The team behind Moglue believes that everyone should have the tools to be a Shakespeare or Beethoven in the modern world. They want to allow publishers, authors and artists to create their own interactive ebooks. They also want to help those creators releasing it as an application on the two most popular mobile platforms, iOS and Android. To achieve that belief, the Moglue team created a desktop platform that only requires content to be generated once.
Users who want to create interactive ebooks might not have a technical skills to do so. As such, they require a tool with user-friendly interfaces. Moglue allows users to simply copy-and-paste, drag-and-drop, click and double click to create. Voila! One-click publishing.
Moglue’s users only need to focus on the content, applying their ideas and creativity. The rest will be taken care of by the app. The books can be published on their store application. Following the release of Moglue’s open beta in December, their platform will be made open. This will allow users to publish their interactive ebooks directly to those stores as native apps. When published as native apps, they can be published under Moglue’s or the owners’ developer accounts. Both Apple and Google will receive a 30 percent pre-tax cut for standalone, native apps and in-store sales.
To develop an ebook, a tool called the “Interactive eBook Builder” is provided both for the Windows and Mac. Import objects such as images, music and videos, as content. Users then set the layout, behaviors and properties, preview it live, and publish it to the AppStore or Android Marketplace. Tutorials are readily available. Moglue’s “StoreApp”, available for iOS and Android, is a virtual directory where readers can find, see what others are reading, view favorite books, write book reviews and share with other readers.
Realizing how important a community for them is, Moglue intends to build an open community where media is shared and any creative and imaginative person will be able to use the platform to build and share fun and engaging apps.
Tae Woo Kim (23) acting as CEO, Ryan Kim (29) the CTO and Chris Riley (26) the CMO are Moglue’s co-founders. Based in Seoul and having an office in New York, they met each other for the first time at Seoul Startup Weekend May last year. This was where the idea for Moglue was conceived. After seeing Atomic Antelope’s “Alice for the iPad”, they thought it would be cool if they could help people tell stories like that.
e27.sg managed to interview Tae Woo Kim, for the story behind Moglue, their future targets and plans.
When was the company incorporated?
“We were established in Korea on October 1st, 2010 with four members and received a seed round of around US$0.54 million from Korean company in December, and began hiring employees to build the product. We have 14 employees at the moment. We have a paper company in US, but for now, it has nothing to do with Korean incorporation.”
How long did the concept and development take place?
“Our team spent three days developing the concept behind what would eventually become Moglue. We had built a working prototype that weekend, felt passionate about the project, and found we complimented each other well, so we decided to continue to pursue the idea at the conclusion of the event.”
What came across your mind when developing the app?
“We spend a lot of time trying to figure out the ‘Why’ behind our product. We feel that we’re going to make a big impact in this space, but we can’t do that without having a good reason behind why we are doing it. The ‘Why’ is a vital starting point for anyone looking to do a startup.
Co-founders personally like to think that ‘Why’ behind Moglue, is to help people share their stories. This could evolve into ‘helping people express their creativity.’ The ‘How’ to this ‘Why’ is by helping people create and share interactive content. The ‘What’ is the implementation, which at the moment is our builder and MoglueBooks.
Using that paradigm of our ‘What,’ in order to maintain focus, I spend a lot of time imaging what success looks like. To me it appears as a picture of a child with their mom and dad, thrilled and engrossed in a story.”
Regarding number of registered members, what’s Moglue target for this?
“And we launched our open beta in last September and now have more than 9,000 users who are creating books. We will launch our mogluebooks application for iOS platform mid December, publishing feature at the end of December, payment system at the end of January next year and Android app in next March. We are targeting to have more than 12,000 users who are creating books and have more than 100,000 users for mogluebooks within this year.”
What are your plans for the app and what features will be launched in the near future?
“Our desktop platform allows publishers, authors and artists a way to create interactive ebooks, and release them as applications for iOS and Android devices. There are two components, the Moglue Builder and MoglueBooks.
The builder is the desktop platform that allows people to create these interactive ebook apps. MoglueBooks is our store, and a harbor for finding the best interactive ebooks on both iOS and Android. It includes a viewer component that allows people to preview books they are building with the authoring platform.
Currently, users can download the builder and MoglueBooks, create books in the builder, and preview these creations on their own local devices. They can also import their own art and sounds. We support JPEG, GIF, TIF and PNG formats for images, and MP3, M4A, MP4 and WAV files for sounds. We’ll soon support video and sprite options as well.
We’re currently working on the ability to import video and sprites, as well as our end-to-end publishing system. We plan to release both at the conclusion of our open beta. The publishing system will allow users to submit content to us for internal approval. If the content is approved, we’ll be able to publish it immediately to our store. Depending on the publishing channels the users chooses, we can also then submit it to the Apple App Store and Android Market.”
Last but not least, what is Moglue opinion on Asia’s Top 50 Apps?
“We were absolutely shocked when we’d heard that we’d won “Rookie of the Year.” I remember we were in Germany at the Frankfurt Book Fair, and totally freaked. It was quickly followed by the realization that we still had a week left in Frankfurt, and had to figure out who would go to receive the reward. Ryan, our CTO and co-founder, had been working 24/7, and we felt it would give him a couple days of deserved R&R.
Asia’s Top 50 Apps is an amazing opportunity for startups. It helps give a real voice to companies who otherwise might have a hard time gaining exposure and building support. We look forward to becoming stronger next year, and giving back to awesome endeavors like this that have given so much to us.”
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