Xellular Identity - All About Mobile Content & Marketing

Video Content Not Only For The Masses

Chris Albrecht from NewTeeVee reviewed a new start up called Big Think. According to Chris, 

"Big Think wants to become the YouTube for ideas. The site has experts like professor Steven Pinker, author Deepak Chopra, and Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer answering big questions on topics like identity, politics and media. The video answers to these questions are supposed to kick-start discussions with people like you and me who can post responses or comments."

"In a world in which everyone’s a pundit, it’s nice to see someone recognizing the value of experts, but I just can’t see Big Think taking off. It’s just…so…heavy. Questions like “How are language and identity connected?” or “Has capitalism run mmok?” require too much brainpower when I’m multi-tasking with my computer, and the answers are snippets, so the topic can’t be more fully explored. While I haven’t watched all the videos, the only “fun” on Big Think I came across was “Writing for the Harvard Lampoon,” and “What is the most lavish party you have been to?” It’s like I’m reading cartoons from The New Yorker — clever, but fun in a way that’s elitist. Ultimately the whole thing feels like a big Ivy League club that I’m not welcome in."

Putting the writers' negative impressions aside, Big Think have a very smart segmentation, aiming to the higher-end of the population and not necessarily to the masses. When evaluating start ups or new websites, one must differentiate between the relevance for him\her and the relevance for the target segment. Although Big Think might make some people feel as if they are in a big Ivy League club to which they are not welcomed, many others might feel at home. This is exactly what segmentation is all about – specifically tailoring products and services for designated populations. Of course people who do not belong to the relevant segment might feel left out. Otherwise it wouldn't be segmentation at all. This is precisely the reason why adults might feel left out when their children play with Barbies, or action figures. Or why career driven businessmen might feel out of place in a cooking course. Good segmentation. That's why.

The segment of choice for Big think, the higher-end, is a segment that spends hours online and is always on the search for quality resources and quality content; i.e. the high-end segment is also part of the addressable market for video content. While this segment might have been consuming "light" content, it is well-equipped to enjoy more complex messages and will probably appreciate "heavy" content.

Some examples of successful segmentations have already made their way into marketing textbooks (such as manufacturing different car models to address different segments). Video content as a market has already reached the masses (YouTube, MetaCafe etc'), therefore segmentation is the natural next step. Lately we started to see some players addressing specific segments, like 5min and now BigThink. So, if you feel left out, don't worry – some player will target your segment soon enough.

This post was originally posted on The Flixwagon Blog.

Avatars @ Mashable

Mashable has a great roundup of 27 best avatar builders.

As a big fan of avatars and a team member of the Klonies here at Comverse I was very happy to see the topic has been getting traction and coverage!

Hopefully in the next roundup we will see Klonies mentioned there as well... :)

The Mobile Content Market - Moving Into An Off-Portal Eco-System

Mobile Content Market - 30,000 ft. View 

Communication, entertainment, information… consumer interest in using mobile phones has amazingly grown worldwide over the past few years. Mobile Content, the fast growing market in mobile, is expected to grow from $18bn in 2005 (Informa Telecoms & Media, July 2006) to $42.8bn in 2010:

• Music - $11.4bn
• Mobile Games - $11.2bn
• Gambling - $7.6bn
• Adult Content - $2.3bn
• WAP Browsing, Infotainment, dating and other applications - rest of market

The mobile industry lead by the mobile operators has spent a lot of $$ to encourage growth of the mobile content market. By establishing the first content-based services, operators put the cornerstone and made content available to their subscribers through their own web portals both for the web and mobile.

all rights reserved to John Puterbaugh, Nellymoser Inc.

[Figure 1]

Initiating the first content-based services has positioned operators as the storefront of the mobile content stores, offering a wide offering (see figure 2 and 3).

[Figure 2]

all rights reserved to John Puterbaugh, Nellymoser Inc.

[Figure 3 ]

Operator portals have been important for being the first milestone, however they have provided limited opportunities. Operators maintain a wide portfolio of mobile products and services while maintaining a reach portal is too demanding for most. This has led to a gradual opening of the market to many more players who share the load (and profits).

The Off-Portal Eco-System

Thanks to this process operators have witnessed that content providers ultimately sustain consumer interest by providing a large variety of compelling content, being constantly updated with the newest hits. Today, the appetite among content providers to leverage the mobile outlet is higher than ever, seeing each month new content brands entering the mobile market. Just as in the early days of the Web, when users initially experienced the online world through a web portal before exploring out to find what they seek, we are now starting to see increasingly wide browsing behavior amongst mobile users.

This consumer activity is increasingly channeled outside of the operator portal. These two channels to market - through an operator portal, or directly to the consumer by the brand itself - are complementary drivers to the total growth in mobile data usage. In most of the off-portal services, the operator is still part of the billing process, providing a simple payment experience. The differences are that the operator does not promote the service in its own portal, and the marketing is managed by the content provider.

The most popular discovery method for off-portal services is the common short codes which enable users to interact using SMS as an entry point into content/services provided by parties other than operators. Phone users then are charged directly to their mobile phone bill. The main services powered by common short codes today are ringtones, wallpapers, games, news alerts and voting applications.
Today, common short codes are the only ubiquitous cross-operator method of marketing off-portal content, being available to all mobile subscribers.

Off-Portal: Everybody Wins

The off-portal channel to market is very attractive; it brings more brands and services into the mobile market, providing wider choice and usage opportunities for mobile users. It also provides a route into the market for more specialized content providers that cannot access the market through operator portals.

Brands of all sizes can invest marketing dollars into campaigns with a single call-to-action that works for practically all mobile users using short codes. They can also leverage their websites traffic to generate mobile usage. And most important for consumer brands, it enables them to clearly differentiate from their competitors through creative marketing.Operators on their behalf, enjoy a growing income from SMS and data traffic with 0 cost of marketing since content providers take care of the marketing to the end consumers. And consumers, from their point of view, enjoy the same mobile services across multiple operator networks.

The off-portal mobile content market is a vital part of the mobile data market. The marketing benefit – reaching mobile users everywhere, regardless of their network, is a strong driver for brands to route their marketing efforts to the off-portal channel and to incorporate mobile services to their marketing campaigns.

*Figure 1 and 3 were used with the curtsey of John Puterbaugh from Nellymoser Inc.

No More Ringbacks for GrandCentral Users

Google confirmed yesterday what the blogosphere has suspected: it has acquired GrandCentral Communications, an online voice communications management startup. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The deal will result in one notable change for GrandCentral users: users will no longer be able to upload their own ring back tones. Instead, GrandCentral users "will be able to choose from a selection of licensed sound files made available within the GrandCentral service."

Looks like Google wants to avoid copyright issues related to users' uploaded music. Another possible reason I read is to assure potential mobile partners that Google isn't a threat to their ringback tones business. I'd really love to hear what you think about this move my dear RBT experts! :)

Blogference: Om Malik's Presentation

Om Malik gave an outstanding presentation, focusing on his insights as a professional blogger.

“The early traffic trends of Gigaom made it clear: you can build an audience of a magazine that costs many $M with a laptop, a cellphone and a broadband connection.”

However, to meet these goals you need to:

1. Define your mission statement – what is your value proposition for the end reader?
2. Have an answer to “why are you blogging”?
3. “If you screw up – say that you did, otherwise people would move on to the other 20M places that exist on the web.”
4. “Remember that your readers are smarter than you think and smarter than you think you are.”
5. “People should behave in blogs the way they behave in real life.”
6. “People who disagree with you are more helpful to you in the long run - they say something about you.”

Om also provided some insights for the PR and marketers among us:

1. Marketers don’t put the time to read the blogs and think about the reasons of bloggers to write\think as they do. So, you should invest the time to learn the blogger and only then communicate on one on one basis.
2. Do your homework - sort which blogs you should pay attention to.
3. You have to treat every blogger as a newspaper journalist.
4. Give him\her an opportunity to talk with your CEOs.

As an example of business reaching to blogs "the right way", Om presented the case of Joost. Joost offered GigaOm’s readers 20,000 invites; by doing this Om not only provided an added-value to his readers in the form of his insights but also gave them 20,000 invitations. Joost, on their side, got 20,000 tech savvy users who were eager to take the app for a test drive. It is clear how everybody wins… 

As for GigaOm, Om was asked about his shift from the online media, Business 2.0 magazine, to his private-held blog\business. His answer was that while he was a Senior Writer at Business 2.0 and writing GigaOm (on the same time) he realized that the blog was getting more readship, as well as more recognition and more alert discourse was being held through the blog. And the rest is history...

Putting aside the profession for a moment, I have to say that I was very impressed of Om as a human. There is so much for to learn from him... :)

And last quotation – “Thanks to blogging, I take other opinions more seriously.”

NYT: People and Their Avatars

The NYT published a beautiful series of portraits by Robbie Cooper in this weekend's magazine about people and their avatars, in virtual environments such as Second Life and Everquest. Follow the link for more pictures

The interesting is to witness how the created avatar is very closely tied to the personality of its creator in one of two ways:

• The avatar can be based on the user’s true physical appearance by keeping the same external characteristics such as color of eyes and skin tone, style of haircut and more...
• The avatar can present a desired but imaginary appearance: thinner, younger, more muscular, curvier, the opposite sex and more...

Sprint Offers Pandora Personalised Radio Stream on Mobile Phones

American mobile operator Sprint announced another agreement to eiden its mobile content offering:

In their first mobile deal, Pandora, a personalized online music service provider, is offering to stream radio stations on a number of Sprint handsets via pre-installed or downloaded software. Pandora, which enables its 6.5 million online subscribers to enter a favorite song or artist and listen to streaming content with the same sound and style, will offer the same service to Sprint's mobile customers.

To download the client, take your Sprint phone browser to Pandora.com and you will be prompted to download it. This offer is free for 30 days. After that you must have a Pandora premium account, which costs $3/month with a Sprint data plan (this also removes ads from Pandora.com when you listen there). The service will work initially on five phone models but will expand to all high-speed data phones sold by Sprint by the end of June.

Pandora is based on the Music Genome Project, a proprietary system that employs musicians to analyze songs one at a time, identifying musical qualities like melody, harmony, rhythm, arrangement, lyrics and vocals. Information about each current song, like title, artist and album, is displayed on the phone's color screen, and Sprint subscribers may scroll backwards to see the same data for recently played songs. Users may also rate songs to adjust Pandora's programming, pause and skip songs. In addition, Sprint subscribers may bookmark songs, saving title and artist for subsequent purchase at the Sprint Music Store. The Sprint service will integrate with Pandora's online service, enabling users to save up to 100 stations per account. Sprint customers can also create new stations directly on their phones.

[via Press release]

Sprint is the first mobile operator to offer Pandora, it would be interesting to see how other mobile operators will follow...

Coping With Law Enforcement: Second Life and Child Abuse

Over the past day, the issue of simulated and actual child pornography in virtual worlds has attracted the attention of mainstream media. The buzz was provoked by a report of a German TV news program which uncovered the trading group and members who pay for sex with virtual children at Second Life.

For those of you who haven’t heard of Second Life, it is a virtual world in which members create for themselves an avatar and use it to live out a separate existence at the virtual world of Second Life.

Now, Second Life is being investigated by German police following the allegations that some members were having virtual sexual contact between adult avatars and avatars with child-like appearances called "age play"; (which are groups that revolve around the abuse of virtual children);but also claims that photographs of real-life child sexual abuse have been made available in Second Life.

The incidents involving child pornography didn't stay within Second Life though, according to the investigator that carried out the report, Nick Schader, he was offered by this said trading group access to traders of real child pornography. Moreover, there were meetings within Second Life where virtual and real child pornography was shown.

Now, the police are trying to identify the Second Life members involved since under Germany law possession of "virtual" child pornography is punishable by up to three years in jail. In response, Linden Lab, creator of Second Life, said it would help identify users and pass on details to prosecutors.

[via BBC News]

Ever since the first allegation of sexual abuse at Second Life has been published, there is an ongoing debate whether “age play” is legitimate, and whether it is a healthy outlet for sexual fantasies. Virtually Blind states that -

“sexual age play practitioners are quick to differentiate themselves from pedophiles (who, they point out, are sexually interested in actual children, rather than in adults who role play children).”

One of the interesting things, apart from the debate about the legitimation outlawed behavior in virtual worlds is what measures Linden Lab has taken to law enforce within its jurisdiction. Virtually Blind states that

“several months ago, The Register, reported that a Dutch prosecutor was considering bringing charges against citizens of the Netherlands who engaged in sexual age play in Second Life.

Shortly after that story broke, the Second Life Herald reported that Linden Lab had begun quietly contacting residents who appeared to be running businesses related to sexual age play, with the following message:

"Dear Second Life Resident:

Linden Lab would like to inform you that your land or business is possibly not in compliance with Second Life’s Community Standards. The depiction of sexual activity involving minors may violate real-world laws in some areas, and the Second Life community as a whole has made it clear that it views such behavior to be broadly offensive. Linden Lab chooses not to allow the advertising or promotion of age play or related activities in any public forum — including in-world textures, classified ads, the Second Life forums, or parcel descriptions.

Advertisements, promotions, or descriptions of such activities must be removed to avoid account sanctions.

Any account asserting an age that does not meet Second Life’s minimum age of eligibility will be closed.”"

[via Virtually Blind]

T-Mobile With A Music Offering For UK People

Hoping to captialise on its "Street Gigs"* events and Channel 4 music series  "Transmission", T-Mobile is extending its offering beyond T-Mobile customers for all music fans. How? T-Mobile is launching of a new music site named ARTISTdirect.com/uk. The site will go live on Monday morning and fans will be able to access exclusive content from StreetGigs artists such as The Fratellis, Mika, Badly Drawn Boy and the Arctic Monkeys.

T-mobile has teamed up with US-based ARTISTdirect.com, the largest site for independent music online. Based on the US version of the service, the UK partnership hopes to offer subscribers the chance to download content from its live music events 'Street Gigs' to the mobile and consume more mobile content. The new website will be dedicated to the UK market solely.

Music fans on T-Mobile will be able to download music via T-Zones, and non-T-Mobile customers will also be able to access news and get tickets to secretive StreetGigs and Channel 4's Transmission with T-Mobile.

[via press release]

What I like in this initiative is T-Mobile's understanding that as a consumer brand, it must have have an attractive offering to a wide audience; but even more important is to find the way to engage people which are not nesesarily T-Mobile's subscrubers. By providing them a reason to access the T-Mobile's website and incentivize them to visit recurrently, T-Mobile will build its public image and hopefully will draw more subscribers.

*For the non-UK readers, T-Mobile's "Street Gigs" is a unique series of live music events.

Get Trusted Health Information On Your Mobile Phone

I was doing some spring cleaning in my mail box (sorry people, I was busy with the Fun Dial Marketing Seminar) and found a PR about a new service which I liked:

The British Medical Journal (BMJ) Group launched yesterday a new mobile service enabling you to get trusted health information on your mobile phone.

“From acne to warts, the latest on more than 80 common medical conditions can now be accessed from a mobile phone, allowing people to view trusted health information wherever and whenever they need it, and in complete privacy.”

[from press release]

When it comes to health inquiries, I think the internet has been a great tool. Who doesn’t look for symptoms before going to the doctor or looking for more info after getting a diagnosis?

So what added value has this new mobile service for the users? First, the ability to get the information on the go (“Is there anything I can do to recover quickly from jet lag when I go on holiday?”); second, the privacy of your search as usually PCs are public while mobile devices are privately held (“I’ve had unprotected sex and think I may have “caught” something, but I’m embarrassed to talk about it. Where can I get reliable, down-to-earth information before I visit my doctor?”).

“From acne to warts, the latest on more than 80 common medical conditions can now be accessed from a mobile phone, allowing people to view trusted health information wherever and whenever they need it, and in complete privacy.”

Access to the BMJ BestTreatments mobile service is done by texting "bmj myhealth" to 60300 at a cost of £3.00 and will be sent a link to the WAP site. Alternatively users can key bmj.myhealth.com into their phone's browser.

Let’s hope BMJ Group will do a good marketing job to increase the awareness to this new service for the benefit of all people who seek medical advice and can find this channel as useful.

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!

WeeWorld Survey Reveals Why Generation Y Loves Avatars

Yesterday Weeworld revealed its survey’s results on “Why generation Y loves avatars”; a survey which is very important for the entire avatars market. For those of you who are not familiar with Weeworld, Weeworld is an online web avatar provider looking like the South Park’s characters. You can follow this link and create a Weemee.

“Based on more than 750 unique respondents, the survey revealed that U.S. Millennials ("Gen Y," born between 1978 and 2000) are using avatars such as WeeWorld's WeeMees because they like having a cartoon version of themselves for entertainment and to express themselves online.
The survey results also revealed key industry trends, significant variations by age and gender, and specific insight regarding WeeMee usage. Key findings include:

• 82% of respondents noted having an avatar “because it is fun,” while 66% also noted a key driver was “because it’s a cartoon version of myself,” and 45% “to express [themselves]”
• YouTube was ranked the number one site that was used regularly (at least monthly) at 57%, while MySpace was a close second at 43%

Based on the wide array of respondents, variations by age or gender also became apparent such as:

• Respondents older than 26 years old unanimously ranked “more animations” as a very important feature, further highlighting the importance of fun and levity
• Females ranked room-building capabilities to provide a home for their avatar as their most wanted feature, while males wanted more animation
• Younger respondents (14-16 years old) ranked YouTube as the site that was most used regularly (at least monthly) at 65%, while older respondents (17 years old and above) ranked MySpace as the site that was most used regularly at 57%

According to Wikipedia's definition, Gen Y was “the first to grow up with the Internet in a developed, prolific form, including music downloads, instant messaging and cellular phones” and “even before they could type and mouse-click their way through the Internet, they grew up with modern media choices: television remotes to encourage channel flipping; cable, with its wealth of channels among which to switch.” Many consider Gen Y as the most important generation for marketers based on their expansive spending power and significant influence over their parents’ purchases. However, with the continued evolution of Web 2.0 and the growth of widgets, APIs and avatars, the motives behind this unique generation’s immersion in the digital arena and how to effectively engage it challenge today’s marketers.

With approximately 76 million Millennials in the United States and 15 million people worldwide having created at least one WeeMee, there is a lot of room for growth. A WeeMee is born every three seconds and 700,000 new WeeMees are born each month.

The survey revealed WeeMee-specific findings on how and why users interact, for example:

• 71% of users changed their WeeMee at least once a week; 21% changed it on a daily basis
• 60% updated their WeeMees to show how they were feeling or what they were doing, while 55% update their WeeMees to wear or show an item they want to own in real life
• 40% of U.S. users discovered WeeWorld through a friend"
  
  [via Weeworld's press release]

CBBC - Kid's Virtual World

Virtual worlds are becoming a sphere for children as well - the BBC plans a virtual online kids's world where they can inhabit and interact.

"CBBC, the channel for 7-12 year olds, said it would allow digitally literate children the access to characters and resources they had come to expect. Users would be able to build an online presence, known as an avatar, then create and share content. Bosses said CBBC World would not have the financial aspects of other online worlds such as Second Life. [...] "It will give children a chance to move around a safe, secure world where they can not only interact with familiar characters but have an opportunity to make that world a more fascinating place with their own imaginations.""

[via BBC]

It makes me think about the messages that will be conveyed, targeted marketing and segmentation, child's psychology...

Communication Technologies in Fiction

I was going through Cellular News and found the following:

"A novel in which the entire narrative consists of mobile phone text messages was published Wednesday in Finland. "The Last Messages" tells the story of a fictitious executive in Finland who resigns from his job and travels throughout Europe and India, keeping in touch with his friends and relatives only through text messages.

His messages, and the replies, roughly 1,000 altogether, are listed in chronological order in the 332-page novel written by Finnish author Hannu Luntiala. The texts are rife with grammatical errors and abbreviations commonly used in such messages."

[via Cellular News]

This made me try to remember if I have ever read about a mobile phone in fiction (not in professional literature)... I couldn't think of any examples... However, I do remember that the first and only time I've ever read about an IM conversation was in Haruki Murakami's "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" written back in 1995! I don't want to spoil the fun so go grab the book, be amazed from the prehistoric IM chat session described and enjoy.

If you happen to know who was the first author to describe\write about the telephone, mobile phone, TV, PC etc' in fiction\literature please comment or drop me a line. Thanks :) 

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!

Ovum: The Market of Mobile Content - long, hard slog!

Hi everyone,

I'm happy to welcome Michele MacKenzie from Ovum to review the market of mobile content here at Xellular Identity. Michele is a Senior Analyst and a Service Manager for the Ovum advisory service and Practice Leader for Ovum's Consumer Practice. Michele has over seven years' experience in the telecoms industry, specializing in mobile communications and wireless Internet.

Michele, the stage is yours:

A few years ago the mobile content market grew quickly, but growth was fuelled solely by a special kind of content: personalisation, that is ringtones, logos and wallpapers. People regard their phones as highly personal items, and content for making them even more personal quickly proved to be highly popular.

However, in the more general content areas such as news and music, mobile has taken longer to develop and has grown more slowly. Mobile operators have had to deal with big challenges in re-purposing themselves as content media, in terms of technology, internal organisation, relationships with other businesses and relationships with their customers. Progress on all those fronts has been slow, and it is not over yet.

So although the availability of mobile content has taken big strides forward in recent years, we expect revenue growth to be steady rather than spectacular over the next few years. We forecast that global revenues will grow from around US$31bn in 2005 to US$55.5bn in 2010. In 2005 and until the middle of the forecasting period, personalisation applications continue to dominate. But from 2007/8 onwards other application groups such as Alerts and mobile TV and video will increase their contribution to revenue growth. Ovum expects revenues from rich content - music, games and video and TV - many of which are core 3G applications, to drive wireless content revenues from 2008 onwards.

The market place for mobile content was dominated, in earlier years, by the closed portals of the mobile operators. Those days are over now. We estimate that in Europe 50-70% of content revenues are driven from outside the operator-branded portal. The figure is lower in the US, around 40%, but is growing fast. Operators need to move fast in order to capture and maximise these revenues, by putting in place a well thought through off-portal strategy. An on portal and off portal strategy are not mutually exclusive, they complement each other and are both needed. The walled garden is no longer viable: a single portal will not meet all of consumers’ growing demands. And operators benefit from off-portal content too: it drives revenues from data traffic, and we believe it will also help open the way for advertising revenues going forward.

On the global level, mobile content, including data traffic, is around 5% of total consumer service revenues at present. We expect this to hover at around 5 or 6 % throughout our forecast period. The wireless content market still faces a huge number of challenges. Many of the new higher value services such as music, video and mobile TV will go through a bedding down phase and will take some time to reach the mass market, not least of all because of low handset penetration supporting the new services and other key enablers such as DRM. Many players have now made those initial investments and have done the groundwork to either launch the service or prepare for launch. Many are now addressing the early market and looking at how to bring those services to the mass market. Two new areas of great potential are social networking and mobile advertising. These two key areas are intrinsically linked: mobile social networking services can drive mobile advertising revenues. But both are embryonic at present, and wireless players are still grappling with the issues they involve: they are a long way from mass-market uptake.

The key challenges that wireless players are facing when it comes to growing the wireless content market are:

• Increased competition in a convergent world
  Consumers are targeted with content and entertainment services by their TV providers as well as their fixed and broadband service providers and in addition by their mobile providers. On top of that, they may well already have their email or instant messaging account with one of the large Internet portals such as Yahoo! which will also be offering them a range of services. This is where mobile players need to think more carefully about a multiplatform strategy and partnering with other players out there. The market is very crowded with many players looking for a share of both the end-user revenue and the advertising revenue.


• Wireless players move out of the comfort zone
  Providing music and TV services is a different business to personalistion. Wireless players are now exposed to greater competition (see above) which means lower margins. Many will struggle to differentiate and build the business and some will do well to take on the facilitator role rather than compete head on as a service provider. These roles are not mutually exclusive.


• Wireless operators need to harness the off portal opportunity
  There is a growing trend for wireless operators to absorb or subsidise the traffic charges for on portal services. This of course is an area of contention for off portal players, many of whom are reviewing their options having seen increased barriers to entering the rich content market due to prohibitive traffic charges. In order for the rich wireless content market to grow it will be critical for the wireless operators to look at a wholesale data strategy for third parties or flat rate data packages. If you don’t do it somebody else will so it is better to plan your strategy early on.

Forgot Your Password? Try A New Identity

Danah Boyd has written a very interesting post about youth's tendency to forget things, like their login passwords etc and their approach when being locked out of mySpace/Xanga/Blogger happens:

"Sara created a MySpace using an email address that she made specifically for that purpose. After vacation, she couldn't remember her MySpace password (or her email password). She created a new MySpace page using a new throwaway email address. When i asked her if she was irritated that she had to do this after investing time in the previous profile, she said, "nah.. I had too many Friends that I didn't know anyways."

"Teens are not dreaming of portability (like so many adults i meet). They are happy to make new accounts on new sites; they enjoy building out profiles. (Part of this could be that they have a lot more time on their hands.) The idea of taking MySpace material to Facebook when they transition is completely foreign. They're going to a new site, they want to start over. [...] Some teens chew through IM handles like candy; their nicks are things like "o-so-funny" rather than the first name, last name standard that seems to pervade professional worlds. It's not seen as something to build an extensive identity around, but something to use to talk to friends in the moment."

[via zephoria]

Forgetting the password and creating a new account is a great opportunity to start over a new account with a new profile, i.e. a new identity. It is even more appealing for youth because adolescence is the age when many 'roles' are being tried/played with as part of the process of constructing an independent (from parents) identity.

in contrast, let's keep Cyworld with its 'real-name policy' and huge success among teens and young adults in mind...

Understanding Mobile 2.0

An excellent piece written by a friend and mobilist Rudy De Waele of m-trends.org titled Understanding Mobile 2.0 at Richard MacManus' Read and Write Web :

"Mobile 2.0 is not "the Future." it is services that already exist all around us. These services are maturing at an amazing rate and what they are doing is effectively knitting together Web 2.0 with the mobile platform to create something new: a new class of services that leverage mobility but are as easy to use and ubiquitous as the Web is today. These services point the way forward for the mobile data industry."

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!

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.

Exploding Anonymity

The IHT reports that the Chinese government

“intends to require its estimated 17 million bloggers to register under their real names, the official Xinhua news agency reported Monday.

“Under the system, bloggers would be allowed to continue using their online pseudonyms, but must register with the authorities under their real names. The requirement is an "unavoidable choice" if China wants to properly develop its blogging community, Xinhua quoted Huang Chengqing, the head of the Internet Society of China, as saying.”

[via IHT]

It is clear that the Chinese government is afraid of freedom of speech, which lies in the essence of anonymity. Anonymity sets people free from inner restrains... Anonymously, users can be what ever they want to be.

However, expressing ourselves is a basic human need, so it will find the way to come out. If blogging isn’t the ‘right’ or ‘safest’ mean, people will find other means for communicating what is in and needs to come out… Here are a few ideas for other means of expressing oneself: the MMORPGs (massively multi-player online role-playing games), forums, chats, comments… It’s like a natural dam in a river - eventually the water will create a new path, a detour, and keep on streaming to the ocean...

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.

Web 2.0 Awareness

A little off topic link I got yesterday (thanks Darren!) of a cool self test built by Scott Schiller, to determine how web 2.0 aware are you.

Have fun people :)

Jump Higher (and Reach the Virtual Reality)

The encounter of reality with the virtual has led to a very interesting and creative implementation of consumer brand offering in a virtual world:

Adidas is now selling its "a3 Microride" shoes for L$50 to Second Lifers. “Like the real-life shoe, the Second Life counterpart provides “the ultimate blend of bounce and flexibility with minimum weight.” In fact, it’s a great virtual-world product, acting like a kind of pogo stick for your feet, and with the option to keep bouncing you around as long as you’re walking over open ground”, says Mark Wallace.
[via 3pointD.com]

So these “a3 Microride” shoes leverage the power and attractiveness of the consumer brand Adidas in reality while also benefiting from being a virtual product that can have fantasy features\powers. Come to think of it, these Adidas shoes are better than the real ones!

This makes me think what more can be done when brands get extra fantasy benefits at the virtual arena... awesome! :)

Dolls' Peronalization

Idan sent me these pics from “Boyds Personalization Center” in NY (correct me if I'm wrong about the store, dear). As you can see, girls are now offered to personalize their dolls and choose from a wide selection of color and hairstyles (no need to make improvised haircuts that end up in tears), color of skin tone, color of eyes, and of course many clothes etc’… (If I was given this task of choosing as a little girl it would have taken me ages to decide which items to buy or even worse, all of my spending money; because a girl needs a wide wardrobe to select from...) ;)

I don’t know if this is influenced by the wide world of personalization that rules the world of virtual identities (MMOGs, IMs, chats, forums and even mobiles) or vice versa. Yet in both, “the user” identifies with the doll\avatar during “the playing time” and is willing to invest money in the looks of the subject of identification.

[Thanks dear! :) ]

     

Itzle - Nice but Lacking (a lot of) Sex Appeal

Tom pointed me to this social tool I wasn’t aware of. Itzle is a new tool that gives you a visual presence while visiting at a webpage “as if it were an actual, physical place”. The aim is to meet other people in the same virtual location and communicate. Tom also points out that He sees it

“as the reincarnation of Odigo's base idea: while being able to IM with your friends, how do you make new friends?

the idea was that you would see on the Odigo 'radar' people being on the same web page as you (you could further drill down to sex, age, spoken language, etc), as well as leave notes for other to see on the web page.”

My criticism is about the visual appearance: the Itzle avatar is nice yet very schematic. The personalization options are very basic and only allow you to change the colors of the hair, shirt, pants and text. The user can't even change the most basic option of all customizable web identities - determining his/her gender. Today, with a huge market of web avatars, this is just not enough. If this seems redundant, just think how would someone attract others into initiating communication while visiting the same webpage when they all look the same??! Would you just try avatars randomly? I don’t think so.

It’s nice, yet this browser add-in will have a tough time gaining popularity with the proliferation of social apps in the online neighborhood and with its avatars' low sex appeal…

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.

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

Stardoll: An Avatar Or A Doll?

Successful consumer brands allow customers to assign their own meaning to a product or service. This gives them the opportunity to project themselves to others, to get a feeling of self-expression. To provide greater added-value, consumer brands usually use celebrities to promote themselves.

Stardoll has taken the power of celebrities being brands themselves. Instead of dressing your avatar or paperdoll - the way it's called there - with brands you can choose Brad Pitt, Halle Berry or any other celebrity out of a list of 400, and get them dressed from a very limited collection. [I don’t know how they got the approval of all these celebrities to use their faces... Anyhow, copyrights and royalties aren’t my issue here].

The celebrities are a sure attraction no arguing here. Yet, instead of using the power of consumer brands and engage it with the need for expressing the personal identity on the web, these avatars are taken to the childish world of play and fantasy. I’m offered to play with my favorite celebrity’s paperdoll, dress it up, identify with it and become the celebrity during the playing time, just like when girls play with their Barbie dolls or boys play with their action figures. This is why they’re called “dolls” rather than “avatars”: you can play with it for certain time and that’s about it(!). There's no other outlet for your paperdoll, like different messengers, web communities and in the future - the mobile… Having this restricted outlet, this service can only be targeting the segment of 5-13 yrs girls, during the dolls' period of glory, and therefor the sweet pinkish tones of the website.

Anyhow, it is an interesting example of combining web identities and consumer brands.

Technorati Tags: stardoll, avatars, paperdolls, celebrities, consumer brands, self expression, marketing, web identities

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

Reality? Check

"Klonies Blogging Idol" is still running... Causing the participants to nervously bite their nails not knowing who’s winning since many friends want to get the chance to try the blogging thing. For those of you who haven't heard about it, I'm looking for blogging talents among the Avatars Group, to get them blogging in our upcoming Klonies Blog. So let me introduce you to my fourth guest, Tom Sella, a dear friend of the group, a Klonies addict, a regular reader (I didn’t pay him to do so I swear) and a great blogger. Well, enough talkin’... Tom, knock ‘em down!

                                   *******

Several years ago I had a couple of paperback Asimov’s Journal (after looking it up, I think it is Asimov’s Science Fiction zine) editions, or something to that effect. These were collections of short science fiction stories by (I think) both known and lesser-known authors.

One story that I particularly liked was one which, among other things, described a message answering holographic video phone, where your (today more commonly known as “avatar”) attendant would answer, and filter messages. Both the complexity of the system, and unsolicited messages (today more commonly known as “SPAM”), were described, where one would try to fool the other to reveal its true identity – the avatar as message filtering service instead of the targeted “live person”, and the message as SPAM, instead of something of importance to the “live person”.

This would seem to be more science than fiction these days, in so many aspects. To forego the subject of SPAM and SPAM filters, we are now making daily progress in manifesting and/or changing our personal representation. We do this in our instant messengers, e-mail, blogs, and when Klonies and SeeStorm have it their way, on our mobile phone.

How long would it take to bring us, our personal computers, and mobile phones, technology just as recently described as being used in movies, where one can come into the studio, and with no makeup and no special effects, appear 25 years his younger, or in fact, anything else? To judge from technologies brought forth by Logitech [videos here and here], combined with avatar technologies like Klonies, possibly not long at all.

As one Israeli child song goes, with a little twist “whomever stands behind in front of me, does not know who I am”.

P.s. if anyone can remind me of the author of the story, and where it may be found, I would be grateful.

Technorati Tags: tom sella, sciense fiction, avatars, mobile avatars, asimov, seestorm, klonies, logitech,

Welcome To The First Signs of Maturity

""It got too fake," 18 year old Summer Stoker said. "You have all these people saying they want to be your friend. It's just a waste of time.""

[via Star Telegram]

well, there are some more mature and more self-aware teenagers... Great news :)

Technorati Tags: myspace, web comunities, web, youth

Perspective

The WSJ compiled some movie scenes about the internet. Very funny to look at the vague idea we had about the web back in the 80'-90'.

Technorati Tags: WSJ, Hollywood, internet, movies, media

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

For Privacy Matters Please Text

These days every kid has a mobile phone. There's no surprise in seeing companies and organizations trying to reach teenagers through their mobile phones, or better said – via texting.

"San Francisco just launched the nation's first text-messaging program aimed to shoot instant cellphone messages to sexually active young people seeking advice about sex and health. The service focuses on everything from what to do "if ur condom broke" to whom to call "if ur feeling down... like u wanna xcape ur life."

Written in the abbreviated style of text messaging, SexInfo is open to anyone with cellphone text messaging. But it is aimed at sexually active 12- to 24-year-olds in San Francisco, especially blacks, whose rates of sexually transmitted diseases have increased in the past year, says Jacqueline McCright of the San Francisco Department of Public Health."
[via USA Today]

What I liked about this initiation is that the San Fransisco Department of Public Health people chose the right means of communication for the specific target segment and for the cause. Info about sex is an urging content for teenagers, yet you probably ask - why is the mobile the right means of communication and not - let's say - the internet?

Texting, like IM-ing, creates a new sphere of communication. Texting and IM-ing provide a protective shield, because the “texter” is less involved in the situation; unlike participating in a F2F or on a phone conversation.

In their essence, texting and IM-ing are very close, yet teenagers prefer texting. Why? Because the mobile looks better after their privacy. Teenagers don't share their mobile with other people like they share the PC (with family members, friends, and/or random people at internet cafés…). So on the mobile, no one could see the latest word searches, the ongoing text conversation, or opened web screen. For private matters, the mobile has greater benefit.

No need to explain that when it comes to "if ur condom broke to whom to call" or "if ur feeling down... like u wanna xcape ur life" teenagers must feel confident enough to express and not intimidated by the fear of possible exposure... To make sure that teenagers would get the important info, the Health Department people made sure that the means of communication answer the users needs – get the info and keep their privacy at the same time. Nice guys!

Technorati Tags: SexInfo, texting, SMS, IM, youth

A Virtual Face Lift

Just saw this one on Yahoo Answers:

Q: Why do you like avatars?

A: “To tell you the truth, I'm just not that great to look at. I'm not the ugliest, but I am getting older and I would rather avoid the signs of aging. An avatar suits me for this purpose.” (Brigid_01)

Avatars - cheaper than a face lift and a lot more effective in our digital era...

Technorati Tags: avatars, yahoo + avatars, virtual identity

Virtual and Mobile Satisfaction (**careful with kiddies around)

More things you can do with your avatar: get satisfacion. Run a romantic virtual/real life. More specifically, you can flirt, court, go on date, cuddle and even have sex.

-Crazy? -Maybe. But it’s real:

IMVU integrated their IM avatars to allow their users to push further their chats into virtual social interactions. Instead of just having a verbal interaction, IMVU enable users to take the “traditional” chat and run it over a cup of coffee on the virtual “Starbucks” or smooch under the moonlight sky.

-Naive? -Maybe, but I’m sure you’ll agree that most people would choose this IM to flirt/ look-for-a-date/ have cyber-sex rather than just to chat with their best friend…

On the mobile sphere, Digital Chocolate apparently targets teenagers and their mobile phones with its new dating video game. According to its last announcement, with “The Hook Up: AvaFlirting” we could create a mobile avatar and flirt with other peoples’ cell phone avatars. No word on how this is going to work, so we’ll have to be patient…

The app that takes it to the verge is “Naughty America: The Game”, a multiplayer online dating game where “players can create their own character and explore an exciting, sexy, and vibrant world. Escape from your day-to-day life by creating a Naughty Persona and interact live with other players from around the world.”

What’s so special you’re asking? Well, while you can have some “ordinary” experiences of a virtual multiplayer world of chatting with people, shopping for clothes or having other outdoor activities, you can also try the “sex mode”! This mode allows you to try sex positions with your avatar partner, turn on the webcam, “or just visit the voyeur club and get a sneak peak at someone else's wild side”.

Very creative, kinky and daring. Really. What I don’t like in these apps is the potential to replace (to a certain extent) a normal social interaction. There’s no harm in meeting a potential date over an online dating service, over any IM jabber or flirt through SMS. There is no wrong in having a place to express ourselves and our fantasies more easily and freely either. But these apps exist in an evasive sphere, not totally real and not totally imaginary. They provide an alternative experience which is easier and safer to dating (in the real world) which many find as very stressing, intimidating and exhausting. By providing a detour, many just don’t need to cope with/ face their difficulties in order to get satisfaction.

Would next step be feeling embraced to initiate a small talk with people without having technology as a mediator? Will we (need to) hum/ scream out loud Rolling Stones' "I can't get no satisfaction"? ;-)

Big Little Helpers

A bit late, but I just had to comment on something I’ve read on Ad Age. The recent post of “Media Morph” covers the phenomena of Avatars, from marketing point of view. Yet it did that only to a very poorly extent, the concept was so reduced and badly presented…

First, Avatars are a visual mean of self representation in a limited environment, where we can’t use our physicality as our representation. The environments vary from virtual games, to chats, instant messengers, forums, different social softwares and they have even reached the mobile sphere.

Avatars can be used also for interacting with friends, like in more evolved instant messengers (IMVU for example), or like in virtual societies (“Second Life” for example). On these platforms, avatars can have all kinds of interactions with other people’s avatars: they can go on a date over a cup of coffee, shake hands, hug or kiss... Avatars can have formal interactions like buying or selling stuff too. Whatever comes to your mind – your avatar could interact for you!

And to the marketing perspective: Since avatars are our representation, we want them to be as close as possible to the way we are, as close as possible to what we wish to be. That is why from consumer’s perspective, there is no difference between branded content for  avatars to other branded merchandise (clothes, gadgets, cars… you name it). Whatever brands we own in real life we’ll probably want to have for our avatars as well. Here lies the big benefit to marketers - make branded content to be used in the virtual sphere. This can advertise and promote the consumer brand in real life. But it could be another major route for revenues.

So, don't just go underestimating Avatras (or you'll get me writing another post about it! ;-))

Who Wants A Pimpled Avatar?

Lately, I see everywhere I look around, a new avatar service emerges to the world. This week I came across the Imstar Instant messenger’s 3D avatars. I’ve looked around their demo site and even downloaded the messenger (I really love playing with new apps).

With Imstar’s 3D avatars you can personalize the shape of the body and face to really look like yours. Then, you can try out different clothes, make up and accessories of different brands, buy them if you like the way you look or sell items if you’re tired of that ol’ dress. The other day, I saw great pics published by Heather Meadows, who tried to build her Imstar avatar to look just like her – as much as possible with Imstar’s 3D graphics.

Imstar’s avatars are really great, but the question is who would want to have his exact body shape and look to be his\her web representation?

Imagine yourself this situation: I’m a very cool teenager but my face is all covered with pimples (it happens to the best, right?). Would I want my avatar to be polka dotted as well?

–of course not!

Would I want to have a button that adds zits to my avatar’s face?

–no!!

Why?

-Cause nobody thinks zits are a good way to promote yourself. We all prefer to show an improved image of ourselves. If an “add a zit" option exists in the avatars building studio, and I’d deny its existence because I want my avatar to look cool and hip (who wouldn’t?!), my friends would say I’m lying about the way I look. The bottom line is that no button that adds flaws is welcome in avatars world.

So, have Imstar guys lost their minds adding the option to make fat 3D avatars? Not really… There are segments that will welcome a very realistic avatar to represent them on the web. These people don’t want to upload their real picture and get the inevitable exposure. Think about the dating scene, for example. When flirting on the IM with a potential date we’ve just met, we want to show our best and to protect our real identity at the same time. After gaining trust, we’re ready to provide more details about ourselves and we’re more confident to send a real pic of ourselves. So in our online lifestyle, even not-so-perfectly-looking-avatars have a role. But cool-looking-avatars have a so much bigger role…!

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.

Anonymity

Anonymity on the web was among the hottest headlines lately... splogs, spammers, Wikipedia’s pains, Bush’s new law prohibiting US citizens making annoying comments (which led to discussions about freedom of speech…). So, what is there regarding anonymity that is so appealing to many? What is there that provokes so many emotions? 

Anonymity gives us the freedom to speak out without fearing from criticism or social rejection. It also sets us free from inner restrains. Anonymously, we can be what ever we want because anonymity means freedom; anonymously, we can say things that normally we don’t let ourselves say out loud (about anything, really). As an aside note I’ll say that anonymity is sometimes exploited to spread malicious rumors and gossip that is published against people (this is how tabloids work).

Anonymity is also a detour to facing with the difficulty that lies in saying hard things right in the face. It’s easier for us if someone else would say it for us - and that mysterious John Doe isn’t us… right? ;-)

Leaving the gossip on ice, if you think of it for a moment, when anonymous, we actually hide our identity and reveal an inner truth at the same time! We reveal something that otherwise is berried underneath, too fragile\delicate to expose on daily life. As said before, even the shiest people when anonymous, loosen up and express inner dimensions.

With so many pros, why should we expose our real identity?

A Thought on Blogs & Avatars

The other day, I was asked by a well known blogger this question:

Is this you?

I answered: "Yup, that's me."

All day long I was hearing the question in my mind over and over again: "is this you? ". Then, it suddenly came to me! I don't know if you thought about it before, but I've realized that your blog is part of who you are. Your blog is another way to introduce yourself on the web. A blog is just like an avatar that represents you or stands for you on the web sphere.

Like an avatar, you can personalize it to better fit your mood, and to better express who you are...

So, we have an icon\an avatar\our web-representation, which we can edit\manage\manipulate to master the message we want to promote about ourselves.

But (there's always a 'but', ha?) does this blog self-representation resemble to the real-life self-representation?

-To a limited extend. Can they (blog and real-life self-representation) co-exist??

You Are What You Pretend To Be?

Well guys, I don’t know what about you but I just love trying different personalities while on-line. Most of you would probably say that I’m a fraud… But if you think for a moment - trying different personalities is just like trying out different costumes for a costume party, trying out different clothes at the mall or in front of the mirror at home – we experiment different characteristics or personalities to explore ourselves.

I’ll give you another example: Avatars are used to stand-in for us when we’re online. That is why a lot of people want their avatar, their web self representation\alter ego, to be as close as possible, if not identical, to how they are seen in real life. But can they really do that? I mean, who hasn’t experienced the pain of “self-creating” a digital image\web persona? Who doesn’t remember how difficult it is to decide which pic to upload, what witty lines to write while on-line?

You probably run into chats like this all the time:

Night Rider: knock knock…

Crazy Diva: who’s there?

Night Rider: who do you think I am…?

Crazy Diva: do I know you?

Night Rider: maybe… I’m the man of your dreams.

So who is really the “Night Rider”? A mysterious suitor or your shy hometown neighbor? Have you noticed that over the net everyone is “the most”… the most attractive, the most beautiful, the most sexy, the most cynic, the most charming… or at least “more something” than in real life? Assuming that this self representation isn’t artificial, how come there are differences between self representation over the net and self representation in real life? The characteristics are supposed to be constant, aren’t they?

Maybe here comes the resolution to self representation “pains”. Avatars are not just our representation on-line. Avatars are also means for playing with our identity. Over the net we can “try” different characteristics as if they were different outfits (or costumes). We can also express hidden parts of our personality that we don’t expose in daily life, because we simply are too shy or unconfident to expose them.

Back to the Night Rider: your neighbor can be both shy and a great suitor at the same time. On daily interactions he’s probably just too shy to let himself express the romantic sides of his personality. So the different self representations are all real.

Or in a MUD participant’s words - “You are who you pretend to be.”

So, keep trying out different outfits, keep playing around with your Avatar, let your imagination go wild, and feel free to express who you really are… But who are you really?

Mobile Identity

Since long ago, mobile phones have grown to be another organ of our body; we carry them everywhere with us. Moreover, mobiles have become an extension of our identity; they give information to society about us (gadget-freak, tech-savvy, hip teenager, etc…) the same way our looks and our body language do.

SIM cards initial purpose was to be our mobile identity, carrying subscriber’s identity module. With late technology developments, SIM cards allow more storage space, and are a platform for different applications. SIM cards manufacturers are developing a lot of new functionalities like controlling the light bulbs around the house, or enabling users to make secure payments. IMHO, the most impressing functionality, that we all should give a second thought, is the process of making mobile phone to be a proof of identity. Is this new functionality for our best on the long run?

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