myshoppinggenie-logoRecently MyShoppingGenie announced a new and upcoming product, RocketGenie. Details have been scarce but from the bits and pieces that have been made public, RocketGenie appears to be a video email and conferencing product.

Initially I found this interesting as on the surface MyShoppingGenie appeared to be entering  iWowWe’s territory and going head to head with them.

Interesting enough to take note of… but not enough to investigate and do a write-up till RocketGenie launched.

Or so I thought.

A promotional video popped onto my radar recently for RocketGenie, outlining the benefits and marketing advantage of utilizing video email and conferencing;

A few seconds into the video, I realized I’d seen the exact same presentation before…

…but where?

Why, on the iWowWe website of course.

Dubbed ‘iWowWe TV’, I remembered seeing the presentation when I first began research for my iWowWe review.

To iWowWe’s credit, the video is very well put together and its presentation stuck in my mind. So much so that seeing it branded as RocketGenie triggered my memory reminding me that I’d seen it elsewhere before.

From the looks of it, RocketGenie appears to be nothing more than a rebranded offering of iWowWe’s video email and conferencing services.

The only difference between iWowWe’s promtional video and the MyShoppingGenie one is the logo that splashes up on the screen in the final few seconds of the video clip.

GenieRocket, the promotional website for RocketGenie, currently states that the product is ‘coming soon’. This indicates that it hasn’t been launched yet.

That doesn’t mean that with a bit of poking around however there isn’t things to see or do on the website.

Looking at the greater picture here, MyShoppingGenie are stating that RocketGenie will automatically be bundled with MyShoppingGenie memberships (new and current). It doesn’t however mention whether or not MyShoppingGenie members will be able to resell iWowWe’s product.

From the looks of it though, MyShoppingGenie are only letting their members use the service at this early stage.

What I can’t help but wonder though, is that following the recent announcement that MyShoppingGenie has secured a new investor, is it possible that iWowWe, as part of the obvious partnership deal between the two companies, are themselves the mystery investor?

All signs would indicate yes as the internal email communications between MyShoppingGenie members stated that

The new investor is a lady who i’m told will be a great asset to the company……….she has her own company and does presentations for it, so she knows what she is doing.

Her own company hey… what are the chances that company is iWowWe. As those familiar with iWowWe’s management might be wanting to point out though, the only thing that doesn’t fit is that iWowWe is owned buy a guy, specifically a Mr. William (Bill) Starkey.

Barring that oversight though, with the timing of the investor announcement coinciding with the launch of rebranded iWowWe products as GenieRocket, everything else seems to fit together perfectly.

What do you think? Have iWowWe invested into MyShoppingGenie or is the partnership nothing more than an open license to provide MyShoppingGenie members with iWowWe’s video email and conferencing products?

Given that video email and conferencing has nothing to do with a price comparison tool, if iWowWe haven’t invested in MyShoppingGenie, it does seem like a random product offering to MyShoppingGenie members does it not?

At the time of publication, neither MyShoppingGenie or iWowWe have publicly acknowledged or infact announced any partnership between the two companies.

Given the obviousness of some sort of collaboration, I can’t help but ask ‘why?’

 

Update 26th September 2011: Turns out iWowWe are not the mystery investor MyShoppingGenie have recently acquired.

Rather the relationship between the two companies is purely the licensing of iWowWe’s products for use with the MyShoppingGenie opportunity. I’ve thus been informed that MyShoppingGenie have had access to iWowWe’s video email and conferencing since February 2011.

Unfortunately for iWowWe however, like MyShoppingGenie’s own distributors, they haven’t been paid for providing the service.

As it stands now MyShoppingGenie owe months of bills to iWowWe and they’re kind of fed up about it.

Two weeks ago Bill Starkey told his advisory board that they were looking to pull the plug on the services provided to MyShoppingGenie and the advisory board agreed this was the best course of action given the circumstances.

Whether MyShoppingGenie will pay out iWowWe from their new investor’s funds or what happens next regarding the GenieRocket service remains to be seen.