Xellular Identity - All About Mobile Content & Marketing

Gaia: Avatars Online Social Network

I was going through my feeds and was excited to read Gigaom’s post about Gaia online avatar social network.

First, a few words about Gaia for those who are not familiar with it; Gaia is an online world with a series of virtual cities where Gaian avatars can socialize (up to 100 in a single space), with apartments they can own, and treasures they can find with no combat, whatsoever). I have been familiar with Gaia ever since I entered the avatars business and learned the avatars market and offering of those days.
However, stumbling upon avatars websites is very common on the web. The real excitement is to be able to get usage numbers. Fortunately, Wagner James Au (correspondent for Gigaom) managed to bring us the usage numbers of Gaia online social network:

• 300,000 log in daily, according to the company; average unique visit is two hours a day.
• Average concurrency: 64,000 users. Maximum: 86,738.
• 85% of users are based in the US
• 10% are English-speaking but non-US (with 5% a nebulous Other)
• Breakdown by gender: 55% Girls - 45% Boys
• About 20% of subscribers put up their real life photo in their avatar profile.
• Number of Gaia gold “millionaires”, as of last week: 1385
[via Gigaom]

Putting the numbers on ice, one of the interesting features that are worth to notice at Gaia is the incentive mechanism where users get incentives for participating in the online community’s life:

“A unique innovation is the way the company distributes its virtual gold currency: instead of selling it for real money (as with There) or allowing its trade on the open market (as with Second Life), Gaians are automatically given gold for participation: You get gold for posting on the Forums, for riding events, for uploading content, for exploring the world. Subscribers are rewarded for engaging in Gaia, in other words— and the reward incents them to engage in Gaia even more.”

To summarize, every avatar social community that succeeds is a win for the entire avatar business. Way to go Gaia!

John White on MMS (Part II)

Welcome to the second part of the mobile messaging coverage. Today, John White of Portio Research Ltd will be visiting here and covering the MMS. If you missed the previous part you can follow the link.

Well John, the stage is all yours! :)

What is the value of MMS?
MMS generated approximately $15 Bn USD in full-year 2006, and our new “Mobile Messaging Futures 2007-2012” forecasts this rising to almost $34 Bn USD by the end of 2012.
Market size estimates Worldwide, MMS traffic volumes in 2006 reached a little over 27 Bn messages, which demonstrates remarkable growth of over 90% form the year before…when we recorded total SMS traffic at 14 bn messages worldwide for the full-year 2005.

How big is the market for MMS?
We forecast this market to continue growing healthily for several years to come, contrary to some reports than “MMS is all-but-dead”, we disagree and we see MS traffic volumes growing to reach over 131 Bn messages worldwide by the end of 2012.

When will MMS penetrate the mass consumer market?
We believe that the entire mobile industry has misunderstood MMS from the start, including most of the operators who have been working hard to drive higher adoption. MMS was sold from the start as this great successor to SMS, but that shows a complete misunderstanding of what MMS ad what has made SMS such a popular service. As explained previously, SMS owes its success to it’s utility and simplicity, it is useful, cheap, easy, quick and almost effortless. MMS is entirely different, it offers little additional utility over SMS, costs several times as much and is more time consuming and complicated to use. If anything, that makes MMS LESS useful than SMS, as a service, so why would consumers want to pay MORE to use it? We believe MMS should be seen in its own right as an entertainment service and as a premium content delivery mechanism, not as a messaging tool. SMS is all the messaging many people need, and what MMS offers is something else, something fun, the chance to send pictures to your friends…this is nice, but it is rarely an essential activity, the way many SMS messages are. As long as everyone keeps expecting MMS to follow the success of SMS, they will continue to be disappointed, but once the mobile community stops linking the two together and looks as MMS as a separate service, we can that it is a highly successful application.   

What should operators do to overcome barriers to users’ adoption?
Reduce prices, drastically. SMS is priced, in “most” markets at a price level that most people don’t have to think about. Most people just keep sending SMS messages without thinking about the cost. Once MMS can be priced at a level that people can exchange several picture messages per day without giving the cost a thought, then traffic will grow, rapidly.

Thank you John for this interview. Don't forget to tune in next Sunday for some more talkin' about mobile messaging  :)

John White on Mobile Messaging

I'm happy to welcome John White from Portio Research Ltd to review the market of mobile messaging here.

John White is Business Development Director for Portio Research and has over 17 years experience in the technical publishing industry. Working in the IT sector previously and in the telecoms industry for the last 9 or 10 years, John has extensive experience in the mobile sector.

Hi John. Thank you for visiting Xellular Identity :) How are you?
Hi Xen, thanks a lot, I’m doing great thanks :)

How big is the market for mobile messaging? What are the forecasts for the mobile messaging market?
Mobile messaging is massive, the total mobile messaging market today is worth approximately $80 Bn USD and in 2007 we will see well over 2.2 trillion messages sent back and forth worldwide between mobile devices. SMS is by far the biggest player in this space, with worldwide SMS traffic volumes exceeding 1,662 billion messages in full-year 2006, generating revenues in excess of $47 Bn USD.

As if these figures are not impressive enough, we see SMS growing for some years to reach staggering worldwide traffic volumes of more than 3.7 trillion in 2012, generating a whopping $67 Bn USD in total revenues.

What are the key country markets?
The Philippines have long been regarded as the “SMS capital of the world” and this still holds true, in fact more than ever as recent changes to SMS pricing on the islands has seen traffic roaring through the roof. Elsewhere in Asia Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and China are all hot SMS markets, and of course China takes the crown as the worlds biggest SMS market due to the sheer size of the market overall. The USA is a very hot SMS market and still growing, and in Europe Denmark, the UK and Spain are all aggressive SMS markets. In Latin America, Venezuela enjoys very high usage levels and Mexico and Argentina are strong markets too.

Who are the leading operators in this market?
In the Philippines – all of them! Elsewhere, Maxis in Malaysia stand out, Telecom Personal in Argentina, O2 in Ireland and the UK and Netcom in Norway all enjoy way-above-average traffic volumes when measures on a per-subscriber-per-month basis.

How do you explain the dominant position of SMS as the worlds leading messaging technology?
It’s simple, it’s all about utility, price and simplicity. We have been saying this and printing this in our reports for some time now – SMS is useful, it serves a purpose, it can communicate a simple message from A to B quickly and efficiently at times when a voice call is not so convenient. SMS is easy, cheap, quick and many people think sending an SMS is fun. It is discreet, private, effortless and only takes a few seconds. There is no “downside” to SMS, it serves a purpose, it does the job well and it is quick, cheap and easy – what’s not to like?

How significant contributor to the overall revenue is the mobile messaging expected to be in the future?
We have not specifically forecast ‘messaging-as-a-percentage-of-ARPU’ going forward so I can’t give you exact numbers, but I firmly believe messaging will continue to be the biggest contributor to non-voice service revenues for some years to come. Currently, worldwide, voice accounts for approximately 80% of total mobile service revenues across the globe and messaging accounts for approximately 80% of all non-voice service revenues contributing to that total. AS other services grow then messaging’s dominant position will decline, but we only imagine that happening at a rate of 1 or 2 percentage points per year for the next few years, then perhaps faster once 3G becomes ubiquitous in the mass market.

What promises to sell in the future?
Mobile email, in the long term, but that’s still a good few years away for consumer mass markets.

John White will be here next Sunday for more talkin' about mobile messaging. Thank you John and see you next week! :)

MySpace Mobile - The Ad Supported Play

For all the MySpace users among my readers,

Sergey Lossev of VCEL just let me know that they are offering you some cool mobile app to access your MySpace account from the mobile for free (excluding carrier data charges, of course). Since I don’t have a MySpace account (I guess I’m too old for it… I have never felt the urge\need to open up an account) I opened one just to be able to take VCEL on a test drive and it looks great.

VCEL offers you:

1. Mobile Web (WAP) interface for simple mobile access to myspace mail, comments etc.  All you need to do is point your mobile browser to www.vcellspace.com and login using your MySpace login name and password.
2. A Java app download for the richest experience, (integrated camera etc).
3. A MySpace "mobile status" profile widget (Moods and Presence info).

This new app is a rival to Cingular’s and MySpace’s mobile application which is offered to Cingular’s users for a monthly subscription plan for 2.99 a month (on top of the data charges) launched a while ago.

VCEL’s business model relays on non invasive mobile ads. Sergey says that they “use the loading screen to stitch in an ad while the app fetches the requested info” – we’ll have to wait and see how that works… I believe that teens would take the free supported by ads version and spend their mobile budget on more SMS and other mobile content. Also this app allows non Cingular get to their MySpace pages as well, which will lead the way to interoperability of mobile social networks. Nice work!

Thanks Sergey!

SMSing Under The Dinner Table

Hi everyone,

The forth part of the mobile youth trends coverage will be posted to next Thursday due to the mobileYouth Tends Summit that will be held tomorrow (Friday 24th of November) at the Tower Hotel, London. If you’re thinking of attending - I’m sure it is worthwhile.

Looking for mobile news related to youth I’ve found a very amusing research related to the American holiday season held by T-Mobile which shows how mobile has created new family dynamics at holiday dinners and family gatherings.

In the survey:

• 70% of young adults (ages 18-22) and 56% of parents surveyed say they've made or answered wireless calls during a holiday gathering.
• 35% of young adults say they've read or sent an e-mail or text message under the dinner table during a holiday family gathering.
• In addition, 67% of parents and young adults now agree that it is ok to use their mobile phone during holiday gatherings. Moreover, 73% of people surveyed agree the mobile phone can improve the holidays by keeping people in touch with those not there in person.

[via Cellular News]

One thing wasn’t very clear and changes my opinion entirely (regarding the described findings): whether “using their mobile phone during holiday gatherings” means “SMSing under the dinner table” as the title given by Cellular News implicates. If we’re talking about literally texting under the dinning table, sneaking letters without accidentally getting caught - you might say I’m too conservative… I think it’s pretty rude to sit with your family and text to friends under the dinning table. That’s me. As Dr. Tracy Wellens said, it might “include more people than ever before at family gatherings”. Yet it seems more like bonding with teenager’s peer group at the stake of disrespecting the people who made a big effort to be able to sit together at the dinning table… How about waiting for after dinner to reply?

****

And don't forget to drop by next Thursday for the last part of my "mobile youth trends" coverage!

MocoSpace

The other day Justin Siegel of JNJ Mobile shared that MocoSpace has just gotten a facelift. My test drive of this social software raised a few questions which Justin kindly answered and I decided to publish them here.

The first thing that intrigued me was the added value for MocoSpace mobile\web users, having other MoSoSo in the mobile neighborhood:

Justin: Today, there are no sites that offer people the combination of communication, self-expression & content sharing available on MocoSpace. The added value for MocoSpace users is that with MocoSpace they can now enjoy the benefits of finding friends (chat, browse profiles), staying connected to them (mobile email, messaging, guestbook), self-expression (personalized profiles, blogs, favorites, photos, videos, etc.), and content sharing (photos, videos, blogs, wallpapers, etc.) all on 1 great site available from virtually any device including mobile phones, smart phones, and personal computers. 

At MocoSpace, we think that it's crucial to incorporate several "best practices", which include

• safety features that allow members to protect themselves and allow site admins to monitor and address abuse issues
• a design that facilitates navigation and minimizes clicks
• broad handset support (wap 1.0, 2.0, xhtml)
• free and premium service options
• privacy levels for members
• customer support & help sections

MocoSpace’s competitors come mainly from 3 distinct areas. First there are the Web content competitors, ie MySpace, Youtube, Facebook, etc. These are sites with lots of content and big existing social networks. Second are the Web communication competitors MSN, Yahoo & Google.  These companies will continue to roll out mobile offerings that cover email, chat, and IM. Third, are the early mobile competition primarily led by WAP chat sites such as AirG and Jumbuck.

Regarding MocoSpace’s placement at the MoSoSo market:

Justin: MocoSpace is in an excellent position in the MoSoSo market thanks to the strength of its product offering and also its location, i.e. North America. In the US, unlike Asia for example, there are not many if any players really taking aim today at what we are doing in terms of breadth and depth of their offering. Some companies are offering photo sharing or chat, but none are offering a product that truly combines the notions of connectivity, communication, and content they way MocoSpace is today.

And some thoughts about the future:

Justin: MocoSpace will continue to enhance its existing features to further enable communication as well as content sharing & creation. Without giving away too much about our product roadmap, I would suggest that our next area of focus will be music.

Mososo is such a broad term that covers so much ground, it's practically impossible to try to predict it's future because the "it" is vague and continually changing. That said, the future of this category of sites and services is going to be huge, it's going to be ad supported, and it's going to obliterate the remnants of operators' walled gardens. I think it will take the idea of connectivity to a new level in terms of people always feeling plugged in to their friends, peer groups, etc. I'm not a big fan of the pursuit of the "killer app" beyond voice and email. However, I do think that MoSoSo is probably the closest we've come to a killer category. I sure hope our evolution as an industry didn't peak with Crazy Frog!

Interviewing Savka Andic on Mobile Marketing & Youth

Welcome to the third part of the mobile youth trends and behavior coverage. Today, Savka Andic, Research Associate at the Wireless World Forum, who is also the co-author of the mobileYouth 2006 report will be visiting here!

For those of you who missed the first 2 part of the mobile youth trends coverage here are the links: Nick Wright talked about mobile youth trends and Jan Kuczynski talked about mobile music and youth.

And now, let me welcome Savka Andic!

Hi Xen and all my readers, I’m Savka Andic, colleague of Jan and Nick (who spoke with you previously on Xellular Identity) and co-author of the 2006 mobile Youth report. A relatively new arrival to both the UK and the world of mobile, I completed my BA in Political Science and French  in the mountainous city of Vancouver, Canada earlier this year and, degree in one hand and British passport in another, was lured to the urban bustle of London. Shortly thereafter, I joined Wireless World Forum as a researcher.

-How are you?
I’m great, Xen. Very busy, but I guess that’s not always a bad thing.

-What brought you into the world of mobile?
My job, essentially! Only a few months ago, I knew less about mobile than some of the youth I now interview for research. However, my background is in politics and the social sciences, so I find the social implications of mobile, marketing and social media very interesting.

-Other hobbies, fields of interest?
Politics and international relations remain two great passions of mine, along with skiing, traveling, world music and a rather taxing branch of yoga known as Hot Bikram. I also indulge in the occasional bout of cocktail mixing (and drinking), my favorite being the marvellous Mojito.

-Something interesting to share with the world about you?
This isn’t particularly interesting, but I can read words backwards in full sentences, as if it were forwards. Don’t ask :)

Mobile Marketing

-There are many successful marketing tools. What are the key elements for mobile marketing's appeal?

Good question Xen - you’ve gone to the heart of the matter. In fact, one thing we found over the course of our research is that many marketing tools that were previously very successful are not so effective with youth anymore. There are two reasons for this: the huge volume of advertising messages that youth are exposed to today, and the decreasing time which youth spend exposed to traditional media such as TV.

Youth are exposed to hundreds of advertising messages per day (up to three or four more than 40 years ago), with the result that day-after advertising recall rates have plummeted, from 26% in the 1960s to 7% in 2005.  Compounding this is the fact that youth today simply spend much less time exposed to traditional broadcast media such as TV and radio, and much more time online and on their mobiles. In the UK alone, there has been a 16% TV watching among 16-24 year olds constitutes a 16% drop since 2001. In sum, not only are youth less exposed to traditional media and therefore to the marketing messages which appear on these media, they are less likely to act on the messages they do receive if these messages are not directly relevant to their needs and lifestyles.

Basically, marketers today have a problem getting through to youth. This is where mobile comes in: We can identify three specific areas where mobile will prove invaluable to marketers. Firstly, its ability to deliver highly relevant and targeted advertising on a personal platform; secondly, its ability to build communities around brands, and thirdly, its ability to act as a linchpin between a variety of different advertising channels. More on this topic later – this answer is getting way too long!

-Mobile marketing so far has focused on SMS. Is there more to mobile marketing?

Xen, you’ve raised a great point and highlighted a major obstacle to creating successful mobile marketing.  In our report, we distinguish between two approaches to marketing, “reach” and relevance”. Reach is the traditional marketing approach, whereby the success of a campaign is basically judged by how many (potential) consumers it can reach. On the flip side is relevance marketing, where success is measured not by the scale of the campaign but rather how relevant the message is to specific consumers.

Many consumers today associate marketing on the mobile with a stereotypically reach approach, largely because of the SMS push campaigns of the “text-to-win” variety. In fact, mobile today is the perfect example of a reach approach being applied to a relevance platform – that is, a platform with great potential for delivering individualized and targeted relevance marketing.

This skewed approach to marketing on the mobile is basically the result of a temporary incongruence between the medium and the message. Messages will gradually adapt themselves to best suit the vehicle of their delivery, but like any adaptation, it takes a bit of time and a bit of trial and error. In the question above, I outlined three key advantages of mobile marketing: its ability to deliver highly relevant and targeted advertising on a personal platform; its ability to build communities around brands, and its ability to act as a linchpin between a variety of different advertising channels. For example, marketers can set up permission marketing schemes whereby youth divulge valuable information on their preferences to advertisers in exchange for targeted mobile ads – in fact such a service specifically for youth (the ad-supported mobile) will be launched next year by the Finnish company Blyk.

Mobile also allows brands to strengthen youth loyalty by building communities. A good example is Coca Cola’s “Coke Fridge” in Germany, where consumers collect codes from promotional Coke packs which can be redeemed on Coke Fridge - on either the internet site, or a mobile JAVA application version. Consumers can exchange the points obtained for ringtones, wallpapers and mobile games or music downloads via iTunes. Coke Fridge also features an instant messaging application, which offers youth social benefits of communication and allows youth to invite friends, which spreads awareness of the site virally.

Finally, the portability of the mobile phone means it can fuse together many disparate advertising channels to create interactive marketing campaigns. The “Warren” campaign launched in 2003 by Virgin Mobile Australia was a good example of a successful campaign integrating mobile into marketing, as it combined aspects of TV, online, print, radio and mobile advertising to create an interactive and engaging experience for the consumer.

-Are there different marketing strategies when it comes to the youth segment? How?
Absolutely. As I discussed above, young consumers don’t respond particularly well to traditional reach advertising.  To resonate with youth, marketers must craft relevant marketing messages that speak to their specific interests and preferences. Even more so, marketers must create advertising that involves young consumers in some way - interactivity is a key component of successfully attracting and building young consumer loyalty. This is simply because interactivity makes products more fun and more real. Mobile marketing has shown a great capacity for fun and interactive marketing, which makes it an ideal strategy for the youth segment - both the Coke Fridge and Virgin Mobile “Warren” examples. I also said it’s important that products be “real”, ie. authentic. What authenticity really means is that youth feel they have a certain emotional investment in the product, and that it reflects them in some way. A good dose of interactivity always increases the authenticity of a product. A great non-mobile example of this is Jones Soda, a soft drinks company. Jones Soda encourages consumers to send in their favorite photos, selects the best ones and publishes them on the labels of its soda bottles. Young consumers love this, as they gain status from being featured on the bottle and feel an emotional investment in the product and hence greater brand loyalty.

-What are the challenges mobile marketing faces today?
There are three main ones which we talk about in the report: First is that the marketing industry in general lacks confidence in mobile marketing, and a shift in mindset is needed before mobile marketing becomes more accepted. Marketers are holding back from the mobile platform due to a lack of traditional reach-oriented data to confirm the success of mobile marketing campaigns. Change must come from reassessing the metrics employed for measuring “old media” marketing techniques towards metrics that suit the mobile platform more specifically. We have to start focusing on “share of customer” rather than conventional market share, meaning focusing more on knowing your customers well and targeting them with relevant information than simply trying to grab as many customers as possible with generic, watered-down advertising.

Another problem is that Mobile marketing so far has focused on SMS push marketing campaigns which were initially successful because of their novelty value but have ultimately become annoying.

SMS marketing limits the potential of the mobile to engage consumers. Direct marketing may yield short-term results but there is no motivation for peer-to-peer marketing which limits the lifespan of any marketing campaign. When consumers are motivated to market the product to others, target segments become smaller and the result is more sustainable, leading to long-term yields through organically growing campaigns. Generic campaigns, such as mobile banner ads or TV style advertising, will see diminished returns over time as consumers become less receptive.

The third problem is that mobile marketing is frequently isolated from overall marketing campaigns. Mobile is treated as a separate marketing channel with a more technological bent than other platforms, meaning there is little integration with holistic marketing strategies. Mobile marketers are often more focused on one marketing technology rather than a larger solution and the high operator charges discourage the kind of experimentation needed to view the larger mobile picture. Mobile marketing also remains an anomaly amongst advertising platforms in that the consumer is expected to pay to interact, which is likely to disappoint consumers both in terms of the brand advertised and the advertising medium itself.

-Any interesting examples of mobile marketing best practice?
In the report we have pretty interesting case studies, such as the following McDonalds example, proving how effective mobile marketing can be.

McDonalds Japan used the mobile as the principle marketing channel to target young female consumers for the launch of its limited edition Prawn Fillet-o burger.

Aside from contents relating to fashion and teen idols, the mobile site’s main feature was a flash wallpaper heart motif which consumers could download for free. Consumers could customize the motif, changing the colors used to match their mood and share their customized version with friends, giving the site a viral dimension.

Average monthly page views of the mobile site hit 49,000 and sales of the limited edition burger were nearly four times that of previous limited edition menu items.

Thank you Savka! :)

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Next week there will be a new guest visiting here and talking about mobile services and youth. Wanna know who??? - Don't forget to tune in next Thursday to find out! Have a great weekend!

Interviewing Jan Kuczynski on Mobile Music and Youth Trends

Welcome to the second part of the mobile youth trends and behavior coverage. Today, Jan Kuczynski, Associate Manager at the Wireless World Forum, who is also the co-author of the mobileYouth 2006 report will be visiting here! Jan has been with Wireless World Forum for almost a year with a focus on emerging mobile trends and technology. Prior to joining W2F, Jan spent two years in snowy northern Japan and one year in the sunny south of France “I can personally recommend the Jurançon sec to anyone into their white wines”.

For those of you who missed the first part of the mobile youth trends coverage: Nick Wright, Jan's colleague, visited Xellular Identity last week and we had a great conversation - you can read it here.

Well, enough said... Jan, the stage is yours!

-Hi Jan, how are you?

Good thanks, Xen. Thanks for inviting me at Xellular Identity!

-How’s the weather in London?

We’ve been really lucky recently actually - it’s another bright and sunny autumn day!

-What got you interested in mobile?

I’ve always had an interest in the latest technology, but I suppose I really fell in love with my mobile when I spent two years living in Japan. There were some great handsets and services over there which kept me busy during my daily train commute. I would always be using my mobile to shop on Amazon, check maps using GPS or just browse around. Since I came back to the UK, I’ve stopped using my mobile so much. I still like to keep my eye on some of the new mobile developments back over in Japan - though sometimes it makes me just a little jealous…

-What takes up your time other than mobile?

Reading (I’ll have to look into your recommendation of Murakami’s “Wind-up Bird Chronicle”!), rugby league, skiing and getting out of London now and again to see the rest of the world. I’ve also been in big trouble with my housemate recently for repeatedly stealing their new Nintendo DS with tetris!

-Today’s topic is mobile music - do you use your mobile as a music player?

Actually, I don’t! The biggest deal breaker is that my handset doesn’t have a regular headphone socket. I really hate the standard headphones that come bundled with most ‘music phones’ these days so I would only use my phone as a music player if I could use my headphones. The other issue that holds me back is the lack of a good all-in-one music service that will let me use my mobile music on my PC and not cost me a fortune in data charges for OTA downloads from my phone.

-OK, not a mobile music convertee yet ;) but you’re a music fan, right?

Yes I am - and so it was fun to do research into the new trends in youth music consumption and try out some of the services that are so popular with today’s teens - in fact, I even went to two concerts of artists that I found out about on MySpace!

-Does music take a different role in the lives of teenagers and adults?

Yes, it does. As we grow older, we tend to have smaller groups of close friends, but for teenagers, friends, peers and social groups are the most important things in their lives. Music is a powerful social tool for teenagers - it gives them something to talk about, social status from knowing about the newest and coolest bands and the type of music you listen to can even define which social group you belong to (in my school you were either a metal-er or a raver based on your music tastes - I’ll let you guess which one I was ;) ).

-What are the key drivers for music’s appeal to youth?

Youth don’t just play music - they explore, display and share music. Firstly, youth can only use music as a social tool if it’s up-to-date, so unless youth constantly put feelers out to explore new music, they get left behind. Secondly, teens like to display their music tastes - whether it’s through their CD rack, their Coldplay t-shirt or simply by turning up their headphones so everyone can hear. Thirdly, youth like sharing music as it earns them social currency and reinforces peer bonds - that’s why teenagers spend time and effort burning compilation CDs for their friends.

-Has the way youth consume music changed over the last 10 years?

The key drivers haven’t changed - youth still want to explore, display and share their music - but the music industry itself has undergone a big transformation over the last few years. Music formats have shifted from analogue to digital and sources of new music have become more diverse. When I was younger, there was only one music chart, one MTV and just a handful of radio stations for youth. Now there’s the internet, a whole spectrum of music charts and channels and more and more specialist music genres (HipHopera or Neo-Rave anyone?).

-What music services are most popular among teens?

The most popular teen music services now are internet services which help youth best explore, display and share their music in the new fragmented, digital music world. Some services focus on improving one of these aspects (for example, Last.fm focuses on exploring, BBC’s Musicubes are a new way of displaying and Kazaa is mainly about sharing), whereas some enhance all three. MySpace, for example, is all about exploring for new music through a social network, displaying your music tastes on your homepage and sharing new tracks with a community of peers.

-How can we make mobile music more appealing to youth?

I think we need to move beyond the “mp3 playback” mindset to make mobile music a competitor for other popular youth music services. Just adding mp3 playback to a handset doesn’t exploit mobile music’s potential to let youth explore, display and share their music.

I’ve started to see some great new mobile products and services which do exactly that. For exploring, mobile technologies such as QR codes, image and audio recognition provide really interesting opportunities to use the mobile to discover new music. For displaying, there is a growing market for Bluetooth speakers which help youth make a display of their music collection, and there’s a great handset called “Neon” in Japan which shows the track title and artist in glowing LEDs along the side of the phone. For sharing, Vodafone have developed a DRM system where young people can swap music over Bluetooth, MMS, infrared and memory cards and there are some new music services that let youth share playlists with friends.

Mobile music has great potential, but I think it’s only by using mobile technology to build on the key drivers of exploring, displaying and sharing that we can make mobile music services more appealing to youth.

Thank you Jan! :)

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Next week there will be a new guest visiting here and talking about the art of marketing mobile services for the youth segment. Wanna know who??? - don't forget to tune in next Thursday to find out!

Cyworld Insight from Plus Eight Star

Just finished reading Alan Moore’s interview with Benjamin Joffe of Plus Eight Star, on a new report about Cyworld.

I wanted to highlight 3 interesting observations Benjamin made regarding topics that I’ve covered here many times in the past:

Personalization as a major revenue generator:

"You mentioned best practices, what is there to learn from Cyworld for
foreign community services / social networks?
To start with, the richness of the Cyworld service itself can support the product planning of foreign services. Among the most interesting aspects are Cyworld's business model relying on micro-customization, which concerns not only avatars but the whole page with music and many other functions. Also, the mobile aspects of Cyworld can certainly inspire companies who wish to step into this next 3-billion dollars industry'."

The use of ‘real name policy’ vs. anonymity online:

"The key point in Cyworld is its 'real-name policy'. Basically you need to use your real name associated with your official ID number to register. This has become more or less a standard among South Korean Internet services. It is a bit counter-intuitive, but real name policy does not damage free speech, it brings responsibility, courtesy and a lot of benefits for users themselves in terms of trust in the information they can find. We faced the same elements when doing a benchmark of best practices in online 'serious dating' services: trust and reliability brings a very high value to services.

Another very important aspect that sets Cyworld apart from 'western style blogs' is that minihompy are about social and emotional presentation of the self, while Western blogs tend to be rather intellectual. It is very different to have an 'online self' and a 'public journal'. This has an important impact on economics as users want to present the most attractive online self for their friends, and friends and emotions do not have a market price!

Users' value in Cyworld:

"In Cyworld we found the following drivers:
a). Not being left behind
b). Their creations
c). Their relationships
d). Their image"

[via Community Dominate Brands]

I really encourage you to read the full interview, it's a worth reading so don't miss it!

Interviewing Nick Wright on Mobile Youth Trends

For quite some time I was thinking about covering a wider scope of the mobile youth trends and behavior. Reading and looking for a body of knowledge, I got to know Nick Wright, a Research Associate at the Wireless World Forum, who is a co-author of the mobileYouth 2006 report. Nick has a BA in English and has worked in film journalism, English teaching and publishing. He joined Wireless World Forum in 2006 after a year living and working abroad in Russia and Turkey. Having made an incredible gesture, Nick will be my special guest at Xellular Identity during the month of November. First, I will be publishing the email interview conducted earlier, and later on Nick has agreed to answer your questions(!)

Well enough talking, let’s give Nick a worm to the stage!

Getting to Know Nick

-Hi Nick, how are you?   
Great, great to be here :)

-What brought you into the world of mobile?
What appealed to me when I joined Wireless World Forum 2 months ago was the consumer focus inherent in their approach to research. I had just finished a period teaching English to kids in Russia and Turkey and I knew the importance of appealing to young people and getting their attention. When I joined I knew as much as the next person about mobiles but within a very short time I discovered that this was an area where huge leaps in development were possible on a daily basis. It’s an exciting area to be involved in and it’s rare to see an industry so passionate about the possibilities that their medium offers. What we are trying to do with the mobileYouth report is refocus that passion to keep it relevant to the youth consumers so that all that energy isn’t lost.

-Other hobbies, fields of interest?
I’m an avid film buff but I temper the long time spent sitting in front of the screen by keeping active though running, rowing and yoga. Recently, it’s been an exciting time for me since the London Film Festival has been showing all over the city. The new, the strange and the classic jostle for attention around London and I’m frankly spoilt for choice. Last Sunday it set a world record for showing its much-anticipated, completely unknown “Surprise Film” on 50 screens at the same time (including a hospital, a prison and some lucky person’s living room). It turned out to be Robert Altman’s hilarious and touching new film “A Prairie Home Companion”, his first for 5 years. It was worth the suspense!

-3 birthday wishes?
1) A solution (or a basket of solutions) to solve the climate crisis we’re facing right now. Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth comes at an all-too convenient time.
2) The persistence to train for the London marathon for next year
3) The Complete Stanley Kubrick Collection on DVD.

-What did you get for Christmas last year?
A Russian chapka from my parents: I was in Moscow teaching English and the benny hat wasn’t doing the trick any more!

mobileYouth

-High influence of the peer group, the need to build an independent personality, search of identity… adolescence was always about those burning questions, so what has mobile to do with it?
The relationship between youth and their mobiles is not necessarily based on being “fun, cool, or entertaining”. It’s a key social tool employed in the dynamics of the peer group. Youth consume mobile products - as they do others - to make statements about themselves and their relationship with their peers.

Self-expression is such a key aspect of young people’s lives that they would rarely choose a non-branded alternative over an identifiable brand. 98% of teens for example would choose a brand/logo designed T-shirt over a plain one.

Mobile is most importantly a symbol of belonging to a group, both as a physical product (you must own a phone to be part of our group) and its communicative possibilities: texting is essential to youth not because of the content (very limited) of the texts themselves but because each text is a reaffirmation and a reminder that “I’m with you”.

If mobile operators are to make the most of this underlying desire for social interaction amongst youth peer groups, then they need to ask how they can benefit youth and improve their communication. So far the emphasis has been more about giving young people things to play with on their phone which don’t enhance or build on existing behaviour. The result is, at best, small-scale adoption and faddish blips but no long-term successes beyond texting.

-How is the mobile phone changing the lives of teenagers?
A pretty broad question! I think it’s fair to say that it’s allowed youth to remain hyper-connected at all times, to the extent that 14% of US mobileYouth surveyed admitted that they couldn’t live without their phones. Other surveys point to the fact that an increasing number of young people are bing admitted to clinics as “text-addicts”. Overall, youth may be building up a dependency on mobiles which have increasingly become a sign of social status and self-esteem: many admit to feeling depressed if they pass a whole day without receiving a text.

We found something similar in the recent vox pop survey we caught on camera last week. One person admitted that he didn’t know “how people survived before mobile phones” and almost all admitted that they loved texting. If you’d like to see what other information we gathered from the video interviews please visit this link.

However, overall it is fueling the more extrovert and allowing shyer teens to communicate more easily. One of the more interesting findings is that mobiles have come to take the place in youth culture traditionally held by cigarettes. They provide or allow private communication, the activity is carried out largely unsupervised and they effectively create a rare private space for youth to interact in.

The most popular aspects of the mobile are features that can be adapted to suit the needs of youth. Texting is easily understood (though it needs practice to reach the blurry speeds of some of the more proficient) and adaptable to the stage where adults find the language unintelligible. Wallpapers and handset choice allow for personalization which allows youth to express themselves and advertise their identity as part of their peer group.

One of the reasons for the low adoption of new mobile services is because youth cannot access the service easily either due to budget or the difficulty of setting up the service to begin with. One of the key factors in reaching the youth mass market is the ease of use of a service which allows it to become widely accepted across peer groups.

- Is there a special usage of the mobile phone when it comes to youth? Usage patterns? How youth’s usage/consumption of mobile services differ from other segments?
Youth are compulsive texters, as I have explained. Globally they spend four times as much  on texting  as the average mobile phone user (US$ 6 a year compared to US$ 1.5 across all ages). 29.8% of their ARPU is on data services, compared to 11% across all age ranges. There is a lot of room to exploit future data services for the youth market as long as operators exploit existing youth behaviour rather than churning out technological features that have little relevance to kids’ lives.

-What is the market size of mobileYouth?
Currently youth from 5-24 make up 28.1% of the mobile phone ownership market. They spend US$ 130 million on mobiles which is 24% of the total spend on mobiles for all ages. Youth spend on data services is US$ 38 million and, importantly 80% of that spending is on texting. Youth spend on data services is 43% of the total, which shows just how heavily they rely on text as opposed to voice to communicate.

-Do culture and orientation influence mobileYouth behavior? How?
Although we argue that the underlying social drivers behind youth consumers are broadly similar, there are superficial cultural differences that have often been given too much emphasis when, for example, some industry professionals dismiss Korean and Japanese youth markets as “gadget-obsessed”.  These markets are far more developed in their adoption of the mobile internet and the uses of camera phones but these are all easily explained in other terms that the Japanese being obsessed with technology.

Japanese and Korean youth have even higher levels of mobile data service ARPU than youth globally: 47.6% of mobileYouth ARPU was data, compared to the global average of 29.7%. One of the most popular mobile services in Korea is a mobile social networking site named Cyworld, which is essentially an extension of MySpace in that it allows youth to create their own virtual rooms and literally buy furniture to decorate it. It’s hugely popular (90% of Koreans in their 20s have used the service) and provides a perfect environment for youth to fulfil five of their basic social needs, as we identified them: Social Networking, Communication, Status display, Personalisation and acting as a Behavioural Platform.

To explain: Social networking essentially allows youth to keep connected to all their friends, reconnect with older friends (as in the case with Bebo, a UK-based social networking site for school students, for those children forced to move school) and meet new people with similar interests.
Communication is simply the ability to communicate via as many routes as possible: text, voice, IM, PM, e-mail etc. Cyworld allows consumers to interact in all these ways.

Status Display and personalisation are shown by the ability to adapt and personalize in a way that shows off the young author’s identity, likes and dislikes (specifically related to music), friends, profile and the customizable room. As in real life, the virtual world holds virtual objects that convey status in the same way as branded Nike trainers or ownership of the latest music does in real life.

Ultimately, since so many youth are on Cyworld, it essentially forms a behavioural platform for youth as well. By this I mean it presents a set of rules, perameters and structures for youth to interact around. A great way for youth to advance their status is to become a master of a certain behavoural platform. Specific sport varieties are also behavioural platforms so, for example, if you are a great skateboarder you will be given a higher status amongst your skater peer group. In the same way, collective familiarity with a certain platform, when everyone has access to it and understands the “rules”, tends to strengthen peer group bonds and the attachment to the platform itself.

Thank you Nick! :)

* *** * *** * *** *

For the second part of the interview and more insights about the mobile youth behavior, the mobile music market, and the future of this market - don't forget to tune in next Thursday!

Mobile Communities on the Dance Floor

A dear friend and fellow mobilist, Rudy De Waele of m-trends, pinged me about a very cool social programming tool called partyStrands. partyStrands is designed for bars, clubs, and other socializing venues or private/public parties. It allows partygoers to influence the music being played all through their mobile phones.

-So how does it work? -partyStrands starts to run on a playlist chosen by the bar or club owner. Then, partygoers can influence the music by sending an SMS containing an alias + favorite artist. As more people join in, the sequence of the songs is influenced by the collective tastes in music of the people who join that party.

To create a seemingly online community experience, partyStrands runs on a screen that displays the current playing song, album and the messages that the partygoers send via SMS. It can also display photos sent by MMS, and several other innovative features such as cool animations targeted to the audience, and what I personally liked (the reason is obvious) - is the ability to display member’s avatar :) Also, the playlist, partygoers, and SMS is accessible on real time from the party's webpage which can be visited during or after the party.

For the partygoes, partyStrands brings the virtual experience of online social network to the physical space (and vice versa). On the same time, advertisers, venue owners, music labels and operators enjoy the newly created context of consumption and the newly created place to advertize and

promote mobile and music services/products. Smart!

Korean Avatars Market Review - Part IV (Mobile Avatars Offerings)

Recently I was asked to give a presentation about the Korean avatars market, trying to understand the craze and predict other mobile markets’ behavior. Knowing it might interest some of you, I’ll be publishing the content of the presentation at this blog. Due to the length, I’ve been posting it in a few parts every Thursday. If you missed the opening, here’s the link to the first part, second part and third part.

               ****

Mobile Avatars Offerings

The medium of avatars is naturally focused on community, since users need an audience to present their character. As such, avatars can increase operator's attractiveness using its viral affect to mobile operators. Also, operators can use avatars in order to utilize the loyalty established by online communities.

However, the mobile industry had stumbled upon barriers to provide a mobile avatars offering: the mobile internet hasn’t reached the web’s speed, latency, and user interface. Also there’s a big difficulty in implementation.

Having said that, there are already some players in the Korean mobile avatars arena. The first player was NEOWIZ which began supplying mobile avatars to KTF in August 2001, to LG Telecom in April 2002, and SK Telecom in August 2002. According to company’s reports, mobile avatar sales grew to over 2 billion won per month in 2004 (which are about $1.5 B).

The second player was NATE. SK Telecom's Nate launched its avatar service in October 2002 and provides avatar service similar to those provided by web portals. This move was the result of the wired-wireless convergence with SK Telecom’s acquisition of a Korean web portal. Nate offers clothing brands for avatars, providing its users with replicas of the genuine clothing lines. The fashion and consumer brands companies enjoy the advertising by increasing actual product sales, while NATE profits from avatar sales.

What avatars demonstrated to the mobile industry is that mobile phones are a strong extension of self for many users. By personalizing the mobile with avatars, the mobile becomes much more than a communication tool. It has become an extension of either how the user views himself\herself, or would like to.

To summarize, avatars should be linked with other services and not just be a cute application to play with. Avatar service has been generating sales related to community-based services like gaming, forums, chats, IM, and minihomepies. Integrating the web and mobile increases the usage of avatars provide the ability to use the digital identity created practically everywhere.

Korean Avatars Market Review - Part III (Avatars Offerings)

Recently I was asked to give a presentation about the Korean avatars market, trying to understand the craze and predict other mobile markets’ behavior. Knowing it might interest some of you, I’ll be publishing the content of the presentation at this blog. Due to the length, I’ve been posting it in a few parts every Thursday. If you missed the opening, here’s the link to the first part and second part

                                ***

Avatars Offerings

Consumption of all kinds of online content has extremely grown in Korea ever since broadband internet service became popular. I’ll also add here a little piece of valuable info I got last week (Thanks Melanie) to get the idea of “heavy connectivity” that was discussed last week: on average, Korean Internet users spend 12.2 hours online per week and participate in 3-4 community websites!

South Korean users were the first to adopt avatars as their web representation. Respectively, the demand for avatars has grown with the fast adoption of online social interactions in a bodiless, ageless and sexless sphere. This amorphous presence has evoked the need to establish a visual presence by nominating a visual representant.

Most of the avatar providers are portal companies which entered the avatar market to upgrade their web offerings. This companies recognized that avatars can increase revenues by promoting more frequent and longer visits and by serving as a bridge to additional services. Only later down the road service providers realized that avatars are a consumer goods which should have a business model of their own. The avatar service evolved to a pay service which increased the quality of the offerings.

What makes the avatar phenomenon so interesting for many, is the fact that so many users are willing to pay to dress their avatar with clothing and accessories. Understanding that the avatar has a major role in self-representation in the social world over the web, service providers offer only a basic avatar. Many times the basic avatar doesn’t wear more than pajamas or a fig leaf. Service providers understood that users want to have an avatar that resembles them as much as possible, so they offered premium content for extra charge.

The major avatar providers in Korea are NEOWIZ (SayClub), Cyworld, Daum, MSN Korea and Yahoo! Korea.

NEOWIZ operates one of the most popular avatar sites - SayClub. SayClub has over 20 million subscribers which are equivalent to nearly 50% the population of Korea! Neowiz launched the first avatar service in 2000 and has occupied one of the leading positions among Korean internet companies offering avatars and games ever since. According to the company’s reports, Q1 2006 avatar revenues reached $2.4 M!

NEOWIZ was the first provider to employ an “avatars distributed for free, clothes and accessories sold for small amounts” business model. According to this model, users can buy designer avatar clothing and other premium content, with licensing fees being paid to actual consumer brand. This has led to the reality where Korean avatar owners spend more money on clothing for their avatar than they do for themselves. In a society where most of interactions happen over the web – this makes sense.

MSN Korea launched its MSN messenger in 2003 which includes “dynamic avatars”. Dynamic avatar changes according to the typed emoticons or certain words like ‘happy’, ‘angry’, etc’ in the chat window. Dynamic avatars require server capacity which is equal to the online games; which makes it harder for small portals to provide similar services. MSN Korea offers users a “multi avatar feature” which enables the user to employ up to 4 avatars. The displayed avatar depends on the chat partner. To initiate the service, users need to pay cyber money.

The last major avatar provider, which got a lot of coverage after its entrance to the U.S. market, is Cyworld. Cyworld is a social networking leader in Asia with localized sites in China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, owned by a subsidiary of SK Telecom, the country's largest wireless provider. The Cyworld service is a combination of minihompies, online communities, music downloads, picture sharing, messenger and eBay. Cyworld’s users have avatars that visit (by linking) each other's "minihompy" [= a miniature homepage that looks like a 3D room which contains user’s blog, photos, and virtual items for sale]. Cyworld users also buy and sell music, ringtones, and clothes for their avatar. They can also buy skins to furnish their virtual minihompy. The service is free yet a big part of the content is available only for a fee, paid in virtual currency. Cyworld has astonishing penetration rates with 90% of the 20-year-old Koreans.

Daum, another major avatar provider is one of Korea's largest portals. Currently it has more than 35 million subscribers.

Next week - I’ll be talking about the next big thing... avatars entering into the mobile arena! So don’t forget to tune in on Thursday.

Korean Avatars Market Review - Part II (The South Korean connectivity culture)

As I told you last week, I was asked to give a presentation about the Korean avatars market, trying to understand the craze on the web and predict other mobile markets’ behavior. I started to post it in a few parts every Thursday. If you missed the opening, here’s the link to the first part and now let’s move forward to the second part:

                                           ***

South Korean connectivity culture

South Korean users were the first to adopt avatars as their web representation and very quickly it has turned to be a very prosperous market for avatars providers. To understand this phenomenon we should look into the South Korean connectivity culture.

South Korea has quickly become the world's most wired nation. A friend of mine who just got back to Israel after being relocated in South Korea for 1.5 years shared that he "couldn’t grasp how much the web had to offer until I got to Korea. You suddenly realize how FAST it can be! An average South Korean apartment has a high-speed Internet connection of 8 megabits per second” - which, just for the comparison, is 8 times the typical broadband speed in U.S. households. That's FAST!

But we’re not only talking about the speed. Korean broadband penetration leads the world being one of the fastest, and its subscription rates which are among the lowest in the world. 78% of the total Korean households or some 11 million homes, have broadband accounts. This makes Korea a fertile land for broadband services.

Massively multi-player online role-playing games or MMORPGs are one of the beneficiaries of Korean broadband’s high penetration. These games form entire fantasy worlds (and economies), where players meet, interact, and even fight (together or against one another). All is done by using their avatars, their web representations. MMORPGs where the first arena where the need for having a personalized self-representation was understood and answered.

The demand for avatars has grown with the fast adoption of online social interactions in a bodiless, ageless and sexless sphere (at MMORPGs and elsewhere on the web). This amorphous presence has evoked the need to establish a visual presence by nominating a visual representant.

Service providers, on their behalf, entered the avatar market to upgrade their web offerings, recognizing that avatars can increase revenues by promoting more frequent and longer visits and by serving as a bridge to additional services; wherever you go, you take your avatar with you. For the different Korean Avatars offerings you'll have to tune in next Thursday... :)

Korean Avatars Market Review - Part I

Recently I was asked to give a presentation about the Korean avatars market, trying to understand the craze and predict other mobile markets’ behavior. Knowing it might interest some of you, I’ll be publishing the content of the presentation at this blog. Due to the length, I’ll be posting it in a few parts every Thursday.

***
Email, IM, VoIP, P2P file sharing, online social networks etc’... we all use these to communicate with other people. It makes our lives easier, it extends our availability (and our working hours) and it makes us manage more "mediated" relationships than we used to have in the past; meaning we communicate more through emails\mobiles\IM and less in person, face to face. Having said that, we should examine the influence of these medias on our lives and what we gain from them.

One of the key attributes of the internet is that users are liberated from their body, age, sex and occupation. For many, this is a major attraction while others loathe the lack of boundaries. Either way, users need to supplement information that otherwise can be gathered easily, like age, sex, personal traits etc’. To do so, users adopt a personal referent that stands for them over the web. It can be a screen name, a user ID number, an email address… Yet many users find that a graphical representation provides a better service for this purpose.

That graphical representation is what we call an avatar. An avatar can be based on the user’s physical appearance as close as possible, if not identical, to how he\she is seen in real life or, in contrast, present a desired but imaginary appearance; a manga fairy, a medieval warrior, cute Hello Kitty... Anything or anyone. Thus, avatars empower users. Avatars are users’ alter ego.

Also, users can change their avatars frequently to better fit their mood and the actual settings.

Scholars have found major interest in the self-representation over the web mechanism, and dealt a lot with the following questions:

• Does web self-representation resemble to the real-life self-representation?
• How users manage consciously and unconsciously their self-representation over the web?
• What message users want to promote about themselves?
• How users read and decode this visual information?

Moving to South Korea...

South Korean users were the first to adopt avatars as their web representation and very rapidly it has turned to be a very prosperous market for avatars providers. To understand this phenomenon we should look into the South Korean connectivity culture. So don’t forget to tune in next Thursday for the second part.

No Mobile? No Social Life

Noted - the mobile is the yardstick of teen's social life:

"78% of 11 to 17-year-olds believe having a mobile has given them a better social life as it meant it was easier to keep in touch with their friends. By contrast, many young people - especially teenage girls - admit they would feel unwanted if the day passed without their mobile ringing."

[via BBC News}

In my days it was getting invited to better Friday's nights dance parties\hang outs...

The Mobile "Don'ts" List

The list of things you don't do with/over your mobile:

1. Fire en employee by SMS

2. Quit your job by SMS

3. Tell you're partner that you're pregnant (even if you were waiting for it for so long)

4. Dump your boyfriend/ girlfriend (even if it saves you the time and trouble)

5. Have a heart to heart talk with a sobbing friend

6. Answer the mobile while having a romantic dinner with your date

Can you see the common in all these situations?

And if you have some more don'ts - you're very welcome to comment :)

Girls, Throw Away Your Diamonds (and Get A Plasma)

Girls, if you haven't already done so, throw away your designers shoes, diamonds and romantic vacations in favor of plasma TVs, digital cameras and personal gadgets...! Cuz these days, tech replaces diamonds as girl's best friend. Also, according to a new U.S. study, commissioned by cable television's Oxygen Network,

"the next five years women see themselves increasing their activities in six tech areas: digital cameras, cell phones, e-mail, camera phones, text messaging and instant messaging."

[via Reuters, InformationWeek]

I say this tech mania is a replacement, to a certain extension, of the fashion mania. Both are a personal statement of skills, knowledge and status; And both function as a language of signs, symbols and iconography that visually communicate meanings about their users/ owners. However, since at the internet era our communications is more mediated and less direct/ F2F, we need new  and reliable signs which would indicate (to others) our skills, knowledge and status, as fashion always has been doing.

The Mobile Life Report 2006

"The Mobile Life Report 2006", a new and interesting study held by Carphone Warehouse in collaboration with the London School of Economics, is now available on the web (a free PDF).

It contains very interesting figures about how mobile influences our lives (interpersonal relationships, parenting, work, health and safety). Short and simple and really worth reading.  You can download it here.

Technorati Tags: The Mobile Life Report 2006, Carphone Warehouse, London School of Economics, mobile culture, mobile behavior

No Woman Is an Island

You see a woman that attracts you. You want to approach and say “hi” (or some other not so creative pick-up line). Wait and examine the field. Is she doing something with her mobile? If she’s talking, sending SMS or any one of those things people usually do with a mobile - abort mission. She’s not interested.

According to a new study held by Carphone Warehouse in collaboration with the London School of Economics “Women are now using the mobile phone as a barrier signal, or 'personal bodyguard', to deter overly keen men from trying a chat-up line.“

Women not only use the mobile as an unwanted-man repellent, but as a safety tool as well. Having the mobile in hand makes them feel secure; feel connected to their entire social network, which is only a phone call away.

Also, many women, and especially teenage girls, feel awkward being in a social setting by themselves. To me, it looks like having the mobile in hand is conveying the following social message: “I’m not really alone here. I’m actually talking/ texting/ communicating with people…”. This message is addressed to the world and to the girl sender, reassuring and calming.

No woman is an island, especially having a mobile at hand… :)

Technorati Tags: women, gender, mobile culture, mobile behavior, safety, social network, man repellent

Update: Interoperable Avatars?

According to jeff Hester from BigBlueBall Forums, the Yahoo and MSN IM interoperability doesn't include avatars... was obvious, ha?

Anyhow, you're welcome to follow the link for screenshots and install instructions.

Technorati Tags: Yahoo messenger, MSN messenger, interoperability, avatars, Yahoo avatars, MSN Dynamic Display Pictures

Interoperable Avatars?

Yahoo! and MSN have finally put up together interoperability between their messengers, starting with a limited beta test of a service that will enable users of Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger to connect with each other, creating a huge community of nearly 350 million accounts. Finally, I can have one messenger less on my taskbar :))

What I’m curious about is the avatars… up till now, each company has been promoting its own brand (Yahoo avatars vs. MSN Dynamic Display Pictures), having free as well as paid content. So how’s this is going to work from now on? Will MSN and Yahoo take interoperability all the way?

Technorati Tags: Yahoo messenger, MSN messenger, interoperability, avatars, Yahoo avatars, MSN Dynamic Display Pictures

Heep: For Now No Reason For Hype

Cellcom, one of the 3 Israeli operators, is trying to leverage the web 2.0 success with its users generated content to promote the operator's new 3G services. Being the last operator to launch its 3G services, promoting music as its main content offering as Cellcom has done by now, isn’t enough to beat the competitors.

So it looks like Cellcom has managed to be the first among Israeli mobile operators to identify what seems like the next mobile trend - the user generated mobile content (like music, short videos, and other MMS content).

To promote this goal, cellcom has launched on Monday its new web and mobile community Heep. For now, the mobile is only a supplementary experience to the web experience, since the mobile web is another tool (and a less comfortable one) to get to web content. So the (rather obvious) key to success lies in a successful website. Yet, the only problem is that big user generated content sites lay over the internet and not over the mobile sphere. And, as much as Cellcom wants to generate mobile traffic, its major tool here is the web. How will it convince users to generate more mobile traffic?

From a web point of view, Heep is far from being a successful site… For now, a user can’t send or publish his/her content in other blogs/websites (walled gardens), and can’t sign up to receive more contents from friends/ users. Also in comparison to web’s successful YouTube's (and others') content, Heep’s content is very borring (well, it's still the beginning). For Cellcom it can be very easy to provide better quality content being a big sponsor for Israeli music, even copyrighted. However, Heep has managed to recruit the new born YouTube star with over 6.5M views and arm her with a new HS with a camera to start generating mobile contents; hoping she could pull the rabbit again.

Technorati Tags: cellcom, Heep, web community, 3G, user generated content, mobile content, web 2.0, YouTube

SMS - The Convenience Zone

Where do we draw the line between messages we can convey by SMS to messages we should deliver ourselves, in a privately manner? Looks like this line is dissolving by the hour if a Minister of Foreign and Defense can give his resignation letter by SMS…!

Don’t believe it? I was skeptic and read it twice too…  Apparently the Prime Minister of Timor-Leste (where is that?!) received an SMS from his Foreign and Defense Minister, Jose Ramos-Horta, saying he’s quitting, and accepted the resignation by SMS as well.

If someone works for Timor-Leste’s mobile operator and can get us a transcript of those SMSs - I’d be very grateful… I can think of about a million different phrasings for these 2 SMSs, from nasty to most formal… You're welcome to share your speculations with me... ;)

Putting all the sarcasm aside for a moment - people, what’s going on lately?!!! Are you nuts??? If every delicate/ sensitive/ touchy issue would find its way to the evasive world of SMS, where are we heading to as a society?! SMS is very handy, useful, time saving, I agree, but there are situations where this is just not appropriate because it means we don’t cope with the difficulties. If (any) Minister of Defense can handle with politicians, military forces, the media, I’m sure he can handle the discomfort of submitting a resignation letter accompanied by disagreement and criticism. Personally, I think that all of us are capable of handling our sensitive issues. Please be more responsible and less coward and step out the personal convenience zone.

Technorati Tags: mobile, mobile culture, SMS, SMS etiqutte

Lost and Desperate

"Klonies Blogging Idol" is still running and kicking... who's gonna win this close competition? Before the final results, let's welcome the last contestant, Nissim Bar-Siman-Tov, a.k.a. D.J. B., who's a dear friend and a gifted software developer. Well, enough said... Nissim, the stage is yours!

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Recently, ABC announced its free broadcast of new episodes of rating-dominating TV series like Lost, Desperate Housewives, Boston Legal and Alias over the web. This announcement followed a former one which stated that “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives” will be provided for Verizon’s mobile devices supporting Web 2.0 for $2.99 for each episode added to the $5 Mobile Web 2.0 monthly access costs, just to watch Eva Longria on the go.

In the 3G world, most of the business models depend on broadband-supported content to gain back the billion $$ invested in 3G networks. However, I don’t think they expected their business models to fail so quickly. Most of the content offered by mobile providers can be obtained freely from the web or through other media networks, and can be downloaded to mobile devices very easily. Any user who has a broadband can access any multimedia content and either store it on his/her PC, view photos, listen to ripped CDs, watch pre downloaded movies, pre recorded by PVR or even watch live TV according to cable/satellite subscriptions. All that thanks to the “Media Shifting” technology, which has reached its matureness. With this brilliant technology, why would mobile users pay twice for multimedia content they can download from their Computer/TV at home?? All they really need is an unlimited internet package for their mobile device!

Yahoo! declared its intention to be a major player in this huge promising market with its recent acquisition of “Meedio” (Yahoo! Go!). This service provides content both to PC and to Mobile devices with the same interface. However, Yahoo! Was preceded by Orb networks which seized the business potential and offered an excellent service of “Media Shifting” for some time and allowed its users to have their multimedia on the go…

Realizing that these business models might not survive in the long term, mobile operators should seek other ways of expanding their services. One way is to make the most from call-related content, like ringback tones, forward tones and branded Avatars. Since the media shifting’s hype can jeopardize current mobile content business models and change the world again, better be ready than sorry.

Technorati Tags: Nissim Bar-Siman-Tov, mobile, mobile content, mobile operators, mobile TV, media shifting, Meedio, Yahoo! Go!, Orb networks

Update - SMS Etiquette

I'll start with a deep apology to my statistics and experimental methodologies teachers, since what I'm about to say doesn't rely on a properly held study... :) Reading all your answers to my question "what is the appropriate time to wait to a reply to an SMS (knowingly that the other side is 'online')" I came to these conclusions:

• The reply is dependent on the context (business/ privet SMS). Even though, I personally would reply saying "I'll get back to you with answers later/tomorrow/ as soon as I have them..."
• Girls are more committed to communication than boys. They answer quicker and expect the same from the boys. Maybe they're less patiant. anyhow, I'm with you ladies! :)
• Men are more evasive, and less committed to communicating (reply within 24-48 hrs, a week, whenever you feel like replying if at all...).

I'll look for better held studies and see if these observations are valid... and thanks again to all of you who commented! :)

Technorati Tags: SMS, SMS etiquette, mobile, mobile culture

SMS Etiquette

the situation:

I received an SMS.

I replied with a question.

Then - nothing... silence.

what would be the 'appropriate' time to wait for an answer according to the SMS etiquette?  Comments are very welcome :)

Technorati Tags: SMS, SMS etiquette, mobile, mobile culture

"The Mobile Perimeter" - Taken in Consideration in Sweden

No more lack of self expressiveness, no more tacky ringtones deafening delicate ears, and no more fights and loud disputes over the mobile, turning all the passengers around into innocent victims… A precedent in Europe, a new law in Sweden takes in consideration the mobile perimeter and brings the 'silent mode' (and tranquility?) to public transportation. From August 2006, the use of mobile phones in the Swedish public transportation would be allowed only in restricted areas. Needless to say that Swedish people are furious as hell...

One of probable outcomes - if only voice services are prohibited - would be content services’ thrive together with the already very popular SMS…

Technorati Tags: the mobile perimeter, mobile, sweden, mobile culture, legislation, ringtones, public transportation

"Share" Your Personality

Yesterday I had a very interesting conversation with a new friend who shared some of his views about the future of mobile personalization. For Gilad, mobile personalization is all about presence and content sharing. You probably ask – what those have to do with personalization… I’ll explain :)

Remember the days, when the mobile was a newborn, batteries had very short life and we had mentality of wired communication? Oh, we used to turn on the mobile to make a call and then turn it off right away… funny. Thanks to technological changes and improvement of battery life (we still complaint, and yet, they’ve improved…), today we carry it everywhere and always available, sometimes switch to ‘silent’ (still available for SMS) but always ‘on’. It’s interesting to follow how it influences our mobile culture, how our grasp of ‘availability’ changed. First we used the mobile only in emergency, then we demanded everyone to be reachable 24-7 (“why didn’t you answer me when I called? Ha?”). Feeling unpleasant when screened and feeling intruded being called on all hours, we realized availability is fluid and has more then 0-1 sub categories.

BUT… tatatata - imagine that you could get the status (available or unavailable) of friends you want to call without initiating any kind of communication (call or send sms), just like we do today on IM? Even better – imagine that we could get the ‘emotional status’ of them: busy, on the phone, driving, on a date, tired, or maybe pissed off (pls call)… whatever they would want to share about themselves. There’s no doubt that end users would benefit from sparing wasted money on unsuccessful calls, for operators, it’s more complex…

All communication relies on personalization: all I need to do is personalize my profile, express my availability and emotional status and choose who can see/ be subscribed to my profile. As my friends/buddies/contacts, you will probably be moved to see my status changes from ‘cool’ to ‘pissed off’ or even from something very ordinary like ‘at work’ changes to ‘back home’ and initiate communication. Next you could subscribe to my list of 5 last downloaded ringtones/realtones/ ringbacks, learn that I’ve changed my wallpaper and see it, see my location, my last moblog rss… the sky is the limit! Sharing this info with friends is far more reaching self-expression, since more people get to see this mobile content. And from operator’s perspective it could be beneficial too - it urges users to get and share mobile content (the best sales agent is your friend).

Last thing to bear in mind – this is self expression in a non-invasive way, because my friends/buddies/contacts need to subscribe in order to view my content, and I can determine the access or restrictions to it. I guess some of you think – “it’s too much of exposure”… hey, look around at today’s teenagers, the MySpace etal generation, this is how they socially communicate… Be prepared.  :)

Technorati Tags: Gilad De Vries, mobile, personalization, presence, connectivity, availability

IM Goes Mobile - Avatars Too!

"there are currently slightly more than 2.5 million wireless IM users worldwide, about 0.6% of the 400 million Internet IM user base. It pegged wireless IM worldwide revenue at $54.9 million in 2005 and predicts this will grow to $265.2 million this year, $580.9 million next year and more than $3.6 billion by 2009."

[via telecomasia]

wow!!

You're probably guessing my thoughts... mobile avatars, that's right! :)

Technorati Tags: IM, mobile, mobile avatars, avatars

The Proliferating Walled Messengers

MySpace launched yesterday their new MySpace IM, right after AOL launched their "MySpace rival web community" based on its AIM audience and Microdoft launched their Windows Live Messenger.

What irritates, bothers, annoys and pisses off the most(!) in this whole IM thing is the lack of interoperability between all the different instant messengers!! I got:

• Windows Messenger (Microsoft's monopoly)
• MSN Messenger
• ICQ (for the free SMS)
• Skype (for the VoIP)
• Yahoo messenger
• AIM (for all my american friends)
• GTalk (comes with my Gmail)
• and now - a new kid on the block - MySpace IM (cause I'm for friends too)

all that just to be able to reach friends...

Making this list makes me think that I might have more IMs on my taskbar than actual friends/buddies/contacts/you-name-it... :-|

Technorati Tags: windows messenger, MSN messenger, icq, Skype, Yahoo messenger, IM, interoperability, MySpace

Girls Watch Out (or get a masculine screen name)

Virtual world parallels to the real world - USA Today reports that a new study finds that female screen names elicit more threats than male or ambiguous screen names. Like in real life, women get more threats and abusive content than men. No news here...

Technorati Tags: IM, screen name, gender, research, malicious content

Confused? Don't Be

How much time would be reasonable to wait for a reply to an SMS? How long can I wait with replying on an e-mail? Evidently, we’re a bit confused, or so says a study called “Digital Etiquette” held among office workers. Most interesting is the fact that we all agree that firing a worker over any kind of means of communication, instead of over a private meeting, is totally rude. However, regarding the time intervals between getting an SMS, IM or email and replying the sender may vary.

Putting stats on the ice for a moment, it is a great opportunity to look at the 24-7 connectivity’s etiquette. We all rant about being always connected, online, reachable, in range… It usually sounds like this: “how the !@#$@#!! did they manage when there was NO mobile\ internet?! They had no other choice but handle the crisis without me. So they can manage it again!”** But, if we do a reality check, we actually have found the golden path between the 24-7 connectivity’s social demands and our own pace of doing things and our privacy.

At the beginning we felt obliged to answer every incoming call on the mobile or apologize for being unable to answer. The technology was new and there wasn’t a clear convention on the subject. With time, etiquette has evolved: we know we can turn off the mobile when we need to, get the voicemail later on and reply when convenient. From total presence it turned to be “when I choose to be available” kind of presence. It looks like other means of communication like SMS and IM are walking on the same path. While it is rude to disappear in the middle of an ongoing conversation, it is very common to have an online status like “be right back”, “on the phone”, “not at my desk” or “busy”… this is the golden path between total connectivity and our needs and our boundaries (“I’m not answering now, need to do something else”).

BTW, It looks like apps like RSS will push it further to optimize the different kinds of “presence” and our accessibility through different means of communication.

So if you’re confused it’s because social norms regarding these new technologies haven’t totally evolved yet, but good news - it's in process.

**There are various phrasing options here, so you can help me. Try to remember the little voice in your head saying it the last time you were ranting on it. And... write a comment. Thanks :)

"Try to Look Natural... and Action!"

Video calling on the mobile phone, what anticipation!! “Wow video calling, how exciting!” “Which HS it’ll work on?”, “Which operators?”, “What capabilities…?”  Lately, everyone is buzzing on Video calling...

It’s great to be able to see people that you talk to. Thinking of all the possibilities, it really sounds great. Waking up to the sound of the phone ringing, answering with puffed eyes and saliva on the corner of your mouth… Beautiful sight! Or calling late to work, saying you’re just around the corner of the office when you’re really 20 miles away… Great surveillance system and the deployment is paid on behalf of the excited workers… 

We will need to direct ourselves before participating in a video call and check if our hair is combed (spikes are standing up, in my case :-)), if lipstick is well put and dark circles around the eyes are well covered – hey, this is a close up shot!

And if you’ll decide to keep your face off the video call (a new zit in the center of the forehead, or a swimming pool in the back instead of an office scenery), people would probably ask – what do they have to hide? If they didn’t have something to hide they would have showed themselves… not only we’re connected 24-7, we will be under the spotlight, standing on the big stage with even less privacy left…

What would be best is another visual means of communicating… Much more fun and much easier!

United Chargers of Mobile!

-What is the most annoying, most irritating, most frustrating thing when you are a part of the 24-7 connected techie community (think before answering, will ya’)?

-When battery dies and you’re stuck with a mobile that can only serve as a paperweight or as a mean for self defense.

The other day I left home in a rush and haven’t charged my mobile phone (happens to the best, right?). Trying to look for a Nokia charger, I found so many good people (with all kinds of mobiles) trying to help but no luck… even other Nokia guys that had a charger with them had the wrong kind of outlet (?!) That was so frustrating!! Why can’t mobile manufacturers make ONE charger for all their HS models? Here’s even a better concept for the mobile industry – a UNIVERSAL mobile charger. I’m willing to give up the royalties, just make it come true…

U look gr8 can i txt u?

It seems that men and women tend to use texting in romantic relationships. However, there’s a slight difference between them. Men use texting to be less committed - and therefore safer from being rejected by a potential date. How? Texting provides a protective shield, because the “texter” is less involved in the situation unlike participating in a F2F conversation or on a phone conversation. Unlike men, women use text messaging as another mean to nurture their emotional interactions.

So, men prefer to pursue a potential date using texting to avoid the upfront rejection (can’t blame them, really :-)). Women, on other hand, want to see men make an effort to get a date. That effort would elevate the lucky woman’s social esteem and tag her as “hard to get woman” (can’t blame women either ;-)). So apparently there is a conflict between emotional needs of men and women regarding “phase 1” in relationships and regarding the reasons for texting. Women claim that texting caused a reduction in seriousness on behalf of courting men. Either way, life is the evidence that texting relationships do happen, and even flourish. 

But way more interesting is what new technologies would do to human relationships. We all agree that texting reduced the amount of participation\ involvement in the process of communication. Who doesn’t prefer saying hard things through SMS?

SMS’s younger brother, the MMS, is a more complementary way of communicating. MMS is a wider visual means of communication that provides the user a lot more than 160 characters. Via MMS we can send pics with voice, or even short films. So girls could get invitations to a picnic date through an MMS with a pic like the one put here. Yet, we see that most people stick to the good ol’ SMS and use MMS less frequently. I can only assume that when it comes to flirting and dating, even lesser people use MMS. If you have any knowledge about the subject, feel free to comment!

Taking it another step further in the evolution of visual technology - pointing on video chats or F2F communication - asking out on a date using video chat isn’t much different from asking out on the street, in a bar or anywhere else… so would you do it that way?

Let Your Avatar Call in Sick for You

I was reading Stowe Boyd's post about face-to-face technology (a.k.a. F2F). He thinks that real time F2F technology will be the next hit, using video chat through PCs and mobile phones. According to Stowe Boyd, the only hurdle is the lack of interoperability which is needed to be cleared out of the way. Looking at Google’s last moves, it’ll happen sooner than we think. Stowe also brings great examples of situations when you would prefer to use F2F communication.

I’m sure F2F will become more popular over time, but what about all those instances that you don’t want to be totally exposed? Like when...

• You’re calling sick from an exotic island or you're really sick in bed with high fever.
• The phone has woken you up and you don't want your partner to see your puffed eyes, your messed hair and your polka dotted pajamas.
• You’re answering the phone in the toilet (I know, nobody does this kind of disgusting things… absolutely n-o-b-o-d-y…).

I believe there’s another channel of communication that we should consider here, and that is communication through Avatars.

Avatars are our web representation. We can personalize them to better fit our look & feel; we can choose their clothing, hair styles, accessories and scenery… absolutely everything! The ease in changing appearance allows us to use this sphere to explore ourselves. In every social encounter we can change our appearance\ characteristics: a hippy, a gallant cavalier or a rapper, and define who we are and who we aren't.

But actually, we can use these avatars for communication everywhere: on the web (IM, blogs, forums, greeting cards, signatures), on the mobile (wallpapers and screensavers), on daily interactions (business cards, ads, bumper stickers… you name it). Think of the day that your Avatar could stand in for you absolutely everywhere…!

What would that give us? Avatars can stand in for us when we don't want to disclose ourselves. They can easily represent us when we want to separate our real life from the social impression we want to make. So next time the phone wakes you up, friends would see your neat and tidy Avatar. I guess when you’re reading these lines now you come up with a lot of more good examples too.

We can communicate using Avatars on the web and in real life when communicating visually. The mobile phone links between these worlds. And this is where the Mobile Avatar is utilized to bridge these spheres. A Mobile Avatar can be your caller ID, so when you call a friend, he will see your personalized Avatar on his screen, just like on the web. This way, your web representation could serve you over the real world as well. Needless to say, that you can use this avatar wherever else you want (like on your business card, etc…).

So… back to F2F communication. Avatars aren't F2F communication by all means; they are just part of widening visual communication. Yet, Mobile Avatars will integrate the web and the real world.