Development Seed Blog

Development Seed is making the news again, and surprisingly it’s for the political ringtones that Eric cooked up back in October. Reporter Mariecar Mendoza from Knight Ridder Newspapers wrote a story on the business of selling personalized ringtones that talked about how the music industry – mostly hip hop but also religious – has really taken advantage of them. She goes on to mention how ringtones have been used politically:

Voice ringtones have even been called the "new protest song" after people in the Philippines used their phones to protest allegations of electoral fraud by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo earlier this year. Many activists in the United States use their cells to lampoon President Bush by using snippets of his speeches, like the infamous "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," and layering them over music. Development Seed, a Washington, D.C.-based online technical support group for activists, supplies political ringtones on their blog forum (www.developmentseed.org/blog/politicalringtones).

What’s even better is that this story ran in several local Knight Ridder papers.

But we were curious as to why we received press coverage for ringtones that were made six months ago. A quick Google search revealed why. Development Seed is the top hit for “protest ringtones” and the second hit for “political ringtones.” C’mon, we know that the reason you aren’t making any ringtones isn’t because there is nothing to protest!