Degardener on mobile content adoption

Aner @ Degardener wrote about his impressions from MEM 2007.  First of all, I’m envious of Aner for being able to attend.   I’ve been debating whether or not I should go, and decided against it (too early for BUZmob).

 Aner’s findings re: mobile content adoption fit perfectly with our own research.  Mobile users are willing to pay for content (or to accept advertising) provided that:

(a) They can easily discover content - open-ended search may not be enough.  A combination of push-pull (recommendations, push-from-web, etc.) is needed.

(b) They can easily access the content on their device – no client downloads, no complex URLs to type, no hundreds of bookmarks to manage.

(c) The experience is useful – don’t crash my phone, don’t make me scroll through endless menus, don’t make me consume useless content (and pay for it), don’t push me files my handset cannot handle, etc.

Degardener is alluding to the invisible elephent sitting in the room - the cost of accessing the mobile internet must make sense.  Aner writes: “It was great to hear executives from operators presenting plans to further breakdown their walled gardens and push flat data rates. It seems like it’s only a question of price points now.”  – I wish.

Depending on where you are from, you may be shocked to learn that here, in Canada, Telus is charging $0.05 cents PER PAGE BROWSED. <click> $ <click> $ <click> $ – you get the picture.  My monthly bills easily hit $200.  No matter how great the mobile content is, the cost of accessing the network is prohibitive (why won’t I switch to Fido/Rogers, where one pays by traffic and not by page?  Because they’re on EDGE, and I want my EV-DO).

Prices in the UK are also very high, and some operators in Europe and in the US are now cutting back their so-called “unlimited” traffic plans.

Moreover, I advise that the genocide in Darfur must be stopped. 

— Oren

BUZmob mobile feed publishing service is now in open beta

Wow, it’s been a busy few months here at Contec Innovations.   Today we announced the immediate availability of our mobile feed publishing service, BUZmob.

 BUZmob is a web-based service which allows content publishers – bloggers, media sites, social networks, business websites – to instantly make their RSS/Atom based content available to all of their mobile readers.  Mobile users need not download anything to their phones, and don’t even have to subscribe to a web-based service in order to access mobile content.  The service combines text messaging, on-the-fly content adaptation, personalization, automatic bookmark generation and universal access to go beyond technophiles, and to enable even first time mobile-Internet users to easily interact with the content they regularly consume on the web.

You can read all about BUZmob on our official BUZmob blog.   You can also experience it yourself by clicking on the BUZme button – – on this page.  This will enable you to read my blog on your mobile, anywhere, anytime.

Most importantly, BUZmob also allows mobile end users to add any RSS/Atom feedto their BUZmob mobile bookmarks, even if the feed’s publisher has not implemented BUZmob.  You can check this out by visiting http://www.buzmob.com/buzme.php.

I am very excited about BUZmob.  It allows content publishers and bloggers to communicate with all their mobile users without having to consider which device they are using, which network, etc.  No longer are mobile solutions limited to early adopters and smart phone users.

BUZmob is in open beta – it is open, but it is still in beta.  You can expect lots of new features and changes in the near future, including content monetizing for publishers.

To learn more, visit our blog and check out http://www.buzmob.com.

Moreover, I advise that the genocide in Darfur must be stopped. 

— Oren

Web 2.0 Expo – Nokia S60 Widgets – Are we making any progress?

Nokia announced its S60 Widget platform – Web Runtime at the Web2.0 Expo yesterday.  I attended their presentation, which was given by a marketing person.

 When you do away with the hype and the (really) cool demos, what you end up with is this:

- Users (who must have up-to-date S60 phones) can download “widgets” to their phones,

- These widgets deliver “point” solutions for specific use cases (weather, ebay, etc.).

Hmm… let me see… if we use the term “application” instead of “widget”, we end up with this model:  User downloads application to his phone, and uses it to access web-based information.

Wow!  True innovation.   Not. 

Can anyones say “Java apps”?  The Nokia presenter failed to explain why adoption would be higher for “widgets” than for “applications”.   The fact is that most users simply do not download/install stuff on their phones.

The presenter also used some (IMHO) misleading stats to enhance the appeal of the solution.  Even though it targets only S60 devices, which currently command a very low market share, Nokia used stats which show global mobile phone penetration (billions of devices).  When challenged by the audience, the presented acknowledged that the stats were irrelevant for the topic at hand.

Worst, the presenter acknowledged (only when asked) that even current S60 phones will not be able to support this new functionality (which has not yet been launched, and is still in beta). 

In other words, no one, right now, can use S60 widgets.

The pitch at Web2.0 Expo was clearly for developers – attracting widget developers in order to enhance the value of the S60 OS.  But attracting developers will depend on commercial availability, marketing channels, business models and adoption rates.  On all these issues Nokia is silent.

What is the role of the carrier in the seemingly open S60 widget world?  We don’t know.

What are the expected business models?  We don’t know.

How will it be any different than the Java model?  We don’t know.

Finally, a comment for presenters:  Sometimes more is less.  The Nokia presenter joked that “…I’m surprised – I just went through for demo examples, and nothing went wrong…”.  One of the first questions that came up had to do with the stability of the new technology – “…why were you surprised?  Did you expect anything to go wrong?…”

— Oren

Mobile Internet As it Should Be

This morning I went shopping with my wife.  I stayed with one sleeping child in the car while she took the other to the store. 

Not much you can do in the car with a sleeping child.  Certainly cannot play music or listen to the radio.  Instead, I flipped open my mobile (a humble non-smartphone with nothing more than your average mobile browser on it) and did some blog-reading catching up.

I read the latest posts on Degardener.  When I was reading this post I noticed it referred to a LinkedIn Group.  Being a LinkedIn junkie I immediately followed the link on my mobile browser.  After logging in to LI, I added myself to the group.

By the time I got back home, I was a group member, and had already received several invitations to link from other members.

Bottom line:  I used the Internet on my mobile while I was in a mobile context – nothing to do, no other connectivity.  The experience was exceptional (EVDO + some of my company’s secret sauce), enabling me to consume content and to act on it in a meaningful way.

As a user experience it was a matter of serendipity meets usability (from useless to useful).

Now I have to check out my new LinkedIn buddies

— Oren

Marketing Strategies – Federated Marketing Partnerships

In this post I’d like to introduce my ideas around federated marketing partnerships.  But before I get started, let’s set the stage.

The Setting

We’ve all seen it – you’ve just launched your new product, and the response is overwhelmingly positive.  Let’s say it is a new download-able mobile application.  Within weeks you get all the right reviews and have thousands of downloads.  You spend your marketing budget making sure you rank at the top of Google’s sponsored links, to draw in more users, and your click-through rates are excellent.

And then something happens.  Soon, much sooner than expected, growth grounds to a halt.  Your user growth dwindles and then stops.  You’re “stuck” with a couple of tens of thousands of users, out of a population of tens of millions of phones capable of running your application.

What Happened?

Classical marketing theory says that you’re having trouble transitioning from the early-adoption stage to the mass market.  But that does not capture the situation adequately.  The early adoption/mass market approach assumes that the mass market is waiting for the right conditions in order to adopt the product.  A lower price point, less bugs, more tangible value, etc.

But it is very likely that you had just ran across what I like to call the needs/awareness gap for your product, which is mostly apparent with small companies trying to operate in large markets.  Let me explain.

For each product and for each market we can draw two circles.  The outer one includes all those customers whose needs we know we can satisfy with our product.  The inner circle includes all those customers who are aware of their need, aware of your product (or product category) and know how to look for it.  The wider the gap between the two circles, the higher the chance for your adoption rate to plummet when you hit the gap.

Take your well targeted Google ad campaign.  You’re serving highly relevant, targeted (and successful) ads, but only to people who are already in context – they have executed a Google search for your product or product category.  But what about all those silent masses out there who simply have no idea that they could be running such a search, and that this would solve a problem for them (which they may not even be aware of)?

In short, unless the need/awareness gap is breached, mass market will never follow the early adopters, simply because they will be oblivious to your entire value proposition.  I’ll never search for your download-able application if I have no idea that one can download applications to the phone.

The Classic Solution – Market Education

So you go on the campaign trail.  You no longer spend marketing money on reactive measures (such as search based ads) but rather go for proactive ones.  You deliver seminars, print advertising, conferences, banner ads.  You engage PR firms, you try to leap the gap by generating more buzz.  You’re explaining the most basic elements of your offering, at a considerable cost.

Educating the Market is a long, painful, expensive process.  It cannot be measured properly, and rarely yields the expected results.  Many companies, especially smaller ones, stop here.  They try to farm their existing user base while trying to grow it at the fringes.

A New Approach – Federated Marketing Partnerships

Ultimately, this is a challenge in “spreading the word” across diverse audiences.  Going beyond the techies or the enthusiasts.

One way we are doing it here is by establishing a federation of marketing partners.  By this I do not mean your typical “partnership” website section, where we list our closest industry friends and peers.  The federated marketing partnership model is about bringing together companies which roughly operate within the same industry, but which still have distinct user bases from one another.  Each customer base is somewhat likely to be more receptive to my offering than the general mass market.  And the same holds true for my customer base and the offerings of the other partners.

Let me illustrate.  Suppose I want to increase the reach of my download-able application.  Why not strike a marketing partnership with a company which is, say, in the mobile messaging space?  I can safely assume that their users are somewhat more informed than the general population about mobile technologies, even if they have never downloaded an application to their phone.

A real-life example exists in the browser toolbar industry.  You download a piece of software, and as you install it, it will ask you if you’d like to install somebody else’s browser toolbar or search engine.  You may not even be aware that this toolbar exists, you would certainly have not looked for it yourself.  But you are just a bit more receptive now, when you are installing new software, to this kind of suggestion.

What you end up with is a mesh of partners, each bringing its customer base to the table.  It is almost like a peering arrangement between bandwidth providers.  The goal is to stimulate user “traffic” inside the federated network, exposing your customers to my services, and the other way around.  Customers learn of new offerings from a trusted source, making them even more receptive.

But wait, isn’t this just what affiliate marketing is all about?  Well, almost, but no.  The power relations inside the federated marketing partnership network are much more balanced than in the case of marketing affiliates.  If I am promoting Amazon.com books on my website, I am powerless in my relationship with Amazon.  Traffic flows one-way, my benefit being a revenue-share cut.  Also, the federated model is not performance or transaction based, it is based on the shared understanding that pooling our user bases provides us all with more value.

The federated marketing partnership model allows small companies, with distinct products and customer bases, to come together in a loosely-coupled marketing mesh.  Network effects make the mesh more and more valuable, as more members join.  Market education happens by osmosis, as users on the edge are gradually exposed to products and ideas which exist elsewhere on the network.

More to follow in weeks to come.

— Oren

Mobile Internet – It is all about Context

Last Friday I was attending several business meetings in downtown Vancouver.  What with one thing and another, I ended up taking the Skytrain back home.  We’re talking Friday evening, rush hour.

Suffice to say, I now know how sardines feel in their can.  I had a book in my backpack and the Metro newspaper stuffed in my pocket, but I was struggling for elbow space.  So reading was out of the question.

Or was it?  I ended up taking out my mobile, and going through some blogs I have not caught up with for a while.  Lo and behold, before I knew it I was home.  I know this is not a big deal for all you Treo/Blackberry users out there, but for us lowly feature-phone (or less) users, this was a real treat.

We’re all happy to complain about the inadequacy of the mobile phone as an Internet access device – small screen, lousy keyboard, slow, you name it.  Hmm… hold on.  Small screen?  Exactly what I needed.  Lousy keyboard?  Who cares.  I easily used single-hand navigation to walk through the text I was reading.  Slow?  First, I’m on EVDO, that’s anything but slow.  Second, it’s not as if there’s an alternative when you’re commuting.

I don’t expect the mobile to replace the desktop anytime soon.  For me it is always the 2nd choice for Internet access.  I’ll always prefer the PC/broadband combo over the phone.  But in the right context, the mobile shines.

We need to move away from thinking mobile Internet is simply WiFi on a larger scale.  It is a totally different interaction model.  Consumption is restricted to very specific time frames, typically when no other alternative presents itself.  Mobile Internet marketing needs to focus on fulfilling the needs users have during those particular time frames, or to invoke such needs by utilizing the “in-context” features of the phone – alerts, localization, always on, always near me.

Blogs/feeds seem to be the “secret sauce” if you will.  The perfect “filler” for when you have time to kill.  Not important enough to be consumed in real time or to defer more urgent tasks, they can be visited opportunistically. 

Oh yes, I made it back to where I had left my car in one piece.  And got a notice for a parking violation.  I guess the phone cannot solve all life’s problems.

— Oren 

Mobile Internet Usage Growth

Forrester has recently released interesting survey results concerning mobile Internet usage by youth in North America.  It turns out that 31% (!) of mobile users aged 12-21 access the Internet on their mobile device.  When you consider that the overall mobile Internet usage rate in the US is just over 10% (Mediapost, Feb ‘07), this figure is quite amazing.

The research also shows that the younger generation tends to use the more sophisticated phones.

Combine these two facts (much higher than average adoption rate, better than average phones) with emerging business trends (mobile advertising), and it could be the case that we are headed towards the inflection point in the mobile Internet adoption life-cycle.

The coming together of different factors -  an active, informed and lucrative segment, new business models, appealing services (blogs, social networks etc.), and tie-ins between mobile Internet, multimedia and messaging features – sends a positive signal to those of us in the mobile internet industry.

— Oren

Mobile Dungeons Revisited

Following my previous post on Walled Gardens and Locked Dungeons, Moco News had this interesting post today.  Apparently T-Mobile USA is now blocking access to 3rd party applications.

 Customer aggravation aside, where does that leave the score of companies who try to make a living by distributing phone clients?

It’s bad enough that applications cannot run on all phones (I could not get GMail to connect, could not get Widsets to work, could not get LiteFeeds to run, etc.), but now you also have to embrace your new business partner – the operator.

It is hard enough to get users to actually download and install applications on their phone.  But with more operators adopting this attitude, entire market segments simply become unavailable to those companies.  Scary.

 — Oren

Mobile Newspapers, Anyone?

The Editor’s Weblog had this to say about mobile newspapers the other day.  Oddly enough, it assumes that end uses are looking to replicate the print/web newspaper experience on their mobile phone.

If we had learned anything from RSS & co., it is that content matters more than presentation.  Why try and recreate a non-mobile experience on a device which was not designed to support it, when you can optimize the content stream to the device and have it delivered in a mobile-relevant manner. 

It’s all about separating the content layer from the presentation layer (which are one and the same in real newspaper).  Deliver the same high-value content, but adapt it to the device.  Adapt it to the mobile experience, where content is viewed in small chunks, where navigation needs to be dead simple and where entering text is a nightmare.

If you set out to replicate the real world / web newspaper experience on a 3″ device, you will fail, iPhone or no iPhone.

— Oren

Walled Gardens? How About Locked in a Dungeon?

I was planning on launching this blog with some deep thoughts on current affairs.  Something that clearly shows my graps of everything mobile.

Then I looked at my new mobile.  It looked back at me.  It was just begging me to tell its story. 

 First things first though.  I live in Canada.  Yes, it’s “that country” north of the US.  Wonderful place, really.  Lakes, mountains, snow – we’ve got it all.

One thing we’re somewhat short on is a thriving mobile culture.  We’re getting there.  Sort of.  Almost.  Not quite.  For starters, there are only 3 operators (Bell, Telus, Rogers/Fido).  The first two are CDMA, the latter is GSM.  So far so good.

Of the three operators, only one has a high-speed network.  Telus operates an EVDO network on top of its 1X net.  The other two are on 1X (Bell) and EDGE (Rogers/Fido).  As my work requires me to spend much time on the mobile browsing the web, it made sense for me to get (another) phone, this time from Telus.  Network speed was critical.

I finally made it to a Telus store.  A friendly saleslady greeted me and explained to me that nearly all their phones support EVDO.  I complimented her on her vast knowledge, and mentioned to her that they offer just about 5 modesl with EVDO, the rest being 1X. 

I opted for the new Samsung A720.  That’s another thing to consider – phone-wise, Canada (and the US for that matter) is light-years behind Europe and Asia when it comes to devices.  Oh well, you get what you can.

After going through all the various plans, add-ons and extras (the total number of service permutations must be in the thousands) I was happy to activate my 30mb/month traffic plan.  All-you-can-eat flat fee data plan?  You’re joking, right?  No carrier in Canada offers it.

As I began to explore the new phone (with its 150 page user manual) I was happy to note its improved web browser.  I decided to check out the built in (read: hard coded by Telus) Google search function.  It worked great.  Of course once I landed on Google’s page, I got some interesting recommendations, such as downloading GMAIL and Google Maps to my phone.

Always a sucker for J2ME applications (and having used both on other phones) I decided to download them.  Lo-and-behold, I got a “Forbidden” message each time I tried to download them.  “Must be a bug in the browser”, I thought.

Next I tried accessing the mobile video platform provided by Nexage.  Oddly enough, I was unable to access any of their videos.  Anyhow, it all went downhill from there.  Telus won’t let you install stuff on your phone unless you get it from them.  Ringtones?  Either buy them from Telus or hack the phone.

Let’s recap:  I paid +$300 for the latest and greatest phone, I’m paying $60/month for the data plan, and it turns out there’s not much I can do on the phone other than use the native browser, and even then some stuff is blocked by the operator.  Walled garden?  How about locked in a dungeon.

The final twist is the crippled bluetooth interface.  You can only use it to exchange contacts with others.  Transfer files?  High-speed data modem?  Cripple-ware.

So… will I switch away from Telus?  Not until the other carriers catch up with their networks.  Once you get used to EVDO speeds, everything else looks so… dial-up like.  Can they get away with it?  Hell yes.  Do I have the energy to complain to the CRTC (Canadian FCC)?  No, I’m too busy writing this post.

— Oren