Mobile Talk

Have you heard of FlashMob? A day when a group of people does silly things like stop and stare at the sky for a short while and then disperse to different directions all of a sudden. Or the case when a group of people search for something on the ground for a good 5 minutes and before finding the item, disperse to different directions. Like KL Freeze in Unison held on 13 April 2008? One carrier in United States used this concept to its advantage creating one of the most talked about and viral advertisement in the whole world. In my humble opinion, this could be one of the most out of the world and talked about campaign ever done by any brand.

In this ad, 400 dancers were hired to create a synchronized dancing where starting from just a few people dancing to a tune blasted in a Liverpool train station to a total of 400 people dancing to the tune. Throughout the whole video, you can see a lot of people capturing photos using their mobile phones (as this is an impromptu situation where most people might not have brought their digital camera but a good enough and enticing enough reason to capture a photo). This benefits T-Mobile as being the largest carrier in United States, most people would have used a T-Mobile phone under their phone contract to capture those photos. This is effective in promoting T-Mobile’s large range of mobile phones with high megapixels in capturing a cannot be missed moments. The best part is wondering how much virality this is going to generate esp those who have took those photos or videos and sent them through MMS as proof of what happened and later only to find out that this is a marketing gimmick by T-Mobile. I saw this ad when I was researching on T-Mobile and the YouTube video has such high traffic that I could see the link as the top three links after searching from Google. Up to today, the video uploaded on YouTube has more than 8,809,443 views and is still being distributed through various sites. A day later, my friend sent me the link to view the same video and I was glad I saw it first The point is the virality something like this can create.

Ingenius and out of the box! An advertisement that will be talked about all over the world and made a name for T-Mobile with the motto “Life’s for Sharing”.

One of the most powerful tool in the world today is the power of the mass or ‘crowdsourcing‘! Even though using the mass to make an impact like through demonstrations and war have been going in since man existed, there is a more powerful and positive tool created by the mass today. The ongoing ability to do content creation in the forms of blogs, images and video uploading has created a phenomenon so huge it can be considered a Tipping Point. Websites nowadays are self-sustaining as long as it is open. Having numerous people inserting comments and uploading images and videos onto a website will create unprecedented ongoing traffic. In shorter words, this is also called social media where contents are contributed entirely by the public be it for a fee or for free. This is where Wikipedia, Blogspot, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn play a part and now the proliferation of many more social media sites.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg knows this. He’s young, sure, but he’s no rube. Zuckerberg knows exactly what’s at stake. “The full potential of the web is to make the world more open, so everyone has a voice and can share what is important to them,” he wrote in a recent blog post.

Zuckerberg wants his company to be the gateway to openness. So does Google. So does Microsoft. So does Yahoo! All of them know that the gateway is where the money is.

Closer to home, we have so many Web 2.0 sites now that are using the same crowdsourcing method through the use of not only videos but also uploading interesting MMS of daily occurences to the website. STOMP in Singapore does quite a good job in this and even creates their own videos like a reality series based on blind dates and all the series can only be watched online. Sad to say, I do enjoy the corny lines spoken by real-life people filmed for the series plus the shaky video filmed by the inexperienced videographers (or did they do it on purpose?) being uploaded onto the website. Driving traffic to the site was easy by assigning a few local pretty faces and bloggers to blog weekly on a given topic. Each of the bloggers have their own personalities and it was interesting reading about some of their adventurous. Some more bimbo comments than the others but those make for good reading right?

Now what about Malaysia. It is catching up with the launch of so many social media sites from The Star’s R.AGE (with a nice layout and readable contents, I must say), AllMalaysia.info (that allows people to blog about anything and everything Malaysian) and the recently launched YouthMalaysia.com. These social media has definitely tapped the right target market which is the youth market who are hungry for information. always looking for something new and enjoys getting recognition for their contributions. There is so much room for growth in this country as people are getting more outspoken and innovative and with the emergence of the latest technology, the youth are empowered to find their own outlet of expression. It is no more only about feature writers penning their daily thoughts but the public who captures interesting photos, blogs about the amazing events they participated in and uploads videos of extremely funny characters. This definitely creates a platform for charity especially when the work of voluneters and donors are highlighted by the people themselves and thus setting a role model for others.

A flash flood of ad dollars is waiting to flow to social media, but the models need to be proven. MySpace failed its proof-of-concept test with Google, and your less-than-$600 million valuation for Facebook suggests it will, too. Facebook has valued each user profile on their site as $4 a person which comes up to $600 million for the whole site due to its 150 million members and counting. Twitter meanwhile is a phenomenon no one can avoid and practically useful to everyone! Imagine updating your friends with just a few words and click! Your friends can catch up with what you are doing and you get the opportunity whenever someone finds you. Investors have valued Twitter at more than $1 billion in a public offering with 6 million users, which means each user is worth $167 or 42 times the approximate value of a Facebook profile.

It is with the rise of the importance of social media which brings me to an event in Singapore one would not want to miss to talk about where social media will go and where will it bring us. I have had talks on this with so many people and if not wrong, it would have to be a gateway that merges the needs of everyone from uploading videos to micro-blogging to posting your photos or songs which Facebook is doing very well now. But will we see more of a merging in the near future? I will not be suprised. Now, I am back to racking my brains about how I can utilise this power of the mass for more value and dollars.

What is one of the online sites with AJAX capabilities that would make most sense to be used on mobile? Which site would you most likely to visit when you are on the go and all you have with you is your mobile? With the rage in twittering (meaning updating ppl in 15 words about what you are doing), and since its users update their activity every other minute(You can’t imagine how fast each post can come in, my post was gone down the page within seconds), twitterring while on the go makes sense and that is why mobile twitter is already long overdue. However, the founders did a good job by enabling a fast loading and easy to use mobile twitter with a simple interface for its simple functions. This is how I experimented on my mobile and manage to load the page in less than 30secs, login within 10s and updated my twitter also in the same time frame.Walla! Now everyone can update their twitter anytime anywhere even when you are in the toilet as long as there is GPRS coverage. Now, if only they have a mobile version of my twitter page. Start twittering on the go now: m.twitter.com. Oh yah, and if you are a member add me at username: princesse

As an advocate of Web 2.0 technology, I have been using Netvibes as my favourite AJAX webpage that collects my personal RSS feeds moving on from Bloglines and Protopage (which I still like with its features that enable saving of bookmarks using Post-it notes and saving of screenshots that links to websites). Recently I have find that the site is begining to get slower to load and the refreshing of the RSS feeds are resulting in my PC hanging.

Thus, in my search for the Next AJAX News Feeder, I came across an almost similar RSS feeds to Netvibes called iGoogle by none other than Google. I was apprehensive at first being someone who supports underdogs. I mean how much more can Google do that would be better than so many other RSS feeds out there who are specializing in it?

Being a technology enthusiast, I tried it out nevertheless. It helps that I already have a Google account and all I need to do is login to use the new feature. And boy was I impressed! iGoogle not only allow we to add as many feeds into various categorized tabs just like Netvibes but it also allows me to add tools like Calculator, Dictionary, Map(GPS) Reader, Weather Forecasts and To-do lists. There are many more tools I can select. One of the most impressive feature is iGoogle automatically adds RSS feeds according to the keywords in your category tabs. So, if I add ‘Technology’, all feeds from technology websites will auomatically be added, ie cnet.com, pcworld.com and engadget.com, good for those who have limited websites to add. For someone who also like a bit of good aesthetics, I am amazed when iGoogle not only allow me to add and change themes but the theme also changes according to the time in your country. You can see the theme now is at night as it is already 1am in Singapore but when I open my iGoogle tomorrow morning, the theme changes to morning with sunshine. The best part is I can set this as my default homepage so that I can read news feeds whenever I want to and use the Google search engine immediately. Great stickiness don’t you think.

Even before iGoogle, a lot of companies are already in this space making this is space overly crowded. Another worth mentioning is inewsdaily.com which already has an available list of famous RSS feeds site which strips away the personalization and customization part of RSS feeds but useful for those who lack the time to explore sites on their own. Meanwhile, Orange, a massive European mobile phone carrier that is now a subsidiary of France Télécom, is beta testing a customizable Ajax homepage product called Bubbletop however, only available for Orange subscribers with over 90 million mobile customers which means this will be incorporated into their mobile products.

Take your pick but with a big player like Google, would you use others? The competition has gotten stiffer.

If one is to see the trends going on this year, it would not be difficult to put one and two together and come up with a list of 2007 Mobile and Web Predictions for Year 2007 which will help those who are looking for the next big thing to work on as their business model or to participate in the most exciting technology events next year. Here is what I think will work and not work in the area of mobile technology in 2007:

Mobile
Yes
1. Mobile Ads
Mobile Ads will be bigger with ads transversing from online to mobile seeing the potential that mobile is something everyone carries all the time and identifies the person by location and demographic (from registration and call details). Advantage of having mobile ads are more targeted and location-based ads can be used.

2. Mobile Search
Soon, you will need to search for information anywhere and at anytime. with the increaing number of wapsites that cannot be easily accessible, the need for Mobile Search Engine will definitely be felt. The availability of Mobile Search will definitely increase the numbers of wapsites.

3. Mobile Blogs
With blogging going full-time, it will definitely be useful to be able to blog anywhere, anytime using the handset. Plus, any photo you took using your phone can be uploaded into your blog anytime.

4. User Generated Contents
Exciting space to watch out where users can submit their videos, ringtones and wallpapers created using their phone for downloading by other mobile users. Explains the proliferation of application that allows user to generate and upload their own contents and films contests for videos taken using mobile phones.

Not so sure
1. WiMAX
Not sure if this network will take off with the need to build a new infrastructure to cater to this network coverage.

2. Blackberry Pearl
Very nice design and color but functionalities has yet to be tested. Might just be the next best handset to buy if you have the cash, at least you won’t fail with the support from Smartone-Vodafone’s endorsement in Hong Kong.

No
1. Mobile TV
Lack of screen size and buffering of streaming TV over insufficient bandwidth via GPRS reduces the attractiveness of using Mobile TV despite all the hype it is generating.

2. Mobile IM
Why would you want to pay for sending instant messaging if you can do it for free online? Besides, the lack of screen size to contain so many messages and the integration of operators to enable susbribers to send to friends using other operator network prevents the uptake of Mobile IM. But while Mobile IM might not take off, Mobile Group IM might in which you can send one SMS to groups of people that you have pre-set on your phone.

3. Mobile Money
There is still the issue with operators not wanting to bear the responsibilities of incurring their subscribers credit as getting subscriber’s money from their phone bill bears very high risks. Besides, merchants needs payment systems in order to allow money commerce to transact and many do not see the advantage of buying and maintaining another system if they alr can take credit card payments.

4. 3G
Hype, hype all the way. With high cost of building the infrastucture and high promises of video calls and fast Internet access, much has remain to be benefitted from this network. Perhaps, the killer application has not elevate its importance. Perhaps, it never will.

I will do a short prediction for technology, new media and web related topics for year 2007 as I am very excited about this space too:

1. Video - One would be blind to not predict video as the next best trend after what happened to YouTube. There will definitely be more innovation in video publishing, eg video search engine and directories. The greatest opportunity it still represented by those companies that will be providing the tool and means to facilitate the filtering, selection and distribution of quality video content out of the ocean of low-quality stuff being dumped out there.

2. Visual search engine - I have been very excited about this technology since 2005 but it has not gain a major following. For me, it would be great to have a search engine that returns results not using texts but also a mind-mapping scenario where you can map the resukts of your search to various criterias that you might not have thought of and how it co-relates to other results. Human are more auditory creatures anyway. Grokker has done a good job and I hope they will be the next Google

3. Immersive Virtual Worlds - Yep, ARG will still make headlines together with SecondLife where people start spending and making more money and creating more life in virtual world rather than the real world. Also, brands are advertising in a very subtle way via virtual worlds where customers need to guess, decrypt clues, immerse virtual reality into real life and interact online in order to understand what the brand is conveying or selling them. A very good example is done by Audi3 through their virtual world called The Art of The Heist.

4. P2P: Since we can never make P2P illegal, why not capitalise on it by creating a workable business model from the legions of P2P software out there from BitTorrent to Kazaa to LimeWire.

5. Anything 3D, example Instant Messaging using 3D avatar which IMVU provides, who knows, Yahoo or MSN might just do this and kill iMv with its huge subscriber following.

6. Internet-based TV: Yes, who wouldnt want to watch free TVs and movies on the Internet with their huge broadband network. This model comes together with huge potential for online advertising, thus the proliferation of companies doing this.

The best part is I am excited to be given the opportunity to tap on Singapore’s incubation program for new Interactive Digital Media projects where Media Development Authority (MDA) has allocated SGD50 million to fund innovative projects that lifts the level of technology and media industry in Singapore. I am really bursting my brains to think of good, profitable technology ideas that I can use the government’s money to play with. These trends are a great help, so let’s watch this space. Meanwhile, contact me if you have great ideas.

You take out your jogging shoes bought from Nike and your sports shirt purchased from American Apparel before heading to the newly constructed jogging tracks next to a large lake where people are picnicing or bbqing nearby. It was a scene to behold. As you walk to the playground, you see a large building looming across the street with the logo in white and blue. Very familiar and upon close checking, you realise it is Reuters. Heh! Reuters is finally here, you think. When will it be MTV, ESPN and McDonalds turn?

Imagine all this happening not in the real but virtual world. And indeed this is the case with SecondLife, the most popular virtual community where more than 900,000 users have signed up to build homes, form neighborhoods and live out alternative versions of their lives in the 3D, computer-generated world. Players spend around US$350,000 a day on average, or a rate of $130 million a year.

By having its virtual presence in SecondLife, Reuters will be the first news agency who will report affairs on SecondLife via its news site. They have even created a human avatar called “Adam Avatar” represrented by Adam Pasick to report the happenings in SecondLife. Reuters will have journalists reporting and writing financial and cultural stories within and about Second Life as part of the London-based company’s strategy to reach new audiences with the latest digital technologies.

SecondLife citizens can even keep themselves updated with Reuters’ SecondLife news by using a feature called the Reuters News Center, a mobile device that users can carry inside the virtual environment. Stories will focus on both the fast-growing economy and culture of Second Life and also include links to Reuters news feeds from the outside world, ranging from Baghdad to Wall Street. If the citizens want to talk about the news, there is even a common place where they can gather to talk about current affairs.

Soon, you will see McDonalds, Burger King and many more franchises mushrooming in the virtual world called SecondLife where branding strategies can be tested and advertising can be done to the people who prefers to have a SecondLife than a “real” life. Talk about having a life

What do I do when I am stuck in a toilet forcing my shit to come out? What do I do when I am hanging on the MRT railings waiting for my stop to office? I pull out my loyal handphone, click on the Internet/WAP browser and read the latest news. Where would you identify this occurence the most? Not Malaysia as the people are still too lazy or stuck with traditional media or are mostly stuck in a traffic doing something unproductive like honing the car in front or cursing incessently. Not Singapore as Singapore has been recorded as one of the country with lowest usage of data services except for SMS due to its free SMS with handset plans.

And that is why Google targeted the right market with the highest number of commuters  that fully utilises their phone, be it texting, checking emails, playing games or browsing wapsites. And it is with this that Google has intelligently launched Japanese news on their cellphones driving tremendous traffic into the wap portal.

The service displays reports from about 30 media outlets, including Asahi newspaper and state-run NHK, and aims to expand its lineup. Instead of charging monthly subscription fees, users get to read for free as the advertising model adopted by Google will be adopted on the cellphone. You have to give it to GOogle to have thought of this, targeted the right market and getting higher revenue from their profitable business model, online and now mobile advertising. SO what will happen to the other news site provider? Get obsolete in view of the monopoly? This depends on the variety and completeness of news and the accuracy of the translation to Japanese language. Furthermore, Japanese are known to be loyal users after all.
Google has also tied up with Japan’s second-biggest phone carrier KDDI Corp. (9433.T) to offer search engines on mobile phones.

It must have been an Internet dream come true for the 2 co- founders of YouTube.com, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. Just today, Internet search leader Google is snapping up YouTube for $1.65 billion making it the most expensive purchase by Google during its 8-years history. I was actually waiting to see who would acquire YouTube.com and bank on its huge potential not only in the Internet arena, but also mobile. With its huge repository of videos, there is vast potential in online advertising, brand building, traffic generating as well as loyal subscriber following. As more viewers migrate from tv to the Internet, advertisers will move the same way too.With the change in my lifestyle, I have also resorted to watching clips from YouTube rather than the television. It was easy to pick up my laptop, get connected to Wi-Fi and take a break by watching a short, funny parody, get updated with the latest preview of movies and to be entertained with the latest music videos.With a growing subscriber base in YouTube,com, Google can redefine how advertising is done. So much better as advertising via tv is merely a brand-building and attention grabbing activity. Advertising via the Internet allows a 2-way communication in which money can be earned by both seller and consumer with a more accurate tracking of success rate and origin of traffic. What more can an advertiser ask for.

After the acquisition, this is how the merger will work. User searches for information on the latest McDonalds Value Meal offer via Google and is presented with not only the websites and images of the Value Meal but also a new link directing them to see videos related to that keyword search that have been uploaded in YouTube.com. Clicking on the link presents users with videos of other consumers enjoying the meal and showing what toy you can get by purchasing the new meal. Walla, don’t you feel like ordering the same thing from McDonalds now? Beats the static information presented on the website and the best part is McDonalds do not even need to spend a single cent or effort to produce the video which turned out to be their most effective viral marketing advertisement.

With a worldwide audience of 72.1m by August 06, more media companies will now be lining up to do business with YouTube now that Google owns it. Like the saying goes, “If you can’t fight it, join it.“

In another article about how this news spread like fire even before it is announced formally, thanks to the use of new media via blogs, forums, RSS feeds and news aggregator, read this article. Well yes, I was late in getting the news but not anymore once I get my feeds on my Pocket PC and unlimited Wi-Fi access.

I got head-hunted through LinkedIn. It could be my profile that highlighted my career path and extensive skillset. It could be the name of my employer who could be at the top of every company’s search list but I did get a lot of leads from LinkedIn. If you notice, most people who put their profile on LinkedIn are established professionals with high ranks and good connections. Only those who prefer to socialize and entertain themselves will put extensive profiles in other sites like Friendster, MySpace and Facebook.

It is amazing how social networking has progressed. With sites like MySpace and Facebook that has more than 40 million registered users, so many others like Socializr are cropping up to fill the space of the Internet making money from selling ad spaces to the millions of traffic that goes into their website. LinkedIn, the more professional networking website along with OpenBC, Ryze and Ecademy at the meantime charges recruiters or business owners for searching for people as well as charges premium fees for direct connections to their members.

How does this translate to the mobile world you may ask? There are a some mobile content companies who are paving their way into mobile social networking by creating sites that allow users to post profiles, MMS and update their profile via SMS. One such company is AirG. The only disadvantage is that customers are charged for every post or updates made, unlike in the Internet world. However, the privately held company is making millions from this venture.

Next is how the sites on the web is cross-selling using mobile for the extra revenue, for example how Cyworld with close to 19 million subscribers or 40% of Korea’s population that allows their members to build their own homepage by buying virtual furniture, post photos and logs onto their homepage via the mobile anytime they want. The same goes to the largest social networking site in China called Wang You whose revenue comes from the over 400 million Chinese mobile users paying to send music, photos and messages from their WangYou pages.

Last but not least is how an operator is using the model of social networking to identify a group of high influencers among their subscribers to target these customers with the best promotions. As this group of people enjoy free or subsidized services, word of mouth would be the most effective tool to recommend their friends to use the service. Imagine the concept of having 100 connections or 1000 friends-of-friends who you can inform about the latest handset you are using with free video calls from your operator. Imagine how the big the viral effect is. There is no denying social networking is here to stay.

Bombarded with tremendous amount of information and the persistence to still maintain a social life with old and new friends, I have persistently been experiencing information overload. In this age of information age, it is those who are the fastest in gaining knowledge who will win the race. And I am not only talking abt pure information gathering but also knowing how to use, apply and execute the knowledge as well.

It is not merely on information acquisition but how the information translate to business and market trends and meaningful data that can be monetize directly or indirectly. This is called data visualization.With various asisgnments, I am just too flushed to handle all data and appointments. In the telecommunications industry, changes happen in the speed of light. Besides with my new assignments, I still need to know about the new media and ways to enhance my branding/portfolio in competition with others who are doing similar projects in the market. There is clearly a shift in information paradigm with competitors outdoing each other with a simple click of a mouse.

Here are 5 information shifts and how we can handle them:

 
1. Having vs Finding Information

To be a knowledge worker, you need to have information on your fingertips. It has to be real-time and on-time. That explains the use of PDA and phones that can browse the net via GPRS. I have recently gotten a PDA phone for my birthday and am still learning how to use it effectively. It will be great to be able to know that you have access to information at the tip of a finger, which gives me the competitive advantage, knowing what data to provide at the right time. You can gain your Vitamin (I)nformation constantly via feeds using RSS aggregator websites like www.netvibes.com, www.bloglines and Yahoo’s or Google’s RSS feeds.


2. Too little vs Too much information


Having easy access to information will not help if you do not know how to manage it. Imagine being bombarded with information left, right and centre. You will get burnt out and the information will not be useful for you. Learn how to increase productivity despite the constant barrage of information by learning from sites like www.lifehacker.com and www.43folders.com If you are too busy to read newspapers or go online, make use of your free time while commuting by listening to audio versions of information like podcasts. You can even hear it while showering if you have a good enough radio and sound system.Using my PDA phone, I will be able to manage information like My Calendar with alarms to alert me on appointments, tasks and to-do list. Most importantly is I can blog/write on the go, upload images and files and synchronize it with my pc/laptop when I am home. Any information I need I can easily browse and copy into my articles or blogs.

3. Relevant vs Irrelevant Information

2 business plans: Business Plan A - 20 pages long with complete and lengthy description of the company objectives, business models, financial projections, products and services and marketing strategy.

Business Plan B – 10 pages with a good graphic representation of their business model, marketing strategies, future projections and target audience addressing all competitive and marketing strategies in concise bullet points.

Both have relevant and complete information but the possibility of Business Plan B getting the funding will be higher as they are able to convey their critical information faster and more effectively. The strategic advantage of quality over quantity is even more apparent now. TO keep your information relevant and to even share with people who requires that information, I would suggest web software from www.37signals.com

4. Accurate vs Inaccurate Information 

Did you notice that there are only 4 points on the information paradigm instead of 5 points as mentioned above. With so much information, you are not sure which is right or wrong. Any wrong information given in a blog can be cascaded down to various websites that link and tag it. So the only way to counter this is to stay critical and observant.