks become more crowded and the limitations of browser-based portals become apparent. Also as navigating through multi-tiered content portals has begun turning off wireless data users, the appeal of dedicated applications native on the phone are becoming more appealing, Beaven said.

“Carriers continue to use systems that shuffle what’s in the top folder, but they’ll always be one step behind their customers,” Beaven said.

News Corp. announced a big push Wednesday to bring its content mobile, using its new majority stake in Jamba to launch a direct-to-consumer sales push of its big media brands like “The Simpsons” and MySpace.

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