We were pretty excited to learn of Velvet Puffin’s (VP) lightning rise to the top of the local Web2.0 pile today; first the local Business Times feature and then the “Web 2.0 Richter Scale” of Techcrunch. Both founders, R Chandrasekar and Sam Hon are 26 and Velvet Puffin is a project under Radixs, a 60-person company both have founded since 2002. Co-founder Chandrasekar also reveals a total of $10million financing (seed and Series A) for the startup from Purple Ray, Artisan Encipta and the Singapore Economic Development Board.

Velvet Puffin is a new dual- screen (mobile and desktop) social networking service that is positioned as THE “Always ON” social networking service; enabling seamless access and sharing of media like photos, video, blogs between the mobile and (broadband-connected) desktop domains. Its slogan is aptly named: “IM meets Social Networking”.

All this publicity was well-timed before its official public beta launch at 12 midnight (Eastern Standard Time). So we bided our time in anticipation..

We must say our initial responses (Royston and I) to the site was good. The GUI looks delicious and sleek with all that Flash. It certainly raised our expectations as we proceeded to breeze through the necessary downloading of the desktop IM client which is essential for the functioning of the service. I must say this was a weird move by the developers to adopt a “web-to-desktop” after the whole Web2.0 craze was built on the back of the “desktop-to-web” service delivery method. This was reverse Meebo (the web-only IM client).

Dual Download a Hassle

After the first desktop download of the IM client, a second download was required for the mobile phone to make the two devices start talking. This was a real hassle as I couldn’t get it to work on my mobile phone (a Motorola Razr V3X). Perhaps its just another Motorola problem and i will try a Nokia later on. But a list of compatible phones on the site will be real helpful. It took a long while to get the SMS to be sent to my Singapore phone number too as the website seems to have the phone number protocol set to the US version. This is strange considering the company’s Singaporean roots. I wonder how many US consumers will bite considering the low SMS usage patterns in the US market (one major market according to Business Times). Getting today’s users to download two pieces of software for a service to work sounds like one too many for the attention-deficient youth crowd. We want things to work, pronto.

Integration with Existing IM Services

The IM client worked well though on both the IE and Firefox browsers. I liked it for the fact it was able to nicely import all the contacts from MSN, Yahoo and AOL/ ICQ services. However, this is all not new. Trilian, Meebo and a host of other IM convergence tools can do this already. Whats the “killer feature” here for VP will be the availability of such popular desktop IM services on the mobile phone.

The Souped-up IM Client

There were 4 main features on the desktop IM client: blog posting, poll creation, video and photo sharing/ uploading. Despite the clean design of the client, I found the photo and video features lacking as they were not unable to tap on users’ existing collections on popular sites like Flickr, Photobucket (photos) or Youtube, Metacafe. Neither could existing blog posts be exported to the desktop client. Whats really weird too is how each of these features causes mini-windows to appear on your desktop, creating islands of widgets that litter your screen. The translucency of these windows (so prevalent in Web 2.0 design) make reading difficult indeed and useability, in this instance, has to take precedence over aesthetics (click on thumbnail for more).

Since this is still only a beta version, there’s hope such features will be integrated since the developers provide for video viewing and in-site search and browsing of videos in the Youtube, Metacafe and Google Video databases. It is not entirely difficult to implement the integration with these web services.

The Puzzling Silo Approach

More integration of the desktop IM client and the website’s content is certainly crucial in the coming days. The “silo approach” of separating web content from the desktop client is a big boo-boo considering the richness of web-based media. I certainly did not understand what founder Chandrasekar means by:

“Users can also access shared content without the need for a Web browser..”

Considering that the IM client requires a broadband connection, I certainly do not see why there was a need to make the IM client the “new browser” with its own functions for data sharing.

Revenue Model

How social networks make money is a new concern considering the presence of the industry juggernaut MySpace. VP certainly differentiates itself as a mobile phone-targeted social network and this makes sense considering the lack of a clear leader in this space and the faltering efforts of the other networks like Myspace, Facebook, Bebo in translating their web dominance to the mobile domain.

The founder Chandrasekar outlines 3 models:

- contextual advertising (most likely Google)

- revenue share of data transfer over mobile phones with telcos (with a potential deal with a regional telco mentioned [Singtel?])

- royalties from device makers who pre-load VP software

I like to see how VP intends to serve ads on the mobile phones and get users to pay for the data at the same time. Hopefully, the first 2 revenue models are mutually exclusive because the price of mobile data plans is a reason why social media is exclusive to the web (and not mobile) where the marginal cost of one extra photo or video is free. Data plan price points will be a major barrier as VP ties up with carriers.

“Unfriendly” Website Footer

A possible tip to the VP team will be to lessen the focus on legalese at the footer. Yes, respect for the law is important but your priority is the user. Instead of endearing themselves to their youth audience with the customary “About Us” or blog as is the custom for community-focused sites, this footer is packed with terms like “Privacy Policy”, “Terms of Access”, “Terms of Use” and “Copyright Law Notification”. VP should at least have a blog and start a conversation with its audience. Be proud of your product. Turn your footer into a marketing tool and community builder, not divider.

Conclusion

The PR and Design Teams of Velvet Puffin deserves high marks for the buzz generated ahead of the public beta and the sleekness throughout the whole site. Coming from Singapore, this is heartening to know we have local talent who can pull this off. While the service concept needs work in justifying why the desktop client approach is preferred to a browser-based service, the challenge will be to innovate the desktop client beyond what the native clients of MSN or Yahoo can do. Of course, this review lacks the critique of the mobile screen aspect, an important pillar of this “always on” service. The success determinant, assuming a functional mobile service, is still in the choice of target user markets and the data plans negotiated with the carriers.

Finally, props still to our first high-profile local Web 2.0 startup. We wish you success!

Update on MOBILE Platform: I tried the service with a Nokia 6280 (a Starhub line) and managed to download the mobile client successfully, which was later saved to my “Games” folder. I was able to login to my IM client (both the native Velvet Puffin and MSN). There is a discrepancy between the desktop and mobile IM clients in reporting the number of online and visible friends though. (34 on my desktop vs 19 on mobile). Attempts at using the other Velvet Puffin features, such as photos, videos, blogs, polls and even profile views, failed due to long loading times. (Perhaps the service was too popular?) Without these enhanced features, I couldn’t see why any user would choose this over SMS. Velvet Puffin had prided itself on its MXI mobile operating system which allows for full-fledged desktop apps to run on mobile phones without source code redevelopment. (via ZDNet Asia) Whats also noteworthy is this service had debuted in a more private beta earlier and had about 3000 users within 2 months before last night’s public beta. (via San Jose Mercury News) Would love to get hold of one of those 3000 to hear from them.