Terry Hsiao Pioneers Multimedia Mobile Messaging

If you use your smart phone to share music, videos and photos, you are probably a beneficiary of Terry Hsiao's pioneering work in mobile messaging.

If you use your smart phone to share music, videos and photos, you are probably a beneficiary of Terry Hsiao’s pioneering work in allowing mobile phones served by a variety of carriers to exchange files via multimedia messaging (MMS).

Vienna, Virginia-based Hook Mobile is Hsiao’s third mobile-messaging-based venture. It’s a software company that develops web-based application programming interfaces (API), like the Max 2.0 platform, to enable millions of mobile phone users to exchange multimedia files.

You’ve probably never thought about what it takes to let that kind of transaction take place across the dozens of varieties of mobile platforms using dozens of services, each with their own protocols. But that capability is of intense interest to marketers eager to push ads, coupons, music files, videos, games and as-yet unimagined multimedia files via mobile messaging. The millions of young people addicted to their cell phones are seen as the ideal audience for sending products viral, creating potential marketing bonanzas.

Hook Mobile has helped companies like CBS, Paramount Pictures, AFP, Atlantic Records and Pic2Phone do just that by enabling their cross-platform mobile multimedia messages. The array of Hook’s services to date includes online redemption, collect-to-win sweepstakes, digital card trading and collecting, social gaming, sponsorships and viral videos.

“We’ve embraced the openness of the social media environment by offering our open APIs to unlock the potential of MMS,” said Hook Mobile founder and CEO Hsiao as his company launched its Max 2.0 platform in 2008. “As one of the most underutilized features on mobile handsets, MMS is showing signs that it will follow the exceptional growth path of text messaging, and we see social networks as the media source that will be the catalyst for carriers to monetize on the long tail.”

Hsiao is recognized as one of the pioneers of mobile messaging. Before starting up Hook, he was COO and the international general manager at Way Systems which he helped grow from pre-revenue to more than $10 million a year in sales. Hsiao also founded InphoMatch (now Sybase 365), the pioneer in mobile messaging with annual revenue of $100 million.

Before InphoMatch Hsiao began his career by working at Nextel from 1993-2000. He managed the founding and operations of Nextel Partners (since acquired by Sprint) wireless venture from the business plan. He raised capital, developed an operating structures and took it to IPO in only 18 months.

Hsiao earned a BS in electrical and computer engineering at Rutgers University in 1991. After working for several years he earned an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management in 19998 with an emphasis on growth strategy and entrepreneurship.