MobHappy

Permission & mobile-marketing

We've all read over the years many different explanations of what mobile marketing is, what can be done with it, and seen some case studies of cool and successful campaigns. Usually, these explanations follow a pretty similar pattern. The benefits of the media are described (personal, fast, ubiquitous, interactive, etc.), common use-cases are mentioned (customer acquisition&retention, sales promotion, direct marketing, crm, loyalty, etc.), technologies are described and somewhat hyped (mms, streaming video, lbs, etc.), and estimates of the market are given. This should all be familiar, so I won't talk about these things. Instead I'd like to point out one important area that I think doesn't get the attention it deserves.

Permission marketing

Gathering a committed audience that is willing to listen to you over time is, in my opinion, one of the most valuable marketing activities you can do. When using mobile technology as the channel for acquiring and activating this permission base, many of benefits of mobile marketing can be reaped. We've noticed that when combining an opt-in option as a part of a mobile campaign (i.e. when you've already gotten the dialogue going with an end-user), the opt-in percentages can be surprisingly high (of course there is substantial variation between different demographic segments, but when targeted correctly, the results are amazing).

A mobile strategy

But building a permission base is of course not enough. In order to maximize the potential of the permission base, you need to have a well thought out longer-term strategy on the activities targeted to the permission base. This is something we work on with many of our customers on a daily basis. Seth Godin has a good book on permission marketing that all marketers should read; it applies well on mobile marketing. Most of the mobile-marketing case-studies I've seen don't analyze the longer term benefits of permission marketing, I'm however sure the best results can be found in this category.

If you have any links on good case studies where mobile permission marketing has been used for for a longer time, don't hesitate to post a comment. I'd also like to hear any opinions you might have on mobility and marketing, post a comment or send e-mail to alindh at flyerone dot com.

LBS in crisis

According to local news, the governments in Sweden and Finland have together with local carriers come up with a system so they can send information (whom to contact, meeting points, etc.) to all citizens in the crisis area in Asia. This really is a brilliant idea, as reaching thousands of lost and separated people is otherwise really hard.

I wonder how long it will take before governments start to require this kind of readiness from carriers at all times, as the implications of having a system like this in place are really huge. As networks cover an ever increasing percantage of the whole earth (and an ever increasing percentage of the population carry a phone with them, even in un-developed countries), this must be the fastest and cheapest way reaching almost everybody in any given geographical area. Had a tsunami warning system been in place in the Asia crisis area, many lives would have been saved. Had it been hooked to the GSM network, even more lives would probably have been saved. Hopefully we'll see a coordinated effort to make this happen throughout the world.

Other examples of cell-phone pin-ponting in the Asia crisis area can be found here.

Guest blogger

Hi,

My name is Anders Lindh, I'm the chairman and co-founder of FlyerOne Ltd, a Finland based mobile marketing services company. We've been providing consultation and technical implemetation of mobile marketing campaigns for four years; our clientele consists major brands both in Finland and abroad. During these years, we've successfully implemented hundreds of campaigns of varying kind. I am going to blog here about marketing and technical issues that we are facing in our day-to-day business. I hope you enjoy your stay even though Russel is away!

You can reach me at alindh at flyerone dot com (e-mail and messenger), I'll do my best to read and reply to any comments.

And for the record, this is my first blog post, ever.

More on Bar Codes

I wrote an article for Net Imperative a few weeks back. It was about the importance that bar codes could have in the future, as real world hyperlinks to virtual world information.

Mobile Weblog reader, Dennis Hettema, is the founder and CEO of OP3 and wrote to tell me that they've just launched a Quicktime video illustrating an aspect of the very point I was making. Check it out.

OP3 make barcode scanning software that can be downloaded to your phone. I have no commercial connection with them, just to be clear.

Virgin Mary has Worked Out How to Use MMS

A Chilean psychic has been receiving MMS messages from the Virgin Mary.

Isn't it great that someone has finally started to use it?

But it'll be just as much of a miracle if the rest of us work out how to use it successfully.

Via Engadget.

Mobile Phone Sitting

Mobile phones are totally banned in Florida Court Houses leading to a new profession - mobile phone minding.

Local merchants, such as hot dog vendors charge $2 - $10 to look after your phone. Other phone owners, seeking to cut out the middle men, stash them in bushes and things.

Image shows the newly elected member of the Florida judiciary, Jabba the Hutt.

Story spotted on Engadget.

Predictions

Well, it's that time of the year again, when people who should know better put their reputations on the line and start making damn fool predictions for the coming year.

Before I do that though, how did I do last year? Not bad actually, with a couple of wrong 'uns thrown in. I am human! Here's the full text, with a summary below.

1. 3 fails to make 1,000,000 subscribers (again)

Hmmm. Well I was certainly wrong about this, they easily surpassed the magic million and are the fastest growing UK operator.

BUT, they've done this by abandoning their previous strategy of which I was so critical. So I was kind of right in that if they hadn't slashed their prices across the board, they'd never have made the million.

Any damn fool can sell a $10 note for $5 though. So this is a short term measure at best.

But they are finally starting to launch some innovative services, which is the key to growing 3G, so there's life in 3 yet.

2. MMS still not going to work

Well, full marks here, Mr Buckley, despite millions invested in marketing.

I've written about MMS's problems before.

As I wrote last year:

the fact is that even if you: · Ignore the technical complexity of setting up your phone · Ignore the complexity of sending an MMS. · Ignore the interoperability. · Ignore pricing (35p – get outta here…). You still have problem with what to put in your MMS - sometimes called content around these parts.

If it’s going to go mass market, people will need help in composing these things and that means a range of cheap and readily available, easy-to-use content. And that content will need to sit on their phones and be able to be previewed so that they know what they’re sending their nearest and dearest.

This is all just as valid today as it was last year. As Frank Koehntopp wrote today:

I took my 3 year old to McDonalds today, and the Coke cup had a code for a "The Incredibles Mobile Special" - which is something like a ring tone, a background picture or a game for your phone.

To get it, you have to send the 8 digit code + your phone model as an SMS to a certain number, and you'll receive the content in return.

I did just that, and in came a two part SMS which appeared as "service message". Would you know what to do with it? Do you have any idea about the costs of clicking on that link? I bet you don't, nor will the kids who try that. In my case, it didn't even work (some strange server error), and I had to chose between different GPRS access points.

If this happened in other industries, the whole management team would be kicked out on its ear.

And I'll repeat my mantra: Why can't the industry make phones that work out of the box? It's a scandal.

If you work for an operator, it is a genuine question. Why? Please leave a comment.

3. SMS continues to thrive

Round of applause.

4. Local Free Messaging starts to take off.

Well that's true too. It's also much bigger than you might think. Watch this space for more growth.

5. Java Takes Off (and not just for gaming).

Yep. And remember all those announcements of media giants creating their own java portals for non-gaming content - what happened to them actually??? Has any actually launched.

6. DRM Rises up the agenda

DRM continues to dominate the conversation and will continue to do so.

However, it's pretty obvious these days that all DRM is doomed and content owners need to live with that and adjust their business models accordingly.

Every time a foolproof DRM system is launched someone cracks it within 24 hours and tells those that want to know all about it. Some of these fools can be darn clever :-)

7. LBS starts to happen

Yep. Still grass roots, but beginning to move from tech provider "sell" to user "buy", which is a great sign. Projects like Dodgeball and Yellow Arrow are pretty exciting.

8. TagText launches to great success

This is one my personal projects and sadly we were badly let down by our development partners. I hope 2005 will be our year!

So I'll give myself 6.5 out of a possible 8 marks (half for the 3 one). Ironically the one that I got completely wrong was the one I was in a position to directly influence :-(

The trouble with this kind of exercise though is that you can't remember if these were bleedingly obvious when I made them. Well, actually I don't think they were that obvious and certainly Local Free Messaging is still not on most commentator's map and MMS was predicted to boom.

Anyway, next I need to think about the coming year. Make your prediction by leaving a comment below or drop me an email russell at mobhappy dot com. I'm off to rub my crystal ball.

Guest Blogging

I'm going to be away from 26th December until about 10th January, catching some sun in South Africa. Blogging's going to be difficult down there, so I wondered if anyone would care to Guest Blog on this site while I'm away.

It's an unpaid post, but you'll get a fair bit of exposure for you or your company. Just to clarify - I'm not suggesting that you use the blog to blatantly plug something, as my discerning readers won't buy it. But it will give you a platform to talk to about 25,000 people and share your ideas.

Drop me a line if you're interested. russell at mobhappy dot com, or leave a comment.

For the rest of you, keep reading! I'll let you know when I put up my last post before heading off.

Mobile Phone Parking Lots

The mobile phone really is changing the society in some quite surprising and hard-to-predict ways.

LA's famous airport, LAX, is opening a mobile phone parking lot, following requests from airport users.

"A number of motorists have asked for convenient waiting areas in close proximity to the airport, where they can await a call on their cell phones," said Kim Day, executive director of the agency that runs the airport.

This will catch on, I'm sure.

Meanwhile, Halifax Live News' headline is "World's Smallest Baby, About The Size Of A Cell Phone". When did the mobile phone start to enter our consciousness as something to compare the size of something to?

And I wonder what we'd have used before?

Story sources: KFMB TV and Halifax Live News.

Turn Your Customers into Raving Fans

When I was heading up the Marketing for ZagMe, a location based marketing channel, I knew we'd succeeded beyond most Marketing Director's wildest fantasies because of one incident. While we had stunning feedback from our customers, one day, one of them phoned up Capital Radio (London's biggest radio station) and dedicated a song to "ZagMe and the cool offers they send me when I'm at Bluewater mall".

In an age where kids are increasing cynical about marketing, we had managed to create a passion, not dissimilar from how some people feel about sports teams. Furthermore, we'd done this on a diddly squat budget and with an under-resourced team.

The guys at Flickr must be feeling the same way about this site. yourcompanynamesucks.com is normally used by disgruntled customers and ex-employees to whine and bitch about your company. Check out this and this, by way of example - I am not endorsing these sites, incidentally, but they are in the public domain for you to visit.

But if you go to www.flickrsucks.com, you get this:

The domain was purchased by an adoring fan. Thanks to Business Logs for spotting it (on Web Word).

To me this is a strong indication that Flickr will be one of the winners in this market, despite the launch of a plethora of rip-offs. People who feel this strongly, won't be easily persuaded to go elsewhere. And having cornered the market for the Alpha users, who teach everyone else how to use technology, they'll be teaching people how to use Flickr, not some Johnny-come-lately entrant.

A further reason why they'll succeed is that sites like Flickr have a strong inertia factor working for them. Having uploaded all your photos, you're going to have to have a very compelling reason to go through all the hassle of uploading them to someone else's site.

Having said that, ZagMe failed despite the passion of the staff and customers alike. But that was probably more a factor of poor timing than anything else. Sorry to repeat myself, but if you don't know, I've got a free White Paper based on the story of ZagMe. Email me if you'd like a copy. russell at mobhappy dot com.

Talking of passionate customers, I had a little rant a while ago about the "c" word - "consumers" in this instance. I hate the word and companies who talk about consumers, as opposed to customers or clients.

It seems that the legendary Doc "Cluetrain" Searls is thinking the same way. Writing about successful marketing is our post-mass-advertising world, he says:

purge the old mass marketing lingo. Forbid the terms "consumer" and "message." The first insults your customers, and the second is something nobody demands. Face it: neither conversation nor relationship are about "messages." I know this makes what we used to call "message development" really hard, but that's too bad. A good clear description — yes, good copy — beats the crap out of a "message" any time.

Yep, I agree with that.

More Straps

Following yesterday's post on Strap Ya, a website dedicated to selling mobile phone straps, Reuters has more on this market.

It seems that it's pretty massive in Japan, worth an estimated Yen 6 billion ($60 million). And big fashion names have noticed and launched their own versions, with Hermes, Gucci and Chanel selling straps for about $300 each.

Strap Ya

Strap Ya is a site dedicated to selling....mobile phone straps, admittedly with a few other accessories.

Rather..ummm...niche.

The pic shows a sushi strap.

Spotted on Tom Hume's Blog.

220 Billion SMS in China

As if you needed convincing that the Chinese mobile sector was big, Textually reports that this year 220 Billion SMS's will be sent by its 315 million mobile phone users.

If my maths is right, that's 700 SMS's a year each.

That's a rather mind buggering number.

The picture, by the way, shows the legendary late comedian, Tommy Cooper. He used to say:

Apparently, 1 in 5 people in the world are Chinese. And there are 5 people in my family, so it must be one of them.

It's either my mum or my dad. Or my older brother Colin. Or my younger brother Ho-Cha-Chu.

But I think it's Colin.

Virtual Island Sells for Real Money

The BBC has a story about a gamer buying an island in a a game for....$26,500 in real money. The island exists in Project Entropia, a Role Playing Game (RPG) and was put up for sale on eBay.

The Beeb goes on:

Earlier this year economists calculated that these massively multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPGs) have a gross economic impact equivalent to the GDP of the African nation of Namibia.

The purchase of the island is not an eccentricity, however. The new owner can tax visitors to his island and sell off sub-plots to other gamers. This can either be further eBay sales for real cash or for the game's virtual currency, the PED. PED's have an exchange value for real money too, so this amounts to the same thing.

I remember in the dotcom era when Beenz (the web's currency) was launched with a great fanfare. "Some day" gushed a spokesman "we'll see day traders in Beenz, earning a living that way." Since their cunning business strategy consisted to selling $5 notes for $10, that seemed to be unlikely to me at the time.

However, it is a very likely scenario that MMORPGs will actually provide some gamers with the opportunity to earn a living in this way.

It's also a fascinating idea in that unlike real land, virtual land can be simply created at will - almost like printing your own money. This means that it's no longer a scarce or finite commodity, which has always been a key economic driver behind the real world value.

Instead its value comes from its desirability to other gamers, just as beach front land in Florida is more desirable and costly than an isolated wasteland in Siberia.

How intriguing.

Better Late than Never

My pals over at Net Imperative had a story last week about Vodafone commissioning Digital Chocolate to develop games to showcase the more advanced capabilities of 3G.

The games are Beach Mini-Golf 3D, Ferrari Experience 3D and Extreme Air Snowboarding 3D, all based on Java.

It's great that Vodafone have got here with their thinking, but it's arguable that such showcase should have been planned prior to their launch. With any new technology, it's essential that the first adopters (called variously innovators, sneezers, mavens or alpha users, depending which guru you follow) have something to show to their friends. This is how adoption moves on to a wider audience.

But if you don't give the innovators something to show off to their friends with, they can't do their job properly, which is recruiting new users for you.

I don't think that this initiative goes far enough though. I'd recommend doing something that goes right to the heart of the brand and its communication. Why not commission a game that puts the handset through its paces as part of the marketing campaign? So you create a game playable on the handsets. Players can interact with the game with cutting edge graphics, but also with other players and game characters in a combination of video, email and SMS. This would really give them a 3G tour and workout.

Think Nokia game on steroids.

Winners can be rewarded with prizes, which in turn becomes an incentive to get 3G in the first place - "Win a Million with Vodafone Live! with 3G".

That would be joined-up marketing.

Sex Sells

The New York Times has an article about "adult services" being sold over mobile phones in the US.

It seems that many operators aren't getting into the sector, fearing it might compromise their brands. Bearing in mind that they're not trying to ban access to porn, merely refusing to sell it themselves, I wonder if they're right to be concerned.

I appreciate both the rise and rise of the prurient religious right and the strong stance that the women's movement has against this industry. But I wonder if the carriers are right to take this moral stance in this context. Isn't it a bit like the credit card industry refusing to allow you to buy porn with their products?

Playboy has been a mainstream brand for years now and allowing them, as an example, to sell product in association with an operator would surely be acceptable to most people, wouldn't it? Obviously, assuming that suitable controls were put in place to prevent kids accessing it.

Or perhaps the US market wouldn't stand for it?

That said, they are turning their backs on that will surely be worth billions of dollars.

Proving another cultural difference, the article also blandly states that the guy in charge of Playboy's content distribution is called Randy Nicolau. This makes us Brits chortle uncontrollably as "randy" in our English means err... "horny", I guess is the nearest word.

Please excuse gratuitous use of semi-clad female, but I thought the story needed it.

Leapfrogging

Leapfrogging is an interesting concept that is highly influential on the growth of the mobile phone market right now.

Wordchanging explains:

"Leapfrogging" is the notion that areas which have poorly-developed technology or economic bases can move themselves forward rapidly through the adoption of modern systems without going through intermediary steps. We see this happening all around us: you don't need a 20th century industrial base to build a 21st century bio/nano/information economy.

Rather than following the already-developed nations in the same course of "progress," leapfrogging means that developing regions can experiment with emerging tools, models and ideas for building their societies. Leapfrogging can happen accidentally (such as when the only systems around for adoption are better than legacy systems elsewhere), situationally (such as the adoption of decentralized communication for a sprawling, rural countryside), or intentionally (such as policies promoting the installation of WiFi and free computers in poor urban areas).

The best-known example of leapfrogging is the adoption of mobile phones in the developing world. It's easier and faster to put in cellular towers in rural and remote areas than to put in land lines, and as a result, cellular use is exploding. As we've noted, mobile phone use already exceeds land line use in India, and by 2007, 150 million out of the 200 million phone lines there will be cellular. There are similar examples from all over the world.

Of course, that's only really half the story - the cause, not the effect, if you like. The effect is that that phones will have a far higher penetration than PC's in these countries. And ultimately, internet access by phone will be far greater than by PC, on a worldwide basis.

Who knows what radical changes this is going to spark off?

For instance, there's a real need to find better ways of keying in data to phones if the mobile is going to replace the PC, which is certainly my theory.

Leave a comment if you have any ideas. Hell, just leave a comment to say Hi!

Link spotted on Moore's Law.

The Future of Mobile

I'm currently working on my predictions for next year, which can be fun and can be surprisingly accurate - or not. Actually I'll review my 2004 ones at the same time.

Do you have forecasts you'd like to share with the Mobile Weblog readership?

Drop me a line or leave a comment.

New Location Based Social Networking

Bookcrossing is a new form of location based social networking, that I think is really cool, even if it doesn't really involve technology.

Bookcrossing n. the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise.

(added to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary in August 2004)

You simply leave a book you really like in a public place, for another to find and share. You register your book on Bookcrossing.com so that the lucky recipient can see who left it and what you thought about it. And you get notified when someone finds your liberated book and what they think about it.

What a cool small way to make the world a nicer place. or maybe I should have been a hippy.

As seen on Business Blogs.

Pay Your $100

Back in August, I predicted that Apple would be launching an iPhone in conjunction with Motorola within 18 months. In fact, I bet all-comers $100 that I would be right.

Yesterday, the venerable Engadget reports:

Apple officially announced some kind of cellphone partnership which would result not just in a Motorola phone that is iTunes capable, but in something users could call a proper “accessory” to their iPod, chiefly one that Apple should have a large part in the interface and exterior design of. The phone should be expected to have fully-enabled Bluetooth (spitting right in Verizon’s eye) and run “mid-range” (i.e. estimated $200-350 US), which we certainly didn’t see coming.

Watch out for more announcements and I'm sure, a really, really cool phone.

And those of you who took my bet, pay up now please :-) I won't embarrass you by naming you.

Kids are Mob Happy

If ever you needed proof that kids are crazy about mobiles, this coverage of a BBC initiative gives it to you.

Ariel, the BBC staff newspaper printed some top line results of a wider survey of children, as part of the Charter Review process. You'll notice a common theme:

"They could text telling us about new programmes or information about competitions."

"Put some programmes on mobiles or the internet."

"If you forgot to revise for a test at secondary school you could put Revisewise on mobiles."
(Children from Little Kingshill School, Bucks.)

"The BBC could use a daily text messaging service for news headlines."
(age 15, Richmond)

"I don't like how the news is on in the morning for about three hours. There should be top-ups on your mobile phones about the news and sport."
(age 10, St Thomas Moore School, Coventry)

"Maybe there could be a loyalty bonus of certain programmes if you watch every day. Maybe you can send a top up card of £5 or give them 10 free text messages."
(age 9, St Thomas Moore School, Coventry)

"Mobile phones are used a lot in films which can make younger children want to use them."
(age 10, St Thomas Moore School, Coventry)

Elsewhere in the feature a group of pupils at Doon Academy in Ayrshire were asked for ideas about how the BBC could use new technology. They listed:

* Free ringtones of programme tunes for mobiles
* Versions of games on internet for mobiles
* More vote-in programmes where people phone in to vote for their favourites

Obviously, there's a lot of bias in this as the author selected a sample, from a sample, from a sample. Nonetheless, I do think that this is how kids view the world.

And in an age where integrating TV (and other "old" media) with mobile is often little more than an afterthought, the kids intuitively understand that integration is the way to go.

Listen to the children. They get it.

You Can't Speak and Surf at the Same Time!

There's an interesting interview on The Feature with Nokia's games guru Greg Costikyan. It's slightly downbeat, which is a little odd when you consider mobile gaming is about to explode. If you believe analysts, of course and when they agree with me, I do :-)

But there's one thing that I'd never thought about before, although if you asked me outright I'd have known the answer:

Given the difficulty of inputting text on a mobile device, being able to use voice makes absolute sense, and after all, these are voice devices, right?

However, given the way data technology has been implemented on mobile phones, it is essentially impossible to make both a conventional voice and a data connection simultaneously, which I find astonishing, because this strikes me as key for a whole slew of mobile applications and not just games.

For example if I'm looking up restaurant listings on my phone, I want to be able to chat with my sweetie at the same time about where we're going to go to dinner. However, unless you are going to put in two sets of circuitry and make two simultaneous connections, there's really no way to do it other than by doing it all as data and packetizing the voice and doing voice over IP at the same time.

However, with current networks [Pathway to Glory], the bandwidth is kind of not there. The reason the N-Gage title works is it's a World War II title and it's a single duplex, somewhat fuzzy voice, which makes perfect sense in the context of the game because it sounds a lot like military radio.

Doesn't this make the operators' worst possible nightmare - Skype or another Voice over IP system - inevitable? Then operators loose the majority of their revenue, as juicy and profitable voice calls still make up the bulk of their business.

Sure, they'll still have data revenues derived from using the phone to make data calls, including VoIP. But that would surely drive the market further into commoditisation and the inevitable price war that accompanies this type of market.

Someone Gets It!

I've been writing a bit about the record industry's denial issues recently. So it's nice to see that someone finally gets what's happening in the industry.

Permission-based marketing God, Seth Godin, spoke at a "closed" conference for the music industry. Here's the unexpurgated notes of one of the attendees. It's like a light goes on in the guy's head - finally they understand what we've banging on about.

Shame the rest of his industry won't get it. But, just as every journey starts with a single step, so every belief change starts with a single voice.

We're gonna start a business.

Lewi's a business book fanatic. To tell you the truth, I don't believe in them. Except maybe Clayton Christensen's. And, of course, the classic "Tipping Point". Usually they're written by self-declared wannabes. Or people who think just because THEY were successful ONCE they know all the answers. Bullshit. So when Jim lobbied all of us to have Seth Godin speak at Aspen Live, we all said NO! But it's Jim's conference. He got Scott down to a reasonable price and overruled us.

I was wrong. This was the first time I'd heard a business speaker who GOT IT! Who I thought was on my wavelength. Who had something to impart other than his desire for a check.

Seth Godin said you've got to give it away for free. Since we refuse to charge.

Oh, Mr. Godin doesn't think music should be free. It's just that we should charge at the ISP level. Give MORE music for LESS money.

Shit, seems like EVERYBODY knows this other than the Big Four.

But, since the major labels are shooting themselves in the foot AND music is free, then you've got to sell a souvenir.

Wait a second. Music isn't and shouldn't be free!!!

If you believe that, you're suing kids. Kids who know that the odds of a lawsuit reaching them are about as high as their parents getting videotape of them puking at the college mixer. FURTHERMORE, even if somehow the labels won, even locked down the hardware, there STILL would be no restriction on people giving music away who WANTED to. And people would STILL gravitate to this free music.

But since music is now free... You've got to sell something else.

Actually, at this point, to a great degree that something else IS the CD.

That's what I think anyway, Mr. Godin wasn't this sophisticated. I scratch my head and WONDER how we can still sell CDs to rippers and downloaders. Who seemingly only want the digital file. I've decided they're TOTEMS! BADGES OF HONOR! A way to express your IDENTITY! AND, Seth DID say to do the math. That even if TEN MILLION PEOPLE got your stuff for free, if one tenth paid, you still were selling a MILLION COPIES! The majors have it all wrong. They're suing Grokster to insure that their business remains small. No, the key is to BLOW THE BUSINESS UP! To have hit music on TENS OF MILLIONS of hard drives. But the majors can't think that way. They're like the hat business. All the businesses Mr. Godin had slides of. That went out of business. WHAT ABOUT THE STOCKHOLDERS someone chirped in from the peanut gallery? What about all those people who owned STOCK in the major labels? Well, the stagecoach company had stockholders too...

It's all about permission marketing. Getting people to ALLOW you to sell to them. All the old wave marketing. On TV. It no longer works. Because of CLUTTER! Hell, I can see the same thing at MY HOUSE! I'm so INUNDATED with music that I listen to almost none of it. I need a REASON to listen. And it's not traditional. Hell, even AIRPLAY doesn't impress me. I've got to KNOW the person involved. Or else somebody NOT involved has to tell me it's happening. And these people I trust. The relationship isn't built in a day. And it's based on honesty. Ongoing veracity. And you overhype me once, break my trust once, and you're done.

Oh, Seth told a great story about CD Now. You remember CD Now. They ruled the online CD sales world. They sent a newsletter of new releases once a month and response was INCREDIBLE! They were bought out/merged and the new money men said to send e-mail to customers TWICE a month. Business went up. Then ONCE A WEEK! Business went up further! Then every three DAYS! And CD Now went out of business. Because now most of their audience was IGNORING the e-mails. CD Now blew it. They busted up the relationship.

But how are you supposed to reach the audience? How are you supposed to break the next diva?

You're not. Sure, every once in a while there's a Celine Dion, but most times the center, the mainstream, is a money pit. You spend a fortune to reach those mildly interested.

Yes, mildly interested.

You've got to work the fringes. Where the FANS are. Let THEM grab hold.

And then THEY'LL spread the idea. Seth calls this an "ideavirus". And the people who spread the word "sneezers". In reality, it's just different language from Malcolm Gladwell. What we're talking about here IS the tipping point. And connectors. But the key element is it's SANS MARKETING! It's not about beating people over the head, but getting your innovative idea out there. And hoping it catches fire.

And, you can't short circuit the process anymore. Because the public has been street teamed to death. No, your only choice is to find something REAL! Something SO hot that people will want to sell it FOR YOU!!

First you've got to get eyeballs.

We listened to Seth on Thursday. And asked questions thereafter. Then on

Friday, we attempted to come up with an outline of our business.

There were some who cringed when they heard the word "Internet". ENOUGH ALREADY! We're selling CDS!!!

But the Net is where the AUDIENCE is. The SNEEZERS!

Shit, just go to a house where teenagers live. PRE-TEENS! Right after school. FOR HOURS kids all over America sit in front of their computers and IM!!! MULTIPLE PEOPLE AT ONCE!! WHAT DO YOU THINK THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT???

And it's not only kids now. Even adults are starting to IM. And certainly e-mail has infiltrated the marketplace. We've seen a paradigm shift. GET OVER IT!

But then there were people who said that music couldn't be given away for FREE! It DEVALUED IT!!! Sent the wrong MESSAGE!!

THIS was a head-scratcher. The MAJOR LABELS made it free. By REFUSING TO LICENSE!!!

Music IS free. ENOUGH with the re-education programs. What, do we live in a third world country? Where the government tries to repress a suddenly informed populace? People know the truth. That you can download just about anything. And you can't really stop it. It's only the MAJOR LABELS who disagree.

Yup, I've got to single out one Cliff O'Sullivan. Who stopped the proceedings to tell us that the lawsuits were WORKING! That majors were selling a PLETHORA of CDs. That they weren't going to go out of business. That there WERE pricing issues, but they'd been SOLVED!!

Shit, sounds like someone who works for Zach Horowitz.

I don't know Mr. O'Sullivan personally. Maybe he's a nice guy. Then again, he IS quite intense. But STATISTICS tell us he's wrong. The number of files being traded has GONE UP!!! Public perception is that music is overpriced. And, the CD IS a souvenir. But it won't be in the future. THIS is the kind of thinking that will drive the majors RIGHT OFF THE CLIFF!

Then again, Peter Tempkins had great insight on the lift the next day. Those leading the charge, those in front of the room facilitating the creation of our business were all ENTREPRENEURS! All people who could come to a decision and instantly EFFECTUATE IT! And almost ALL the naysayers worked for the man, the corporation. They couldn't just say YES! There were higher-ups, policy, A WAY OF DOING BUSINESS! You just couldn't throw the rule book OUT!

But that's what Shawn Fanning did. That's what most kids have done. It's reality. GET OVER IT!

The key is to aggregate a TON of eyeballs. And gain their trust. And THEN to figure out how to sell them.

Yup, we've got that luxury. We're not borrowing money from the public via Wall Street. We've all got regular jobs. We're ALREADY selling things ourselves. But, we can SELL MORE if we can create a place where the AUDIENCE comes. An audience that TRUSTS US!

Hell, build it and they will truly come. Not only Internet advertisers, but the record companies THEMSELVES! As I told the Board the next day, if we aggregate music fans labels will PAY US to GIVE AWAY MP3s on our site. Yup, they'll argue about music being free up front, but once we've BUILT IT they'll be DYING to play. Because it's JUST LIKE RADIO! But BETTER! Because our constituency will TRUST US! And we won't sell space to EVERYBODY! And if it comes directly from the major label, we'll call it WEASEL HYPE OF THE WEEK! Because that's what it is. But, we'll allow the major label to sell it as hard as they want. With all the bio and historical info they've got. Although now it will have to be written WELL, be INTERESTING, since this isn't newspaper reporters who don't care, but TRUE FANS, who don't want to be LIED TO! Who are HUNGRY FOR INFO, as long as it's real, and it's INTERESTING! Gain their trust, and they'll be looking for YOUR COMPANY'S giveaways. And WE won't abuse their trust by giving away A TON of your shitty music. We'll only give away one track at a time. Not abusing OUR relationship with OUR fans/customers. Oh, we'll give away stuff they WANT!!! We just won't be HYPING THEM ALL THE TIME!!!

We finally got it together in Saturday's meeting.

I'm not going to give away most of our ideas, because you could rip them off. WOULD rip them off. Since you never had an original idea in your life. To think out of the box is ANATHEMA to those entrenched.

But the audience is yanking you from your perch.

The key is to throw in with the audience. FOLLOW THEM!

That's the goal of our site. It's not about beating THEM over the head, SELLING THEM. No, our site will be GIVEN OVER to the public. It's THEIRS!!!! We're just creating the framework. Which we will adjust based on their feedback. But they've got a hunger. For what we provide. And we're gonna provide it.

Russell

PS If I've got the photo of the wrong Bob Lefsetz up there - many apologies. But I think there can't be two people of that name in the music industry!

The Age of the Pro:Am

It seems that we're entering a new age where amateurs are beginning to produce work that competes and even exceeds the quality of that produced by professionals.

This has pretty much always been the case with artists - if you're a painter, a sculptor or even a novelist, you normally have to start out as an amateur, pursuing your vocation as a hobby.

But this is now slowly permeating into other areas.

Blogging is an obvious one. Now we have the tools, everyone has the potential to produce news and comment, as well as consume it. There's a great 8 minute video here or here(thanks Dennis) if you haven't seen it. It's difficult to load as I suspect their servers are a little overwhelmed. But it takes the perspective of looking back from 2014, when the great news organisations have folded and ordinary people generate the news and analysis.

Then we have Wired's report of school teacher George Masters' advertisement he produced for the iPod. Its been viewed by about 40,000 people and is generally rated as good as anything any as agency could produce. Watch it here.

For me, there's a couple of interesting things here. Firstly, George was able to do this without any brief from Apple. Why? Because as a user of the product he understands everything he needs to know about the brand, its positioning and values.

Secondly, he spent 5 months producing it, a couple of hours at a time. Think about that. 5 months producing something he wasn't getting paid for and he probably thought would be seen by about 10 people.

If you can make your brand users as passionate as this about your product, the world really will beat a path to your door. Not only will they create a powerful word of mouth marketing campaign, they'll even produce your advertising for you!

I expect that this trend of the Pro:Am will continue and next on the horizon will be the music and film industries. I think short films in particular will have a Renaissance with 1.5 billion personal screens out there - commonly known as mobile phones. And shorts are the prefect length for viewing on your mobile.

Anyone any ideas about other industries that might be affected? Leave a comment if you have any ideas. Don't be shy now!

Mobile Price Comparison

Last year social networking sites seem to be the vibe, despite no definable business model. Today, hardly a month seems to pass before another mobile price comparison service is announced.

UpSnap are the latest to launch with their "Scrooge Buster" in the US. But unlike other competitors, this one is free, apart from the cost of the sms you send them. This neatly circumvents one of the key problems with price comparison - mean people don't like to pay for things :-)

To use it, you simply sms them the make and model of the product. They search their database for the best prices and sms you back. You can then request that you're put through with a voice call to your merchant of choice.

The business model behind this is not very clear apart from that they make their money from the merchant, not the user. So they either charge merchants to be included in the results they sms you, or they charge the merchant for putting you in touch with them with a voice call.

If they charge merchants for being included in the search results (like Google's AdWords), it's not much use unless the merchant is also offering the lowest price. If people use a price comparison tool, it's pretty unlikely that they'll choose to buy a product from a more expensive supplier. So, unless the merchant thinks she's going to be the cheapest, it's a pretty useless advertsing medium.

If, on the other hand, they make money from connecting the user to the retailer they choose, they have a massive logistical issue as they need to sign up to their service every merchant they list. And if they don't sign up every merchant, they're not delivering their promise (finding the cheapest) to their users.

And anyway, I imagine only a relatively small fraction of people will choose to be connected there and then, meaning revenues are going to be significantly lower than you might think.

Hmmm. Am I missing something? Or is the price comparison game not such an easy one to crack?

MPAA Have Shit for Brains - Official!

Sometimes we can all be forgiven for not learning from others' mistakes. Maybe we're not aware that the mistakes that have been made. Or perhaps we fail to notice the parallels.

But the similarities between the much publicised RIAA's largely unsuccessful actions and the ones just about to be embarked on my their retarded cousins over at their Motion Picture Academy of America are blindingly obvious.

Even if they succeed in closing down BitTorrent (unlikely as it has tons of legitimate uses), new ones will emerge Hydra-like somewhere else and be even more difficult to stop. Look at what happened with Napster.

These court actions are just the MPAA's anger response, which has followed years of denial that this would happen. The bargaining, depression and acceptance phases are coming soon.

What do you call a person who does exactly the same thing and expects a different result? "Optimistic to the point of stupidity" would be a kind way of answering the question. "Shit for brains" would be more honest.

When will these people realise that you can't stuff this cat back into the bag? They need to accept that the world's changing, deal with it and move on. But initiating a round of legal initiatives against their customers just can't make sense. "Don't sue customers" sits alongside with "try and make money" and "don't greet your customers in the nude" as being such obvious rules that they're not even mentioned in even the most basic business books.

Media Fragmentation

Mass media continues to fragment at an alarming rate - especially alarming if you work in the media, advertising or a brand wedded to a traditional media strategy of TV and Press.

The Guardian* reports:

In 2004 it seems that just six TV shows managed to attract an audience of more than 15 million people [in the UK]. This compares with 50 programs in 2003. The change in viewing patterns over five years is even more dramatic, says the Guardian. In 1999, 177 programs had more than 15 million viewers.

So far, the advertising industry is in the denial stage of its own pending death, continuing to party like it's 1989 - watch out for subsequent signs of anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance, like we're seeing in the record industry.

Meanwhile, there's much chatter among the Blognoscenti about how advertisers are beginning to covet the mobile phone as an advertising tool. For instance, Mike Masnick at The Feature had some interesting thoughts on this last week.

With 1.5 billion phones out there, with increasingly sophisticated media capabilities, it's natural that advertisers should look to the new medium. Having said that, frighteningly few advertising agencies are, in my experience - denial again, you see.

But you can't really blame the agencies. The media planners' job has been pretty straightforward for 50 years; if the client has the budget, put it on TV. Can't afford TV? Go for press. Can't afford press? Get out of my office please.

But now they have to consider other forms of media and guess what? These new ones need a totally new way of thinking. You can't really expect to run conventional TV ads on a mobile, though it won't stop them from trying initially. And when it doesn't work, they'll get extremely peeved (anger stage).

And then there's accountability. The schtick about 50% working is great for the ad industry as there's always room to hide behind justification jargon like OTS's and awareness studies.

So what might work on mobiles? Well, I have a lot of stuff on this in my free White Paper on permission based mobile marketing. Drop me a line if you'd like a copy: russell at mobhappy dot com.

I don't claim to have all the answers on communicating via mobiles, but I fear that traditional disruptive methodologies won't work. Worse, it'll piss people off. That said, again it'll be tried.

I think the answer lies in getting their permission to communicate (a MUST!) and finding ways to deliver real value to your audience. If these two essentials are in place, they may accept and even welcome your message.

What kind of ways could add value to them? At one end, we have the alerts to special deals, like we ran at ZagMe and which my White Paper covers in some depth. At the other, it could be sponsored content, which includes advertainment - the kind of advertising that's excellent enough to get passed around through P2P networks. Stuff like the Bud "Wassup?" campaigns, Burger King's Subservient Chicken and the Honda Cog. Obviously, this stuff is fiendishly difficult to get right, both as a creation and as something which actually works commercially - the BK Chicken, for instance, didn't work apparently. Maybe people didn't like the idea of being entertained by something and then being invited to sink their teeth into it.

So expect to see a big growth in product placement, short film making skills, sponsored content and contextual and immersive advertising. And people who tell you how to create viral marketing campaigns for mobiles - again, possible but very hard.

Oh and the inevitable spammers, of course.

So if I were Sir Martin Sorrell (pictured), the boss of the giant marketing services conglomorate, WPP, I'd be looking to invest some of my dollars earned from old advertising into new mobile. And get some clever brains onto cracking the new new paradigm.

*Story spotted on: Corporate Engagement.

Barcodes are Real World Hyperlinks?

I wrote an article over at Net Imperative about my increasing interest in Location - I was beginning to think that Location Based Services were about as relevant to real people as Shakespeare is to a cat.

The NetImp piece argues that bar codes could be the real-world equivalent of a hyperlink - the break though thinking that gave us the web. Clicking on a physical hyperlink (bar code) can take you anywhere relevant in the cyberworld.

And now we have camera phones capable of doing that "clicking", a new era could be arriving, as I write.

An interesting idea, even though I say it myself. Read it here.

Location Based Stupidity

I had a bit of a rant few months ago about companies who both make employee tracking technology and companies who use it.

My main point was that if you feel the need to track employees to make sure that they're doing their job properly, you've got a fundamental problem with how your company is run. And no amount of technology is going to solve that problem.

I was reading the latest edition of the UK's The Director magazine (no link, old media) which examines the issue in the context of managing homeworkers.

People who work from home can be considerably more efficient than their office-based colleagues, mainly as their managers have learned to trust them to get on with their jobs.

Carsten Sorensen, a senior lecturer at the London School of Economics, says that employers need to focus on outcomes not process. In other words, set the employees goals and trust them to meet them.

"If you don't trust your employees, you're going to use all sorts of wrong technologies to monitor every step they take," says Sorensen. In return, remote employees who are not trusted will spend much of their working day bombarding their boss with unnecessary emails and text messages just to show that they're on the job.

He goes on to specifically examine tracking via mobile phones and how this breeds a tangible environment of mistrust, which directly impacts on productivty.

Of course, some companies will still learn the hard way - there have always been bad managers, after all. But if you're a shareholder in a company that "invests" is employee tracking systems, the managers aren't just bad, but they're stupid enough to advertise the fact. Fire 'em.

The Word according to Microsoft

Jeff Raikes is a senior, two-decader Microsoftian and recently gave a speech at Seattle University's Albers School of Business, as reported in Seattle Post Intelligencer Reporter. His remit includes sharing responsibility for strategy and being in charge of MS Office (hence the appalling pun in this headline).

Among the lessons were:

It's often better to cannibalize your own business than to give someone else an opportunity to do it.

In some situations, your biggest competition is yourself.

One of the best ways to compete is to bet big on a "paradigm shift."

When you dominate a market and you're looking for ways to grow, adjust your thinking to enlarge the potential market you're pursuing.

Keep your mind open to unexpected opportunity.

As I wrote last week, I think we're in the middle of two paradigm shifts right now. Firstly, the shift from desk top to web services. And secondly, the shift from the PC to the mobile.

Where's Microsoft's big bets on these?

Link via Emergic

Next Gen Mobile Billing Explained

Billing platforms are the engines that power the ship of mobile commerce. One of the leaders in this sector is Qpass.

I interviewed Kenneth Parkinson, Director of Business Development for Qpass EMEA to get the low down on their product and his thoughts on the direction of the mobile industry.

In a nutshell, please can you tell my readers what your company does?

Qpass provides mobile commerce software to mobile operators including Cingular, Nextel, Alltel, Boost Mobile and Dobson. These customers utilise Qpass’ Prosperity Series software as an overlay to existing business systems to efficiently manage mobile commerce payment and settlement, content partner relationships, service bundle creation and customer care in mobile or Wi-Fi networks. With more than 75 million subscribers using our platform today, we are able to deliver $25M of revenue for our mobile operator customers in a single month.

And why that’s important?

It is estimated that the m-commerce market will be worth €32 billion by 2009 (source: Juniper Research). Prosperity Series is the only comprehensive services management platform on the market in Europe today, enabling MNOs to efficiently manage mobile content and services to take advantage of the great business opportunity offered by mobile commerce.

Do you think MNO’s lack of adequate billing systems is holding the content industry back and if so, do you have any evidence to support that?

We conducted a survey in September 2004 of mobile content providers who operate in Europe. The survey revealed that inadequate business systems are holding back the development of mobile commerce amongst mobile phone users in Europe.

The study found that 85 per cent of mobile content providers believe that European MNOs are constrained by poor or inadequate systems for mobile commerce. Additionally, 70 per cent of mobile content providers reported that they deemed this situation unacceptable and reported that European MNOs have inadequate business systems compared to MNOs in other geographical regions.

Mobile commerce content providers jointly ranked time-to-market for new content and the inability to link seamlessly into MNO billing systems as the key issues holding back consumer adoption of m-commerce and future revenue growth.

An inability to support a flexible pricing model and a lack of real-time sales analysis data from MNOs were jointly ranked as the second issue holding back consumer adoption and revenue growth.

Where do you see the big growth areas being for mobile content?

Any services which will drive revenue from outside of the current focus areas of ringtones and logos. Thus the trends that we are seeing in the US where we are able to analyze data for more than 50% of the addressable subscriber base, show us that today the fastest grow area is in games.

We do however believe that as the mobile phone moves to also become the mobile music device; music will be another growth area driven by the same youth sector. In addition we have been approached by a number of operators who are interested in developing a number of enterprise specific applications in the future.

Why do you think it is that MNO’s have been slow to adopt next generation billing? Surely, it’s their lifeblood – like a supermarket not installing tills?

There are several reasons for this, the main one being that MNOs were able to piece together systems to manage functions such as pSMS efficiently for several years.

Now that GPRS handsets are widely available, as well as 3G networks, the opportunities for consumers to download mobile content and utilise their phones as payment mechanisms are greater than ever before. However there is an obvious reluctance for the MNOs to upgrade billing systems since this type of project can typically take between 5 to 10 years to complete and the cost is similarly high.

That is the advantage of the Qpass Prosperity Series software solution in that it acts as an overlay to existing Billing and OSS systems. Thus even if a MNO has 19 different billing systems (as one of our customers did have!) the interface for content providers and other parties is common at the Qpass solution layer.

One reason why P2P music file sharing exploded was that the record industry refused to consider a legitimate sales channel via the web. Do you see any parallels with mobile content? In other words, if MNO’s don’t provide what people want, will they get it underground?

There is a great similarity between these two “channels”, since they are both driven by the market group in the main. Operators are going to need to be careful not to disintermediate themselves from the value chain and simply become a “pipe” allowing delivery of digital goods. This in some way has been already seen in Europe through the introduction of Premium SMS, where the user has greater freedom to choose from where he would like to buy his goods. This will move from a national solution to an international solution with the introduction of Simpay next year.

Make three predictions for the next for the mobile industry for the next 3 years.

a) Data services revenue for mobile operators will far outstrip the revenues associated with traditional voice calls.

b) Vodafone will make a more recognisable footprint in the US.

c) I will still not be able to maintain a 3G connection while using my data-card in my PC on the Eurostar train journey from London to Paris!

Who do you most admire in the mobile industry?

I admire the many mobile content providers in the industry that are producing wonderfully creative games, ringtones and other downloads. They often operate on the frontiers of the industry and are helping to drive it forward.

Who’s the most influential person in mobile today?

There is no, one single person I could identify as the most influential although any of the current CEO’s of the top six European operators would be good candidates. I will be keeping my eye on Stelios as he launches his new MVNO and be interested to see if he can succeed in the mobile space.

Will Apple launch an iPhone?

If they do, I think it will probably be the best looking and most usable mobile phone on the market (and will definitely be on my Christmas list!).

Location Based Gaming

While location-based services have been written off by many, rumours of its death are greatly exaggerated, in my opinion.

What tends to happen with any new technology is that the vendors hype it up and cite all kinds of ways we might use it. Unfortunately and somewhat inevitably, they get these ways very wrong. So everyone slags it off, looses interest and looks for the next big, sure fire winner.

In the meantime, a few developers find the technology lying unloved and abandoned, play around with it, talk to some real users and come up with a couple of ideas that will work. Slowly, more and more users take it up until suddenly, as if by magic, we have a mainstream success that everyone's using.

Take WAP which has gone from "WAP is crap" to "russell me hair and call me Frankie, did you know that WAP in the UK has over 1 billion page impressions a month and is growing 20% year on year?" in just under 4 years.

We're at the stage with Location Based Services now of developers quietly working on cool stuff, while operators have essentially lost interest. If you like, we're changing from vendor push to user pull and that's an exciting time.

Big caveat here: it's only exciting if the operators install the technology to enable these new services.

Location based gaming is one area about to explode. We had Swordfish a few months ago. And now we have Raygun, as featured on the wonderful We Make Money Not Art.

A cell phone loaded with RayGun software emits “spectral” energy that lets you attract and track ghosts.

Unfortunately, the energy also annoys the ghosts, so you’d better “ionize” them before they get to you.

The twist: RayGun is a GPS game, and to play it you have to move through the real world—that is, running around using your real feet. To aim the raygun at a ghost, you move toward it. Moving quickly increases the raygun’s range.

You can adjust your beam to long and narrow (good for zapping ghosts while they’re still far away) or short and wide (good for zapping them when they’re closing in on you). The longer you play, the more ghosts you attract, and the faster you have to move to stay ahead.

LBS gaming is going to be very big, take it from me.

Desktop Search from Your Mobile

There's quite a lot of blog chatter about desktop search at the moment and especially how it relates to mobile.

VC and guru Kevin Laws has speculated that, while it's not the intention of these companies, accessing powerful desktop search from your mobile could be the big opportunity here.

The argument goes like this. Many of us have data stored on numerous devices these days - our PC's, PDA's, phones and even iPods/MP3 players. While they can all synch up, it's not an easy or quick process. In fact backing them all up twice a day would mean that you wouldn't get much else done.

So, let's assume that it all resides on your PC, which incorporates a very powerful search facility. Let's assume that very fast connections are readily available (via an operator or wireless Lan).

Now, if you want to view or use a file, which could include playing a game or listening to your MP3 files, you access them on your PC from your PDA, mobile or iPod. Use them and return them for storage on your PC.

I think that this is a very Microsoftian view of the world, making the desktop PC the centre of the network. I believe that the principle of such a model is possible, even highly probable, but in fact it'll be the network itself that will store this information.

In other words, all our devices, including the PC, will migrate towards being thin clients, with the main storage and processing done on incredibly powerful central servers. The PC will change from being the centre of our digital lives to just another device we use to access the internet and our centrally stored, personal data centre. In fact, the concept of having a personal PC at all may seem quaint and old fashioned a decade from now. We'll just grab the nearest and best device for doing what we need to do next.

And whatever device you're using, which includes any PC anywhere you happen to be, as well as your PDA, phone or MP3 player, will present you with a view of "your" desktop. Any work you do will automatically be saved and stored centrally. And thus changed simultaneously for any other device you happen to be using later.

This trend is supported by initiatives like Gmail, BlogLines, Flickr and many other rising stars on the net.

The company who has most to loose in this scenario is Microsoft, obviously, who are currently wedded to the desktop-centric view of the world.

The company with most to gain I think is Google. Rumour has it that they've opened a new $300m office in Georgia, with no windows, 100 employees and deny that it's part of Google. If you were about to launch a mega storage farm on the world, this sounds like a way you might go about it.

But leaving aside if or when this is a Google initiative, I think we can say that migration from the desktop to the network has now begun.

What's your view? Leave a comment and let me know.

Long Live the Mobile

OK, we all know that mobile phones are ubiquitous - "everybody has one these days".

But it's also good to remind ourselves from time to time what that means.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) announced yesterday that there are now 1.5 billion mobile subscribers in the world - 25% of the global population has one. For the record, fixed line is 1.185 billion, so mobile has overtaken that significant benchmark.

Much of this growth is fueled by the world's three largest populated countries, China, India and Russia. In fact, developing countries now account for 56% of the world's subscribers.

How does this compare to Internet access - we also think of this as fairly ubiquitous. Actually, "only" 700 million have this.

But once these developing countries get better phones and can access the internet through them, you can see where the growth opportunities lie.

The PC is dead. Long live the mobile!

Stats via Reuters.

Shag Phone Again

I wrote a post on this blog back in June about people having affairs keeping a second phone - I called it a Shag Phone. Having a shag phone means that you know who's calling and there's no unexplainable number on your phone bill for your spouse to find.

This story has been going round ever since and is still responsible for a lot of visitors.

Looking at blogs linking to this site, I came across one called Aging Rockstar and is a diary blog of an anonymous GOD man - Growing Old Disgracefully. I assume the band is quite well known as he refers to things like the police controlling crowds and being besieged by groupies. Or he could be a complete fantasist, who knows?

Anyway, Baz (another band member I think) read about the Shag Phone here

Baz's shag phone rang - the one he keeps for special lady friends. Baz read about the idea online and didn't waste any time in getting himself sorted.

Turned out to be BJork. That wasn't a typo, that's the nickname we gave her after she came backstage at Roskilde one year to congratulate us on the set. She suggested that Baz got himself comfortable while she "relieved his stress" - say no more.

Strange old world.

Russell

The image, of course, is of the stars of the great mock-unmentry, Spinal Tap.

Enough Already!

Just what the world was waiting for.

You can download a PDF of this and other other "shhhh" messages to hand to loud/obnoxious/inconsiderate/shameless mobile phone users here. Just print, cut out and enjoy.

Thanks, Nige!

Blindingly Obvious Research Concludes Blindingly Obvious

One of the oldest rules in the marketing or sales book, it that you talk to potential customers about the benefits of using something, not the product features.

So when selling a PC, as an example, you don't talk Gigabytes of storage, you talk about the fact that the PC can store as many documents, videos and music files as any normal person could ever want.

OK, I know that most of the PC industry hasn't realised that either. But it's pretty basic stuff.

Incidentally, if you want to know if you've got a feature or a benefit, think about putting "which means that" after it. This'll make you see the benefit in user terms.

Ericsson, could have saved themselves a ton of money by reading those few paragraphs. Instead, they launched a major piece of research to rediscover this blindingly obvious conclusion, interviewing no less that 14,000 people.

As the BBC puts it:

Faster, better or funkier hardware alone is not going to help phone firms sell more handsets, research suggests.

Instead, phone firms keen to get more out of their customers should not just be pushing the technology for its own sake.

Consumers are far more interested in how handsets fit in with their lifestyle than they are in screen size, onboard memory or the chip inside, shows an in-depth study by handset maker Ericsson.

"Historically in the industry there has been too much focus on using technology," said Dr Michael Bjorn, senior advisor on mobile media at Ericsson's consumer and enterprise lab.

Despite the obvious findings, in fairness, the mobile industry doesn't seem to understand these things and maybe a major piece of research is needed to "prove" this.

It reminds me of 2001 when I attended a meeting where O2 were launching MMS. The marketing spokesman also talked of some obvious research results. It was very important, he quoth, that mobile phones worked straight out of the box. Users weren't comfortable changing settings and weren't prepared to do it.

Fair enough, you might think. If users don't want it, that'll mean that O2 and all the rest will make sure their phones work when they're purchased.

After all, you wouldn't buy a PC and expect to spend hours installing software and fiddling around with it, would you. D'oh - bad example. OK, you wouldn't buy a car and expect to have to manually re-tune it yourself, adjust the gaps in the spark plugs (do you still do that?) and then switch the car from right hand drive to left, would you?

So why do you have to do this with a mobile phone?

Alas, despite what that research said, phones still don't work properly when you buy them, which I think is possibily one of the biggest scandals in the industry and is the elephant in the Board Meetings of every operator.

And I fear that this new Ericsson research will have the same fate. Yes it's right, but it'll be ignored, while they prattle on about network speeds and incomprehensible three and four letter acronyms.

"Yes but what can I do with it?" mutters the user. "Never mind that, it's got GPRS and 72mb of memory!!" enthuses the operator.

When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?

Art Mobs

The artistic community can often be the source of inspiration for the mainstream. So a new exhibition, Art Mobs, could be giving us a glimpse of the future and how we can interact with our mobiles with the world around us.

Art Mobs is produced in conjunction with the Yellow Arrow project, which I've written about before and in a wider context at Net Imperative.

The event features the work of art students at Marymount Manhattan College and attendees can leave virtual comments about pieces they see via sms. Subsequent visitors can view the last five comments by sms too.

People can also download Podcasts of interviews with exhibitors to hear on their iPods.

There's a video here.

What I really like about this is that it turns the passive visitor into the active participant. This is important as if you're forced to say or write what you think about something, you're going to get much more out of it.

For a more traditional way of achieving a similar thing, next time you visit an exhibition, choose your favourite piece and "present" a short critique of it to a companion. You'll find you both get much more from it than passive consumption.

Actually, this is one of the reasons why I blog. It makes me think about things far more deeply than if I just read them alone.

Story spotted on the ever-stimulating