Oxford University CPD ran short courses around mobile Web 2.0 on 3- 6 July 2007, covering .
• Mobile social networking,
• User generated content
• Mobile Web 2.0 and IMS :
I attended and took notes on presentations by
• Tomi T. Ahonen , mobile service consultant
• Alan Moore, CEO of SMLXL
• Steve Jones, 3G strategy consultant
• Ajit Jaokar is the founder of Future text
• Mark Searle, head of product development at Surfkitchen
Take-aways
1. Mobile social networking is already there, it’s a 3 billion $ business and can get to 90% penetration with lots of niche services to complement the big names we know today.
2. There’s plenty of potential for creative advertisers to create new multi-channel consumer experiences, while generating revenue for enterprises.
3. Collective intelligence is what powers the web and opening mobile network assets, including IMS to developers will accelerate mobile web 2.0
4. Widgets, identity management are key enablers for mobile web 2.0.
5. We need to observe better social behaviour, emotional experiences to develop successful services.
6. The walled garden model of mobile networks is slowing the development of services, there are regulatory and historical explanations to this but more openness is required.
Video sampler
(so you get the energy and passion of our speakers)
Tomi T. Ahonen
Mobile service consultant, he was previously at Nokia's global 3G Business Consultancy. Tomi’s book and blog cover the relation between mobile communities and advertising.
Tomi discussed about youth and mobile. It’s generation C “text telepathy” sending SMS under the sleeve using Samsung's chocolate phones. He sees SMS threads beating mobile IM because it’s so ubiquitous. Up to 100 messages/day in Korea. Tomi estimates mobile social networking being a 3.5 billion $ industry that could double next year. He gave a listing of his favorite mobile social networks including :
• Habbo hotel (has 8 million subs spending 0.4 € per month),
• Flirtomatic ( designed by Fjord, sending over 1 million messages a week now, on average 40 flirtograms, logging 8 times per day, and creating a side-business of romantic gifts),
• SeeMeTV (over 300K GBP paid out to bloggers by 3) ,
• Ohmy News (3000 citizen journalists and now 7-years old).
• Cyworld, obviously as Tomi’s next book is “Digital Korea” he could not avoid the example of (90% of Korean teenagers, 20 million on internet, possibly 1 million from 3G phones),
• Daycare center blogging ( a day at the zoo, such as Peter Vesterbacka’s Connected day service )
Alan Moore
CEO of SMLXL,
Alan is a great evangelizer of “engagement marketing “. He defines it as :
• Not ‘interrupting' audiences –with product or brand marketing messages
• Helping businesses and customers better engage with one another.
• Building customer advocacy.
• Compelling content that intellectually/emotionally engages audience through multiple media channels.
• Built upon the 4C's: Commerce, Culture, Community Connectivity
He gaves the example of Artic monkeys, offering free tracks to audience at concerts, thanking them for their support. One other example is the “Fanta Beach” project that offered an end2end user experience around fancy urban beaches, where you play, meet, sound, dream. Although it was not launched, it is a good example of moving FCMG brand to the cultural brand of cinema or communities.
How do we apply this to mobile ? It is mostly a creative challenge. 76% of users Blyk target users say they don’t want adds but services. So we have to create a compelling experience.
“Our parents grew up with product marketing, we were raised on brand marketing and our kids live in the world of community marketing. A connected culture is a world of hot media, of Current TV, peer production, collective intelligence, Second Life, the world of Warcraft, Pop Idol, Citizen Journalism, Myspace, Bebo, YouTube, mobile social networking, new business platforms which is about utilising digital technologies to radically challenge the status quo of our industrialised world. It is all about persistent conversation and extended narrative.”
Steve Jones
3G strategy consultant and founder of www.the3Gportal.com. Steve Jones summarizes the two success factors :
1. The user interface has to be a delight (zero complexity)
2. The service should deliver emotional rewards (this is what users are looking for)
One comment was on the potential of niche communities that can ve developed by specialists “ the value of the cheese is in the holes” . Some examples include
• Mobber that allow mini-communities.
• Cingo for familylife
• Evoca provides site to create, organize, and share voice recordings
• Parental advice
• Car buyers
Ajit Jaokar
Founder of Future text, consultant, author of book 'Mobile web 2.0' and a well-known blogger and member of the web2.0 workgroup. During the two days, he discussed
• Definition of Web 2.0
• Web 2.0 business case,
• Mobile and Web 2.0 technologies
• Social behavior
• Evolution of publishing business as an example
1. Definition. With Mobile social networks in mind, , Ajit Jaokar proposes 7 principles of Web 2.0 adapted from O'Reilly -- What Is Web 2.0? It is about
1. Harnessing collective intelligence: “this the central principle from which all other derive” (it means blogging, wikis, tagging / ranking by communities…)
2. Web based: “double click was rigid” ( it means browser and network data and lots of long tail content or services)
3. Data inside : “re-index it, link it permanently, Google is relevant because of this” ( it combines data from NavTech, Digital Globe and serves it to mashup sites who link it with other data).
4. End of software release cycle : “ permanent new current release, beta releases with users as co-developers”
5. Light programming models ( example SOAP for B2B, REST representational state transfer, XML/HTTP, RSS, or widgets; syndicate, reuse and mix services)
6. Software above the level of a single device ( this means convergence of services on devices such as N95/ iPod/iPhone but also PCs and others – not only user interfaces but content)
7. Rich user experience “ think of Google maps” (and also personalized, context-aware pushed content)
2. Business case : .
This turns into demonstrating the importance of metadata. Not the data only but what are you capturing uniquely in a transaction,. And not the users only “users will come and go” Then the question of smaller communities was raised : “ is it a race where the slower or fastest will win ? Will one end up winning or many winners? “ In web 1.0 there was no real niches but in Web 2.0 with UGC it allows niches to appear.
One question to answer is : are we in bubble 2.0 ? Ajit answers NO because
• There is no IPO, M&A activity like the Web 1.0 period.
• The revenue model is stronger
• Application are genuinely usefull to end-users (Flickr vs. petfood.com).
• The cash requirement are modest so VC funding is not so critical (hardware start-up cost as low as 20K$ unless video / audio; software from open source is free)
• VCs do not expect huge losses (US funding easier UK funding in the '000s not millions )
• There is a lot of support in the business community ( see “How businesses are using Web 2.0: A McKinsey Global Survey” ¾ of executives say that their companies plan to maintain or increase investments in Web 2.0 technologies in coming years)
4. Mobile technology, How can we put Web 2.0 success on mobile phone ?. The challenge is that the mobile stack is fragmented but some open platforms are appearing. Ajit is a fan of browser technology (he’s been blogging about this )and gave some examples :
• Ajax (Asynchronous JavaSript and XML so you access services from a browser without bouncing between pages, see the mobile ajax FAQ )
• Widsets (widget for Java MIDP 2.0 phones providing RSS feeds, blog posts, photo-uploading sites. Nokia has a library and templates for creation)
• Opera widgets (for Opera 9 browser)
• Mobile Ajax
• Google gadgets
• Openwave has widgets with extensions for mobile address book
• iPhone API’s (Morfik WebOS AppsBuilder to develop AJAX on iPhone)
• Zimlets (Zimbra "Mash-up" Zimlets)
• Snocap, as an example uses widgets for Facebook and Myspace ,to embed music stores on the internet services
• OpenID was also quoted as additional example here. An OpenID identity is an URL which can in turn refer to documents (FOAF, RSS, Atom, vCARD). the authentication can be implemented with Ajax .
The interop is one of widgets issues as they tend to have java script but also extensions. There are other limitations but Ajit sees them winning against previous mobile development tools :
• Java 2 Mobile Edition (J2ME)
• XHTML
• Symbian ( Forum Nokia has 1.3m developers)
What are the mobile technology assets ? We need to use web to harness intelligence of mobile devices and networks
• Mobility, location (call routing, handover, presence, missed calls);
• Mobile content (synchronization of contacts, buddy lists, messages, ringtones, photos);
• Mobile messaging (SMS, email, voice mail, IM, video messages);
• Personalization (profile, authentication, directory, browser favorites),
• Billing,
• Some open APIs
5. The team also discussed the social side .
• Are social networks a mean of expression? Or is it a distraction “we have exceeded the limits of having contacts” ? “Twitter is a loss of time “. Is it going to stand the test of time ? Are on-line participants really socials in real life ? . I quoted the papers of Kenton O'Hara where mainly social use cases have been observed [ Everyday Practices with Mobile Video Telephony].
• On rules governing social networks, were you do draw the lines for regulation? Should it be user (policing based on goodwill) or service provider monitored. Regulations differ depending on societies, religions. Habbo, Friendster, Second Life have strict rules. Mobile operators have a much stronger responsibility than ISPs.
• On content : UGC cannot be stopped nor control it (example of Osama Bin Laden), content is king as long as people consume it. The changes is that consumers are no more mass media but community consumers
• On issues of privacy, Ajit pointed to Kathy Sierra, “the girl with a one track mind” who fighted back privacy intrusions with the help of bloggers. On demographics, we noted that usage patterns change with ages. There is a huge movement out of MySpace,as the 14-16 generation grows-up and turns to other networks, such as Facebook)
• And then digital rights issues, lawyers point of view : is there no point in going after small players but they will go after big players.
6. Ajit shared his view on the impact on his publishing business .
• The role of the editor is changing from maintaining brands to reinventing business models. Newspaper never made money was subscription , advertising was.
• Communities become content editors.
• Niche publishers are emerging ( Futuretext uses HP printers at Lightning source bound in softcover to print 500 copies of a book)
• Marketing is evolving : Futuretext want to sell books, but it adds blogging to get references.
Mark Searle
Head of product development at Surfkitchen (their main product is a mobile content publishing client software and server provisioning). He opposes the web eco-system to the mobile telecom on economic and technology levels. And he sees little future for IMS as long as it remains a walled garden.
As backgrounder, Mark suggest look at the eco-system illustration in Tim O’Reilly Meme Map and to compare with IMS the papers from the Moriana group.
Is IMS-based Web 2.0 a contradiction ? Mark Searle seems very frustrated that the issue is not so much technology but cultural. IMS has does have some of the characteristics of Web 2.0. But telecom operators are chartered with the responsibility (license agreement)to operate a reliable service compensated by financial revenues. The web developed in an opposite manner, mostly as a free service, by technocrats or hacker communities seeking no financial reward. Today, this leads to a conflict “the net heads point of view : telecom operators are trolls guarding the edge of networks"
On the technology side, creating mobile applications is VERY complex as IMS has a strong "telco" structure. “IMS has a schizophrenic view : CSCF and SIP AS are similar to IN and control oriented , …not all packets are equal"” . Today, IMS interop is not there, it is single NEP vendor-driven . Surfkitchen struggles to get web 1.0 on mobile so mobile web 2.0 will be a challenge. Mark Searle argues that 3G-UMTS is first a service platform. The big deal is not in the bandwidth (mobile bandwidth will always be limited, for example e.g. streaming/GPRS/HSDPA)but in the service enablers. The success of SMS however is quite similar to Web 2.0 in the way it opened to VASP. IMS should be transparent, naked SIP :without control mechanism.
The 4 drivers of the internet eco-system are :
• Entrepreneurial culture (Skype, Google etc..)
• Communitarian culture (the whole idea of web W.P, Wikis etc...)
• Hacker culture (a social model, not economic, contributors looking to gain status as developers, Linux, JBOSS, Tomcat are examples)
• Techno-meritocracy (Mbone started H.323, with VoIP suits began to appear)
And there are 4 phases of development in mobile telecoms:
• Coverage
• Quality
• Price
• Services (usually closed and controlled, as opposed to the web open service enhancements and competition on the user experience "History is not on the side of operators as developers of cool services.).
What are drivers for IMS ?
• IMS : devices are not here. No customers are queuing two nights to get an IMS device like an iPhone
• There is no user demand for IMS services. Voice is the big service, there are no data services. FMC is a big motivation for operators because of market saturation (Tispan release 7) .
• Video calls perhaps “when you are in love” but no mainstream.
• Simultaneous session capabilities : voice call while watching is no more subscriber growth
• Synchronous network address book is a very strong capability, evolution from PAB to directory services such as Taxi, Pizza services that appear on your PAB.
"There will be two battlegrounds
The first screen : widgets are the way to deliver the user experience
The PAB address book, linked to identity. Sxip also an OpenID supplier, proposes an identity being a cloud of attributes sources. Sxip’s CEO Dick Hart evangelizes identity 2.0 and the simple extensible ID protocol.
