MoiPal to Expand with Branded Goods, Mobile Payments in 2009

MoiPal bills itself as a mobile-oriented virtual world, and understanding this is key to understanding the company's shape and future direction. MoiPal intends to grow first by attracting young mobile-oriented users by marketing through shared interests, like promotions incorporating virtual goods sponsored by musical acts, and through making sure that users can pay for microtransactions from their handsets. MoiPal's stated goal for 2009 is to grow its userbase from 100,000 users to 1 million.

"The main differentiator for Moipal from other virtual worlds is that the avatar is doing stuff for you when you’re not there. That’s how it works on a mobile phone, otherwise it would use a lot of bandwidth expense for moving your avatar to different locations," says Joakim Achren, founder and CEO of MoiPal's parent company, Ironstar Helsinki. "Your Pal avatar is more like a virtual agent you give commands to.  It’s why the game is 2D, and why you don’t actually walk around the world. The avatar is your agent and you give it instructions, then come back and go, 'Ah-ha, so this is what happened.'"

The most avid users of mobile handsets tend to be young people, and young people love music. Right now MoiPal is running an extensive campaign that involves recruiting new users to their virtual world by embedding avatar creation widgets on the homepages and MySpaces of participating bands. Users who register through a band page get access to exclusive band-themed virtual fashions for their avatar to wear, and MoiPal is extending the promotion by giving away the sponsored goods as contest rewards.

"We’re also thinking about doing revenue share kind of deals with the bands," says Achren. "For now it’s interesting to get the bands and the artists, to get this new kind of engagement with the audience through the virtual merchandise. It’s like the band suddenly has its own game. It’s something most of the bands and record labels have had an idea for, to give the band its own game, and we come up with the solution for them."

Achren says that only a couple of bands enter the world regularly to interact with fans, but some are showing signs of more extensive commitment to MoiPal. The most conspicuous is Lordi, whose "virtual tour" of MoiPal is promoted from the virtual world's front page. The virtual tour is actually a new location for users to visit, where they can participate in specific quests and interact with members of the band as NPC characters.

"Your avatar can come up with pyrotechnics and things for the show," says Achren. "The band is there, and there are quests and portals we’ve worked out, and the band rewards you with things like their new single to put into your digital record player.  For bands, of course, there’s a lot of different options. They may take your avatar along on tour in the virtual world as a roadie. Today the band might say, 'The fridge in the tour bus is empty!', and your avatar reacts somehow."

Achren says that when MoiPal starts a promotion with a particular band, they can expect to see between 5 and 10% of that band's daily site traffic sign up for MoiPal. The promotion is usually effective through the first month it's available, after which new sign-ups from that source slow. Of course, Achren says MoiPal is currently signed with all of the big four music labels, including EMI, so that's a lot of artist pages to skim that initial 5 to 10% percent from. New promotions when a band is about to release a new album also tend to get numbers back up in the 5 to 10% range. 

"There’s also a lot of indy bands we’re interested in, so we’re now trying to focus on independent labels. It’s really an untapped market, nobody else is really trying these kinds of things yet," says Achren. "Virtual Greats are doing stuff with major artists, but in Europe, nobody is talking about virtual goods with record labels or artists yet."

The band promotions are a major piece of MoiPal's plan to grow the service's userbase from 100,000 to 1 million users in 2009. Other venues of grown have been a MoiPal Facebook app. About half of MoiPal's growth, which Achren stated was about 12% monthly, was fueled by simple word of mouth. Promotions like the Facebook app or the artist page widgets were mostly about trying to spark new word of mouth in interested users.

Most of MoiPal's payment revenue comes in the form of premium SMS text payments from European users. Users in the United States can pay from mobile through the Zong service, though Achren admits that most American users prefer PayPal or credit cards, which MoiPal also supports. Achren himself, though, hopes to see the number of users paying by mobile grow.

"It’s still the easiest way to pay outside of the States," says Achren. "In Scandinavia it’s the way to go. People are so used to sending a text message to pay for something."

Part of Achren's enthusiasm is fueled by the way mobile payment providers have opened up entire regions for MoiPal. Essentially all of MoiPal's Eastern European users are serviced by a single mobile payment service called Fortumo that Achren recommends very highly.

"I’ll say I wouldn’t try getting into Eastern Europe with anyone else," says Achren. "The traditional way of getting there is a lot of paperwork, and Fortumo is a really easy way to go. The guys there are really great as well." 

By contrast, MoiPal is having more trouble monetizing users in Southeast Asia due to issues with securing payment providers' services. The region isn't serviced by one dominant mobile or other type of payment provider comparable to Fortumo, Zong, or PayPal.

"There's no service there where you can just create an account in on the web, and pick out what price point you want. You really have to talk to the people, meet them, give estimates of what you’ll make. Zong and Fortumo just give you the right to start doing stuff straight away, and you don’t have to give them forecasts of how much money you’re going to make," says Achren. "The mobile providers are very good for start-ups, let’s say."

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