Cuban Pushing Cyber Dust App To Mavs Fans To Accelerate Its Growth, Up Fan Experience

Mavericks Owner Mark Cuban is using his new ephemeral messaging app, Cyber Dust, to distribute exclusive content about the team, and he hopes the move both enhances the fan experience and accelerates the app's growth. Cuban launched the program in February with L.A.-based social mobile gaming company Mention Mobile -- in which he is an investor -- to give people an outlet where they could send encrypted text or photo messages that would automatically delete within 24 seconds and thus not leave a digital footprint. The app is available for iPhone users, while it is being beta-tested for Android. It can be downloaded for free, after which users create their address and then add "friends" to correspond with. Cuban’s official account, which uses the handle BlogMaverick, has so far been used to push fans updates about NBA free agency ranging from the team's bid to sign Carmelo Anthony to pictures of Chandler Parsons and his parents partying with Cuban after signing a free-agent offer sheet with the Mavericks at midnight Wednesday. Meanwhile, the organization's official account, LetsGoMavs, has used the app for more traditional marketing messages like promotions and giveaways. Cyber Dust is closing in on 1 million users overall. Cuban’s account has attracted an amount of followers in the five figures in its first week of existence, while figures for the team’s account were unavailable. Cyber Dust has competition in the disappearing messaging space, but the company is hoping it has enough differentiators -- notably the robust privacy features -- to make it among the first to break through to America’s mainstream alongside photo-focused SnapChat.

A SHOT AT SYNERGY: Cuban in an e-mail wrote he did not necessarily create Cyber Dust with a partnership with the Mavericks in mind, adding, “It's just a chance to match great tech with great marketing.” Cuban intimated that Mavericks fans who are following the team’s messages on Cyber Dust seem to be enjoying the service thus far, calling it “more personal” than other social media outlets in that conversations are not made public. “Unlike Twitter, they can get a personal response to questions without having other fans see the question,” he wrote. This extends down to sometimes getting personal responses from Cuban himself -- providing fans with a simple and immediate level of access to him. He added, “Because this is not texting or email, we can be much more appealing in what we do with fans.” Cuban has yet to hear of another NBA team inquiring into possibly using the app for their communications and/or marketing. The team has already gotten Dirk Nowitzki to sign up for the service and advertises his handle on its website alongside other athletes and celebrities like Steve Nash. Cuban plans to continue to bring players into the fold in terms of getting them accounts and then promoting them, exemplified by the company signing an endorsement deal on Thursday with ARCA Racing Series driver Shannon McIntosh. Asked how he plans to monetize the app, Cuban responded, “Stay tuned.”

PRIVACY A KEY: Cuban has become an outspoken privacy advocate through the years, and the app's emergence comes at a time of heightened concern in the U.S. over privacy. Cuban also has publicly accused the Securities & Exchange Commission of taking out of context old text messages he had sent during its investigation of him over insider trading, in which he was exonerated. These factors helped give him the idea to create the app.