Mippin Announces New CEO and Optimizes Service for 3G iPhone



Mippin, a free mobile media service that makes discovering, consuming, and sharing content on mobile phones easy, today announced that Judy Gibbons has joined the team as CEO. Judy has 25 years of technology experience at Microsoft, Apple Computer and Hewlett Packard and has twice been ranked as one of the top 20 most influential European business women by the Wall Street Journal Europe. Judy joins the two original Mippin founders - Scott Beaumont and Robin Jewsbury - and retains her role as a venture partner at the leading technology investment firm Accel Partners. Her previous positions include Corporate Vice President of MSN Global Sales & Marketing at Microsoft Corp, and board member of leading European mobile operator O2, prior to its acquisition by Telefonica.

Additionally, in advance of the new 3G phone launch Mippin has further enhanced its service for iPhone. The refined version benefits from even faster performance and a number of user interface improvements that make finding, discovering and sharing interesting content more intuitive and effective.

Mippin goes beyond the iPhone as well. Now, hundreds of thousands of users are relying on Mippin to stay informed and entertained on the go. Mippin seamlessly brings together the broadest range of streamlined content for any mobile phone with a web browser. The website automatically remembers a user's preferences and displays their favorite sites directly on the homepage where they can also see what is popular across the Mippin community. Whether you want to follow tech news, fashion updates or sports scores from big publishers or tiny blogs, Mippin combines all of this in a way that is faster, simpler and more enjoyable than any other mobile content option. Just type www.mippin.com into any browser on any phone to try out Mippin for yourself.

You can also take the Mippin 'Pepsi' challenge on the company's blog which compares going directly to site URLs with reading the same content from Mippin by visiting http://blog.mippin.com.

Momentum

Judy joins Mippin (formerly Refresh Mobile) at a time of rapid growth. Since the launch of the service in October 2007 Mippin has:

-    built a worldwide audience that consumes over 10 million page views a month across 146 countries using 1,300 different devices

-    accumulated more than 12 million stories from 20,000+ web sites. all perfectly formatted for any browser on any phone

-    enabled content owners - from branded media companies to specialist bloggers - to set up hundreds of new titles using Mippin Maker to brand their services, reach new users on mobile and monetize their content, for free

-    served over 20 million ads from partners including AdMob and Screentonic (Microsoft)

-    achieved an average clickthrough in excess of 3 percent with content contextual ads averaging 15 percent

Mippin is at the forefront of a growing number of users accessing the Internet from their mobile devices. According to M:Metrics, in April 2008, 30.2% of US cellphone users browsed the Internet, used an application, or downloaded content from their phones with the UK close behind at 28.4%.

For publishers

In just a few steps, any web publisher can create an enhanced, branded, mobile version of the website's content using Mippin Maker. This increases syndication from RSS feeds without the extensive cost of developing separate mobile sites - yet gaining a site which is made for mobile. Publishers can then elect to insert advertising automatically into their feeds to create a new revenue stream. Publishers that have made use of the Mippin Maker most recently include Incisive Media (including Gizmodo, VNUNet), blog aggregator Shiny Media (including TechDigest, Shiny Shiny), established print brands such as OK! and T3, and hundreds of independent bloggers such as Mobhappy and FasterFuture. Publishers can find our more at www.mippinmaker.com.

About Mippin

London-based Mippin is a free media service that uses Web 2.0 tools to make discovering, consuming and sharing interactive content on mobile phones painless. Quicker than going to traditional URLs and easier to use than mobile widgets, Mippin is laser-focused on delivering a compelling user experience on any mobile phone via the mobile browser, for free. Mippin also directly benefits online publishers and advertisers. It allows them to effortlessly distribute web content and targeted branding messages to mobile audiences. Mippin has received $9 million in funding from Accel Partners following an initial seed round from Alpheus Solutions. For more information visit www.mippin.com

For more information, contact:

Mara Ritti, Sparkpr (US)

+1-415-321-1888

mara @ sparkpr.com

Paula Santos, Sparkpr (UK)

+44 207 033 7759

paula @ sparkpr.com





Mippin Announces New CEO and Optimizes Service for 3G iPhone