Make friends with a celebrity
2009-07-08 12:02
Cape Town - Have you ever wished that you could SMS your favourite SA celebrity? Or perhaps even receive an MMS with the latest news directly from your hero's phone?
Well, stop dreaming, and forget about the gossip columns, because it has finally become possible with a personalised MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) celebrity service called MyFamousNames.com.
The website, first launched on 1 February 2008, lists a selection of SA's favourite sport stars (eg AB de Villiers, Roxy Louw, Jonty Rhodes), TV stars (eg Izak Davel, Freedom Hadebe, Jo-Ann Strauss), music stars (eg Danny K, Van Coke Kartel, Kurt Darren) and other big names, who will send you weekly messages containing sound clips, images or videos, directly from their cellphones to yours. All you have to do is, register online.
You will pay only R5 per MMS and celebrities won't send more than one MMS per week. You will also be able to reply to the personal celebrity MMS that you have received, via an SMS. All fan mail is routed to the celebrities inbox, available to each celebrity online.
So, how was the concept born? Where did it all start?
According to MyFamousNames.com's managing director Bruce Tedder, it all started with a new cricket accessory and cricket star AB de Villiers.
"I had invented a new cricket accessory and wanted AB de Villiers to endorse it," Tedder told News24 from Ballito, KwaZulu-Natal.
But like many young inventors, "with no money, no knowledge of patent law and no time to market their inventions", he was faced with the question: "How are you going to market it?"
"Right there and then, MyFamousNames.com was born, a personal weekly celebrity MMS, with pictures," says Tedder. "The idea was to send every kid who bought the accessory an MMS every Saturday.
Of course, MyFamousNames.com was not just limited to AB de Villiers, but open to any celebrity or organisation who had a message to send, to registered fans.
In a nutshell, MyFamousNames.com is a celebrity and organisational communication tool, whereby at zero cost to the organisation or celebrity, personal MMS messages can be created and pushed to fans who have registered to receive such MMS content.
Says Tedder: "The key is that the celebrity or organisation must use solicited fans, the fans must want to receive the content and they will need to register to receive the content. This eliminates this horrible spam that arrive on one's phone every day from bulk push providers!"
Was it hard initially to convince celebrities to join the website?
"No. A lot of effort went into the design of MyFamousNames.com. It had to be a free service for celebrities or organisations and it needed to be secure. It also had to be novel and slot into a growth market, ie telecommunications and social networking," says Tedder.
"Having developed such a service which complied with all the regulations governed by Waspa (Wireless Applications Services Provider Association), celebrities could not but help understand it was a truly great opportunity to send their fans personal MMS messages from anywhere in the world, at no risk or cost, and have a revenue stream."
According to Tedder, the company uses "Super Agents" to reach celebrities that could potentially join MyFamousNames.com.
"Having read a book by Malcom Gladwell, called The Tipping Point, I realised that I may never singlehandedly reach all the celebrities that should ebb on MyFamousNames.com.
"Using a connector, a term used in the book to describe people who have a far reach in social circles, undoubtedly could shorten the space between MyFamousNames.com and the celebrities out there.
"And so we developed a re-seller called the 'Super Agent'. Super Agents generally know the celebrities personally or their agent, which opens doors for us," Tedder explains.
"We have yet to receive an application or request for a celebrity to join, whom we have needed to turn away."
Tedder says his company is conscious about protecting the social standing of all the celebrities who have registered, as well as minors who may wish to receive personal MMS messages from their favourite celebrities.
"We have built in processes and filters for all MMS messages to prevent harmful content going out to fans."
Is MyFamousNames.com exclusively for local stars and celebrities?
"No. Any celebrity or organisation can register for free from anywhere in the world," says Tedder.
"MyFamousNames.com has the capacity to deliver personal celebrity MMS messages to all major networks globally where necessary."
According to Tedder the original brief was a global social network service.
"We just have not had that cup of coffee with David Beckham, Bono or Mylie Cyrus yet," he adds with a smile.