Nokia to Shutter Mosh Sharing Service in Favor of Ovi Store

Nokia has announced it will be closing down its Mosh sharing service, and rolling some capabilities forward into its forthcoming Ovi Store.

Back in 2007, Nokia launched its Mosh sharing service, an open-ended service that users could tap into from their smartphones or computers to share media and content. Mosh certainly represented a bold foray into the then-new world of user-generated content, and—unlike many Nokia online services—seemed to gain traction among users despite virtually no advertising or promotion from Nokia itself. However, Mosh was not without its controversial elements: Nokia had very little control over the direction of the service, some companies pulled out of partnerships with Nokia over piracy concerns associated with Mosh, and the service became well-known for trafficking in adult and explicit content—probably why Nokia shied away from promoting it heavily.

Nokia says that it plans to integrate content from its Mosh, Download, and WidSets services into a single channel in its forthcoming Ovi Store, which will be the new focus of Nokia’s online efforts. The Ovi Store will compete with Apple’s iTunes App Store, offering programs and content for use on Nokia smartphones and devices. The company says the experience making Mosh available worldwide—an incorporating things like user recommendations—will be leveraged in the Ovi Store, which it expects to serve 300 to 400 million users within a few years. However, unlike Mosh, Nokia plans to screen all content before it will be available to users through the Ovi Store.