Webware

Video ringtone company Vringo has launched Vringo Studio, which gives user the capability to create their own video calling cards. Previously, users could only select from a pre-built library of videos on the site. With the new Vringo Studio, users can search for any video on YouTube, select a portion of it up to 30 seconds long, and send it to their phone, where it can become their outbound ringtone for other Vringo users.

The Vringo.com main site also supports the creation of custom video ringtones, and from sources other than YouTube, including videos on a user's computer. But it's very picky on what it will work with (video files have to be under 2MB, for example), and it has no clip editor.

Vringo Studio lets you create your own outbound video ringtones from YouTube clips.

As far as I can tell, Vringo Studio, which is in beta, is not linked to from the main Vringo site. That's just as well; I found the current version of the online app buggy.

Vringo's video support has always been cool, and the capability you now have to make your own videos rounds out the service. But it's the outbound ringtone capability that sets Vringo apart. Vringo lets you decide what your ringtone looks and sounds like to people receiving your call; most ringtone selectors just let you define what the ring is when people call you.

In order for Vringo to work, both caller and callee need the Vringo app on their phones (it's available for a lot of phone platforms--but not the iPhone). It can be a lot of fun, and it's a very viral app. If you want to join in so you can see how your friends' video ringtones when you call, you need the app. Vringo is forming deals with carriers to help with distribution (it recently got on the Turkish carrier Avea). The service is free at first, but there's a subscription fee after the trial.

Previously: Vringo. Video ringtones. Get it?

Vringo, a company that offers an application that can take video, images, and slideshows and turn those into a personalized ringtone experience, announced that it has signed an agreement with Turkish mobile carrier Avea, to bring the company's video ringtone service to Turkey. The deal puts in place the first carrier-led video ringtone subscription model in the world.

Vringo plans to launch its service on Avea with a 60-day free trial, followed by a monthly subscription fee. For added revenue, the company will also sell pay-per-clip video ringtones for those who aren't satisfied with the company's library of free videos.

"Analysts estimate that 50 percent of ringtone revenues will come from video ringtones as early as 2010; it's our mission to make that a reality," said Jon Medved, CEO of Vringo.

The company's foray into Turkey is just the first step in what it hopes will be a worldwide carrier-driven video ringtone market. Before its deal with Avea, Vringo was operating independently from carriers, but now that it has finally inked a carrier-driven model, it hopes to expand those deals around the world.

I'm pretty excited about Vringo's new Facebook app for a number of reasons. First, I'm a big fan of Vringo's video caller ID service, which lets users choose a video ringtone (vringo) that plays on their friends' phone when they initiate a call to said friend. Second, this new app carries Vringo's concept of personalizing the moment of phone-to-phone contact by syncing your address book with your friends' Facebook profile photos.

It takes about 5 minutes and quite a few steps to set up the service, but the directions are clear and fairly straightforward. You download one app to the phone and one to Facebook, and follow instructions to sync the phone contacts list with your Facebook friends list. It's not automatic, however. Vringo's Facebook app produces side-by-side lists of your buddies, which you match together before re-syncing your phone. The next time a friend calls, their Facebook photo blinks on for a long second, and then displays again while you're on the call.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

It'd be better if the image stuck around until you answered (maybe it was shy during my tests?), and if the syncing process were streamlined. Vringo's original service still nets higher points for originality and "wow" factor, but Vringo Facebook is a good fast, free way to add a little more life to calls.

Vringo Facebook is in pre-release beta for BlackBerry and Windows Mobile phones. You can get in line for the invite-only phone download at http://www.vringo.com/AppServer/fb/index.jsp.

>>See all the hot cell phone news from CTIA

David Goldfarb's phone won't stop ringing.

The Vringo CTO is giving me a demo of Vringo's video ringtone service, now in public beta, to demonstrate how users can assign phone-formatted video clips as their outgoing ringtones. David has chosen a humorous singing cartoon of a green bear as his video calling card. He's set it up so that any phone he calls with a Vringo client will light up with his chosen video. If so desired, he could limit the output to his wife and send everyone else a much more sober video to announce his call.

Vringo reverses the conventional ringtone concept of users choosing songs to differentiate between contacts, entertain themselves with favorite songs, or make a stylistic statement. Here individuals control how they're perceived by friends, and can use "vringos" as a gift or personalized greeting. Users can upload their own clips on Vringo.com or record clips from within the Vringo phone app. It's easy to see how users could create happy birthday messages or video gifts.... Read more

Vringo bills itself as a video ringtone service, but don't let that fool you. My theory is that the company uses the term to convince traditional media types--like those at AlwaysOn's conference this week, where I heard about Vringo--that it's a viable business model for mobile marketing. "Ringtone," after all, is an easily-recognized buzzword, and it's pretty well-known that tech-savvy kids are willing to shell out money to pay for ringtones of the hottest Top 40 tracks. (I might not be a kid, but I admit that I did pay for a vintage Super Mario Bros. ringtone.)

In reality, Vringo is a video-sharing platform for cell phones. We've all heard that now that video has conquered the PC and the iPod, it's going to move on to the mobile handset, and Vringo is aiming to capitalize on that. Here's how it works: you, and any friends with whom you want to share clips, download the free Vringo app. Then, you surf Vringo via the Web (on a PC or mobile device) and choose what video clips you'd like to use as the ringtones when you call particular friends. Founder Jonathan Medved suggested it as a potential goldmine for movie and music marketers, demonstrating a Vringo call that used a clip from the movie Wedding Crashers. But you also can upload your own video content and use that, too. Yes, it costs money if the content's licensed--so it'll be free for you to share a Vringo clip of your cat, but not one of Nelly Furtado's latest video. It looks like licensed content will have a one-time download charge, and don't forget the fact that anything like this potentially will incur charges from carriers' data plans as well.

It's not perfect. I think that some Vringo users are going to wish they could quickly share video without actually making a call--it just seems a little bit constrictive. But hey, mobile video sharing is still pretty new. This could really be where things are going.