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Super Tuesday - Super New Mobile Apps!

A big day like today brings cool new mobile apps!

First, let me share my own news:

As you know, I recently joined MyFrame Inc., who offers you a cool new mobile application called Flixwagon. For those of you who don't know what Flixwagon is, Flixwagon enables anyone with a capable 3G/WiFi mobile phone to broadcast live videos to the internet.

So you're probably saying, "ok, new mobile gig, where's the news?". We partnered MTV. Today, MTV's street journalism team will broadcast from 23 states to ThinkMTV using Flixwagon. Throughout the day, MTV will regularly break into programming and showcase news features from the live reports.

James Whatley from SpinVox shared that that SpinVox has partnered with WNYC Radio to enable greater listener interactivity during the station’s ongoing coverage of the multi-state primary Super Tuesday. Voters will be encouraged to contribute thoughts, comments and observations by speaking messages to a special phone number set up for the radio station. Those messages will be converted into text by SpinVox and will dynamically become a part of the coverage in real time. Hockenberry and Udoji will report on voter sentiments and read select text on-air.

Interesting to see how new means of communication take part in one of the biggest political events. Will follow closely.

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.

Special: A Sneak Peak at the mobileYouth report 2007 (Part II)

Hi everyone,

Continuing with a great success, let me welcome here again a dear friend of mine. Please welcome Savka Andic, Research Associate at the Wireless World Forum, who is also the co-author of the mobileYouth 2006 report. Savka has agreed to share some insights from the upcoming mobileYouth 2007 report! If you missed the first part of this interview, just follow the link.

Savka, the stage is yours!

Which handsets are popular among different age groups and why?
There is a whole school of “handset anthropology” devoted to the study of how mobile handsets mark out group identity. Handsets are not only associated with different age groups but also with different lifestyles and aspirations. One recent Australian survey I came across drew the following conclusions about the identity of handset owners:

Handset	Typical Owner
Motorola	Fashion-conscious under 24s
Nokia	Family-minded, middle-aged managers
Sony Ericsson	Ambitious young men trying to make their mark
Samsung	Career-minded young women
LG	Mothers

According to this survey, I would be an ambitious young man, given that I’m the proud owner of a Sony Ericsson Walkman handset -  It’s a great handset and I would recommend it to music lovers everywhere (Sony Ericsson are not sponsoring me to say this!).

Notice that Motorola is very much seen as a youth handset, particularly in the United States. This is due largely to the success of the slim and zippy Motorola V3 RAZR handset. The handset’s status as a badge of inclusion among youth made it into an iconic youth handset. Nokia, as always, is renowned for its durability and reliability, and for this reason is favoured by more active youth with a propensity for breaking things!

Which services appeal most to different age groups and why?
Pre-teens and younger teens will favour services which allow them maximum communication with their friends. Services such as Boost Mobile’s Loopt service are popular with this age group. Boost Mobile customers can download Boost Loopt on its existing Java- and GPS-enable handsets. Once you activate the service, Boost Loopt can use GPS to locate you and others who subscribe to the service and have accepted your Boost Loopt invitation to list them as friends. When Boost Loopt is running, a map appears on screen showing your own location. Up and down hardware navigation controls on your handset cycle through your friends' locations, from nearest to farthest or from farthest to nearest. Left and right navigation buttons control the zoom view of the map.

Like some instant messaging clients, Boost Loopt lets you scribble a short status message about what you're doing; you can also broadcast messages to groups of friends (which you can define by name, using a desktop browser) or to all friends within a certain distance. Boost Loopt lets you bookmark locations and define events to which you can then invite your friends. The service expects to introduce additional community mapping features--such as the ability to tag, blog about, and annotate locations with images and videos--later on.

Older teens and young adults will favour services such as Chaos Mobile, a portal for mobile music and content based on punk and rock music, skateboarding and other extreme sports associated with the “Vans Warped” tour. On Chaos Mobile, consumers can download songs, related content such as ringtones and wallpapers and find additional music and artist information exclusive to the portal. This age group also favours MVNOs such as Amp’d Mobile, which creates and delivers exclusive mobile content to its subscribers (such as the Li’l Bush series). These kinds of services are more geared to a youth expression of individuality and desire for unique content than simply to satisfy a need for belonging.

What can you say about issues like texting and linguistic degradation?
The results are inconclusive. While some studies have shown that youth linguistic skills are adversely affected by text messaging and we hear that “txt spk” is showing up with disturbing frequency in school essays and exams, other studies have shown that the children who text most frequently are on average stronger readers and writers than the less frequent texters. So texting doesn’t have a noticeable effect on the language used by children with pre-existing stronger literary skills. What still needs further investigation is whether children with weaker literary skills are more adversely affected by texting.

Thank you Savka for this great interview :)

Cingular (The New at&t) Pumps Up Revenue with "American Idol" (Part II)

Continuing with a very interesting study case of Cingular's long success with sponsoring the "American Idol" TV show, today I want to present the huge success Cingular had in the SMS arena. In case you've missed the first part of the Cingular study case - just follow the link.

For many years, the US was a backwater of mobile messaging in comparison to other regions of the world. However, looking at Figure 1 reveals a remarkable growth; Cingular has doubled the number of sent SMSs within a year (in millions):

Figure 2 might provide an explation for the striking growth: the SMS voting for “American Idol” which has been doubling itself from season to season caused the growth (in Millions)!

However, Cingular has done a lot more than offer SMS voting, it has been very creative with a diverse SMS offering:

1. Voting
All voting are done by texting the word ‘vote’ to a different number to vote for each contestant.

Who can vote?
Anyone calling or any Cingular Wireless subscribers that text message from within Continental US, Hawaii, Alaska and Puerto Rico can cast their vote for the next American Idol. 

According to Cingular’s press release, “it has set a new record for wireless text messaging in the fourth season of "American Idol". The company recorded more than 41.5 million text messages throughout the show's 12-week voting period, which is believed to represent the largest volume of text messaging in a single campaign in the history of the U.S. wireless industry.”

Season 3 had an 80% increase over season 2 with more that 40% of all participants had never sent a text message; and the most outstanding fact - from the first to the last voting episodes, text votes increased by nearly 700%! (According to “The Future of Mobile Media” by Lucy Hood, News Corp Content & Marketing, April 27, 2005). It would be only fair to say that “American Idol” taught the American nation how to SMS!!

2. Vote Reminder

Cingular offers its customers to sign up to a vote reminder. Customer then receives a recap of the contestants and their voting numbers just as the voting window opens. To sweeten the offering, customers who sigh to the vote reminder service can earn 25 bonus sweepstakes entries and get standard message rates apply to all messages sent and received.

3. Trivia Game

Cingular offers a trivia game about the idol’s facts. To play, customers need to register for the weekly game. Registered customers get 20 new questions each week direct from the show. Each question answered correctly gives 1 point, answer incorrectly and they get 0 points! The top 30 scores are available at Cingular’s web site. Signing up and playing is done by SMS, messages sent and received while playing American Idol Trivia are charged at your standard messaging rates.

Amazed? This is not all... wait for next Sunday to read about Cingular's offering beyond the SMS arena!

John White: Mobile Messaging Futures (Part IV)

Welcome to the third part of the mobile messaging coverage. Today, John White of Portio Research Ltd will be visiting here. If you missed the previous parts you can follow these links: Part I, Part II and Part III.

Let's welcome John:
Hi John. Thank you for coming back, how are you? :)
Hi Xen, thanks a lot, I’m doing great thanks.
Today, you're going to share some more insights about the mobile messaging futures
Yes! Here’s what Portio Research has to say about it:

Why has growth been so slow for mobile email?

Once we understand this argument, we can put mobile email into perspective. Set against an installed base of 2 billion plus SMS-capable handsets, mobile email has only just got off the starting blocks. RIM’s BlackBerry is widely accepted as the market leading device of choice for corporate executives who need reliable mobile email, yet after years of pushing these excellent devices into the market, the installed base of BlackBerry subscribers, worldwide, in mid-2006, reached only a little over 6 million. Taken alone, 6 million or more is a great success for RIM, but compared to the 2 billion souls around the world with SMS in the palm of their hands, it’s just a drop in the ocean.

Looking forward perhaps 10 or 15 years, we should see a future where email becomes the unchallenged #1 most popular form of non-verbal communication on the planet. With billions of people connected to the Internet, wired and wireless, email will surely be the messaging format that most people use, but this is unlikely to be a conscious decision on the part of the consumer. By this time, how an individual is connected to the Internet, and which messaging platform they are using won’t matter - and the user will neither know nor care how it all works. Messages - text or images, moving or still, with or without attachments, sound, colour, etc - will be sent and received by any device, any time, any place, with or without wires, and telecommunications service providers, if they are smart, will not burden consumers by even trying to explain how it all works.

But getting us to that vision of the future from where we are now will take some time, and there will doubtless be some barriers to cross along the way. To move towards a point where mobile email becomes the mass market messaging format of choice will require absolutely seamless integration of competing technological standards, in an industry that so far has a poor track record on standardisation. For mobile email to start reaching deep into the mass market we need widespread penetration of email-enabled devices, we need to see simple, transparent pricing and we clearly need effortless interoperability between telecoms operators, not only mobile network operators but also wireline operators and the broader Internet community as a whole.

So it may be a while before consumers all use mobile email, but what about the enterprise sector?

In the short term, mobile email solutions such as BlackBerry will remain popular tools with company executives, and many operators around the world are promoting their own email solutions, and this should slowly help the sector to grow. But as we learned from MMS, it takes a long time for handset penetration to build a critical mass of users, and a long time for a service to penetrate the consumer masses who are more price-sensitive than corporate users.

Further hampering the take up of mobile email in the enterprise environment, corporate IT departments are unclear about how to integrate mobility in the broader world of the corporate IT infrastructure. Should mobility be bought with other IT and telecom services from long standing, trusted suppliers, or separately, directly from the network? Should corporations equip large sections of the workforce with mobile devices, possibly costing a hefty slice of the IT budget, or can companies tap into the devices these individuals already own? If using their own devices, who should pay the bill and how does the corporation control network security? Corporations are understandably concerned about making these decisions, and so far no clear precedent has been set.

Again this presents an opportunity for SMS, and a problem for mobile email. While big companies can afford complete mobility solutions, for many small and medium sized enterprises that simply is not an option. In mature markets such as Europe and North America, the vast majority of employees already have an SMS-enabled device in their pockets. Solutions are available to offer some email functionality to SMS, such as copy, back-up, archive, forward, auto-divert, out-of-office reply and so on. If enterprises could buy into these solutions from network operators at a fraction of the cost of replacing all those handsets, many SMEs might find that SMS has an affordable place in the corporate communications infrastructure, at least for a few years while the industry hammers out the technical barriers to cheap, widespread mobile email for all.

So mobile email has a strong future, but it would be a mistake to expect it to replace SMS for many years yet, probably the best part of a decade. Mobile email will continue to grow year-on-year and big corporations will start deploying large scale mobile email solutions as time goes by, but mobile email for the consumer mass market remains some years away. Hundreds of millions of email-enabled devices need to penetrate the market first, alongside cheap and easy-to-use services, and technical issues around standardisation need to be ironed out before they have a chance to put people off. Remember ‘you never get a second chance to make a good first impression’. 

And where does that leave mobile IM?

Yet again we find it’s pretty much the same story for mobile IM, plus or minus a few subtle differences. Again mobile IM requires market maturity to make a big impression on the messaging industry globally. Hundreds of millions of IM-enabled handsets need to penetrate the market, interoperability agreements need to be in place and operators need to work together to ensure standardisation and the removal of technical barriers. Much of the promise around mobile IM lies in the argument that hundreds of millions of individuals already use IM services on their PCs, and these people are likely to switch effortlessly to using IM on their mobile handsets instead.

While this may eventually happen, this theory relies on a number of factors. For one, maybe these people use IM on their PCs because they sit in front of a PC all day anyway, so that’s unlikely to change. Secondly, IM on the mobile handset needs to be a perfect replica of the desktop experience, or better, in order to attract users away from a cheap wireline broadband connection to a more expensive wireless connection. Facilitating this experience will mean network operators, handset vendors and IM heavyweights such as AOL, Yahoo and MSN working closely together to ensure standardisation of handset display configuration and so on. Finally, true IM requires presence awareness in order to function as it does in the desktop environment. For operators worldwide to deploy fully IMPS (Instant Messaging and Presence Services) compliant IM services and have those service fully interoperable around the globe will take some time, and until that happens, without presence awareness, IM offers little more utility to end users than good old SMS, which everyone already has and already knows how to use.

As markets move forwards mobile IM is likely to gain increasing popularity in certain countries, such as the US and some big Asian nations, where desktop IM is already popular. For hardcore users IM is likely to be cheaper than SMS, but in strong SMS markets, such as Europe, operators will keep SMS prices low and IM prices less competitive. Cannibalisation will inevitably happen at some stage, once all-IP based networks penetrate the mass market and IMPS improves the functionality of IM, but until then SMS is likely to continue to wear the crown.

Thank you John for this interview, it was VERY insightful! :)

Tune in next Sunday for the my next visitor!

John White: Mobile Messaging Futures

Welcome to the third part of the mobile messaging coverage. Today, John White of Portio Research Ltd will be visiting here. If you missed the previous parts you can follow these links: Part I and  Part II.

Let's welcome John:

Hi John. Thank you for coming back, how are you? :)
Hi Xen, thanks a lot, I’m doing great thanks.

Today, you're going to share some insights about the mobile messaging futures
Yes! Here’s what Portio Research has to say about it:

Many in the mobile industry feel that MMS, mobile email and mobile IM have somehow failed as messaging platforms and that SMS, though it seems to pain people to admit it, is the only truly successful mass market messaging format. However, this is not the case, while SMS is a truly staggering mass market phenomenon, these other messaging formats have not failed, they have simply failed to match up to the runaway success of SMS.

For some reason SMS has become a ‘dirty word’ for some people, analysts don’t like to talk about it, mobile operators don’t like to focus on it, and no-one treats SMS like it’s sexy any more. It’s as though SMS is “old” technology, as if it no longer deserves any credit, it should be consigned to the history books. This is crazy. Worldwide, SMS still accounts for approximately 75 to 80% of all non-voice service revenues, SMS traffic volumes are still growing at a breath taking pace and as worldwide subscriber numbers climb from 2.5 Bn to 4.5 Bn over the next 5 or 6 years, SMS is the only non-voice service likely to gain widespread acceptance among the majority of these new mobile users.

Worldwide, SMS traffic hit 1 trillion messages in 2005, and that figure is set to reach over 3 trillion by the end of 2011. Set against that backdrop, of course other messaging formats look small. But MMS has not failed; worldwide MMS traffic touched 14 billion messages in 2005 and is forecast to pass 115 billion by the end of 2011. These are not small numbers, and while they are only a fraction of the volume that SMS has achieved, MMS should still be seen as a great success.

So if MMS is a success, why has it not replaced SMS?

MMS has not failed; the industry had totally unrealistic expectations of MMS in the first place. MMS was hyped as the natural replacement for SMS, but that shows a misunderstanding of SMS and the reasons why SMS has been such a big hit worldwide. SMS owes its success to its simplicity. It is the quickest, easiest and cheapest way for two people to communicate a short and simple message and as such it serves as an extremely useful communications option that is affordable universally, even among some of the lowest income groups of society.

MMS, on the other hand, has been misunderstood from the start. MMS should be seen more as a mobile entertainment service than as a messaging service. MMS is more complex and expensive than SMS, so consumers are unlikely to use MMS to communicate a simple message, when SMS does the job so quickly and easily and costs so little. MMS will always look like a failure when compared alongside SMS, yet when you consider MMS in its own right, as an entertainment application and content delivery tool, then MMS can be seen as a very popular and successful service.

Why has growth been so slow?

MMS struggled to gain ground between 2002 and 2004 primarily because the service was not fully supported and the necessary equipment was not in widespread circulation. At the time of launch, MMS-enabled handsets, with GPRS support, colour screen and camera included, were comparatively expensive, and many networks launched services amid an array of complex tariffs. MMS was often charged according to the size of the message (per-KB) which left end-users confused about costs and created the perception that picture messaging was expensive.

Further problems were caused by a lack of standardisation among handset vendors, leaving screen display for MMS messages unreliable, and a lack of signed interoperability agreements between network operators further hampered the potential growth of MMS services. Add all this together and throw in a complex user interface and it is hardly surprising MMS got off to such a slow start. The industry failed to understand that until the penetration level of MMS-capable handsets reached a certain critical mass, widespread use of the service was never going to happen.

Only now is MMS growing in popularity since all networks are fully interoperable, colour-screen cameraphones are in widespread circulation and MMS tariffs are now cheap and transparent. Compare this to SMS: worldwide there are approximately 2 BILLION SMS enabled handsets in operation, it’s cheap and easy to use, widely supported in almost every corner of the mobile world and there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of services and applications that utilise SMS as a communication medium. That is why SMS is so popular, and why MMS has taken so long to take off.

Thank you John for this interview. Wanna read more about mobile email and mobile IM?? Tune in next Sunday! :)

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! :)

Don't Do This, Boys

The story of Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen made the headlines even here in Israel. According to Reuters,

"Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen, dubbed Finland's sexiest man, broke up by text message with the girlfriend he had met on the Internet, she said in a magazine interview.

"Matti dumped me in a text message, where he said 'that's it'," Susan Kuronen told the magazine Me Naiset (Us Women) in an interview published on Friday."

[via Reuters]

Maybe in Finland, the land of Nokia and mobile phones, there's a different interpersonal mobile etiquette; To me it seems very rude and inappropriate... Maybe it's a new trend where politician prove to be tech savvy?!

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!

Political Campaigns Go Mobile

Justin Oberman, a dear friend and a very talented mobilist, is now in charge of the mobile campaign of Green Independent candidate for Governor Pat LaMarchen. From a mobilist perspective, it is very interesting to see how politicians use mobile advertising (and mobile technology) for their political campaigns. Here in Israel, we haven't seen this yet.

Justin says that Pat LaMarche "has already gained a reputation for technological innovation in Maine for her Online Town Hall and a Website that the Library Of Congress has already designated as a historic & site worth preserving in the federal archives" so going on a mobile campaign suites her reputation and public image. Her mobile campaign was officially launches yesterday. One part of her mobile campaign aims to provide citizens the ability to influence the topics that she will address in her public appearances. Justin writes that "students and citizens of Maine will be ask to text the word Pat and a topic (example: Pat Health Care) to the short code 30644. Later today Pat will be speaking at the University of Maine in Orono" where she will address the top three topics that people sent her via SMS. Also, Pat will receive questions via SMS in upcoming radio interviews throughout the week.

There's more: they aim to engage the people to Pat's campaign through SMS. People that sent a question to Pat through SMS will get an SMS in reply "asking them to opt in to what the campaign is calling "Pats Immediate Response Team" the purpose of which is to send out the latest insider news, call to actions, campaign ringtones and tips on how you can help Pat win. Opting into the text message also signs you up to receive important Get Out To The Vote reminders on the day of the election (of which will include information on where to go to vote). The text will also ask users to send a text message to at least 5 people reminding them to go vote".

As for the first part of the mobile campaign, where people get to raise their burning issues and ask their candidate to respond, I'm pretty sure it will be very successful. Who doesn't want to take the opportunity to influence? What would be very interesting to follow is the ability to engage people to take public action through a plain SMS. We know from our daily lives how hard it is to go out and take action. Would a plain SMS could manage to persuade us to do so??? This one is still an open question... -You're very welcome to express your opinions.

Great work Justin!

SMS's New Visual Language - "Zlango"

ESC, the Israeli youth MVNO, launched a new mobile app which enables users insert graphic icons to replace words in SMSs. The new graphic ‘language’ is called Zlango and now contains 220 graphic symbols which, according to official PR, aims to add personal expression and some fun spirit to the dull SMS. All ESC users will be able to watch messages containing the Zlango icons using a link (provided in the Zlango SMS) to the company’s web portal and view the message as a pic file.

[via Ynet in Hebrew]

A few notes:

• SMS is turning to be more than 160 characters using visual signs to express more in each character (out of 160).
• Visual symbols are the shortest way to convey meaning: think about ads, banners and promotions - a pic is worth a thousand words, right? Why not leverage this characteristic in other fields where space is limited/ expensive?
• This is another step towards a “visual” mobile which doesn’t rely only on voice (bigger screens for visual caller ID, SMS, IPTV, wap portals, emails, etc…).
• Written language is being reduced into visual icons. Some are universal (like ESC's symbol for “and”) but many others are being made up by the mvno itself (like ESC's symbols for “big”, “now”, “new”). Who will be the authority to invent missing symbols and to decide on their common meaning?

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 :)

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

Mobile Elections?

Yesterday it’s was one of the most interesting Election Days in Israel. In general, for those who haven’t visited Israel, I can honestly say that Israelis are very hot blooded and politically involved people. Everywhere you go you always hear people arguing about politics and security issues. Many times it sums up in giving hot compliments about each other’s mamas…

Knowing my people, I was very surprised to learn that only 63.2% of voters have voted on current elections. In contrast, the final round of the local version of the famous “American Idol” has generated so much more voting, emotional involvement and participation. The voting was held via SMS, yet each viewer could vote only once.

Politics isn’t a singing contest (though you can see so many politicians trying thir best to dictate the tone to the choir), so it’s hard to compare the two. But maybe if we could vote through SMS the voting rates would grow… I searched the internet to see if it has already been done, and it seems like there was a trial in the UK back on 2002 that aims

“To boost the proportion of people who bothered to vote in elections. […] There would be an "ever more extensive" programme of pilots to open the possibility for an "e-enabled" general election some time after 2006.  In some wards in Liverpool and Sheffield, electors will be able to vote by digital television as well as via mobile phones.

There will be a touch-tone phone voting system, […] and pilot elections where people can only cast postal ballots.  A variety of other measures include extended voting hours and mobile voting kiosks. The whole package is designed to get more people to "re-engage" with politics in the wake of tumbling turnouts at recent elections. The text messaging system will work by voters being given PIN numbers to use if they want to vote by text message.”
[via Cellular]

I think it would be great to be able to vote digitally, and not having to drag my self to the ballot so I could spend the entire day-off having fun. Yet there’s always the little fear from the George Orwell’s apocalyptic vision of “Big Brother’s inspecting eye”… If you have more info if and  how this has been done you can e-mail me or leave a comment. Thanks :)

Technorati Tags: elections, mobile, mobile + elections, voting