I’d like to present a different take than proposed by Aner below. When I think of the effectiveness of this new marketing channel I look at the wider perspective of the platform and user habits. To pinpoint the discussion further I’d like to address the action that leads to the ad being served. Google’s definition of a mobile ad is as follows:

“Mobile ads are shorter text-based AdWords ads that appear on mobile websites or when users search Google from a mobile device. When users clicks on your mobile ad, you can send them to your mobile webpage or offer them the option to connect to your business phone.”

The issue that I would like to focus on is the fact that content discovery and search habits are COMPLETELY different when it comes to mobile browsing. As such, I believe ‘copying’ a successful ad model on the ‘pc web’ does not guarantee success in the mobile world.

Mobile web browsing is much more focused. You hardly ever start in one place and ‘wander’ to the next or discover new services and information based on advertising and hyperlinks. Its usually a much more focused action. You are ‘on the go’ you look up ’something’ - news, sports –> these are served via direct links in the Operator’s portal or your own bookmarks - done. There is no (or hardly any) plain search. If there is, its in the context of a use case such as maps, music or video search and that usually happens within a specific service (HooQs ).

In his MEM2007 insights post Aner mentioned (point #9) users tried Google mobile search and didn’t like it. I did too, and didn’t like it. Not because of Google but because content is scarce and the chance of random discovery which is part of the Internet’s main ‘wonders’ doesn’t [yet] exist in the mobile web.

I’m willing to agree Google’s drive is positive. If anyone can start some kind of drive that will motivate mobile content to be created thus leading to an eco-system that is able to sustain ads based on that content…it’s Google. Google’s mobile ads are basically an experiment that will hopefully lead to more mobile content and probably also lead to a change in the ad model.

One of the greatest killer apps for mobile search will be the integration of location based with search. Not on a country level, on the neighborhood level! If I want to buy flowers for my wife - Go to Google, search “Flowers” –> results = near by flower shops, with link to number and a map. That’s effective and thats the kind of “fused” service I am looking when it comes to using my mobile for search.

For now, the level of service is basic. The action is welcomed but execution not focused enough on leveraging mobile use cases.

      

A good friend of mine recently complained to me that there are no good mobile finance solutions. He has a regular consumer mobile (SonyE w800i) “What about Yahoo Finance?“, I asked …”Na..doesn’t work” he quickly dismissed. When I learned about Google Finance for Mobile I quickly ran to compare. Google’s solution includes easy access to financial info on the go through text messaging or mobile browsing - but so does Yahoo so whats the big deal?

The deal is: elegance & simplicity - the atoms of execution. On the surface Yahoo’s solution should even be better. The Finance page is more informative, there is even a cool feature that enables you to send yourself an SMS with the web address instead of typing the address yourself. The problem started when I tried (God forbid) using it - I just couldn’t login. I got the link, tried to add a quote only to get a ‘turn off’ message - “Invalid Yahoo ID or password”. Now remember I got here by sending the SMS, the least you can do for me is let me login…NO. No link to login, “Help” didn’t help and the other roads I tried didn’t lead to Rome (login). So there I was, yet again disappointed of a Yahoo service that beat Google to the mark but missed on execution.

Google’s WAP browsing experience and portfolio management was a breeze to operate, a joy to use and has now become my official on the go stock tool - BAMM…Bookmarked!

Yet again Usability wins the day. I could care less about the tech behind these two platforms - when the execution is seamless and the basics are there, your a step a way from success…or as in Google’s case…swimming in it!

      

IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY

Aner’s insights from MEM2007 zoom in on the transitional phase the mobile industry is going through. The company I co-founded (TriPlay) recently launched an internet-mobile service (SyncSpace) with an Israeli operator and if there was one highlight to this whole process is that “westbound” mobile operators are sailing in uncharted territory. Here are a few key points I learned that highlight some challenges I came across (far from the complete list which could fill a book):

1. Target audience - there is no doubt that the market leaders on the demand side for web-mobile service are young people (ages 15-25 and we know that even 15 might not be young enough). They breath mobile services, consume content and eat up data services like no other target group. How is this a problem? Because WE - the mobile/internet start-up’ists, the VC partner, executives at large corporates, ALL of us who define, create, build and fund related companies and services are at least twice that age.

How can we be sure we are creating the right service?

Solution - Talk , talk, talk to them, get feedback, have them involved in your development process. Don’t force your vision on them and expect them to comply. If you don’t expect to find out at launch that you are simply not cool enough, that you have given them far too little credit and that you don’t really cater to their need.

About a year ago I read through a fascinating 200 pages research paper focusing on mobile youth. The ONE sentence I still remember a year later is that “Messaging services that fail to reinforce peer groups offer little beyond their initial novelty value to youth“. This is true for any service - there is tendency to seek technological breakthrough with less thought invested in the real life scenarios it supposed to serve. Bottom line - focus on value first, technology second.

2. Mobile operator corporate culture - analyze the typical headcount at any mobile operator and you will find that most are experienced MOBILE professionals who know a lot about mobile but less about web services, content and entertainment. Yesterday’s mission for the mobile was to ‘connect people’ by voice. Today’s Mission is about connection, voice or data and content. Tomorrow - the mobile will be an ‘IP gateway’ through which the users ‘mobile life’ will be enabled. Where mobility is the focus and not the mobile device.

The mobile device will be the users’ setop-box, entertainment and multimedia device as well as the voice/data communicator. These offerings are not only technologically diversified across platforms but also combine different schools of thought on how to launch new services. The words BETA, rapid development, on the fly, viral and other funky web 2.0ish words contradict mobile operator’s mentality. I don’t believe they need to change their skin but some of the attributes that go hand in hand with creating successful businesses in the web and entertainment industries will have to meld into their corporate culture.

Since this is not an overnight revolution, I expect this to be solved over time. Some interesting times ahead for management, HR units in the mobile operator world as well as their supporting industries. Service providers too will have to go through this metamorphoses. One that will reflect the new role the mobile device has in the future world.

3. beta? Don’t be surprised if you get this reaction. Telco’s are not used to running beta, not to mention the famous Google’s “perpetual beta” mode. Beta mean you are tolerant to bugs, open to user feedback and ready to change requirements if the market says you should. Telco’s heritage is simply different. The good old ‘telco grade’ means that when you pick up the phone (old fixed line phone) you hear a dialing tone - no ifs and buts. Web 2.0 user services launch way before they are fully tested for mass market usage. By definition they are not built for scalability and reliability from day one. They launch in beta, make mistakes, learn, fix and invest in scalability when the market demand forces them do so. When the ‘worlds collide’ this will have to change.

Mobile operators launching web-mobile services will not be able to apply this ‘telco grade’ mentality from day one. If they do they will always lag with services and not be perceived by their users as providing them with ‘edgy’ services. If users find their telco is introducing web- mobile services months and even years after independent players do they will find that the leading target users are already engaged with a different ‘off-deck’ solution. Scalability will not be an issue then since no users will use them to begin with.

Nonetheless they don’t have to be complete 37signals’ type cavaliers and mange their projects on IM chats, no meetings and launch. Somewhere in the middle would do.

4. The handset factor - most of the PC’s in the world are about the same, same OS (windows), same browser (Firefox/Explorer), same keyboard, strong memory, big screen, sit on one network - the PC internet is WWW etc etc. In the mobile world the ball game is totally different. A highly diverse OS environment - J2ME, Symbian, Brew, Windows; Countless different browsers, different screen size, open garden / closed garden (E.G Verizon) etc etc. Therefore creating a smooth, unified, simple, reliable and more important PREDICTABLE mobile experience is a mammoth task. Solution - focus on your initial target audience - what OS are they on? what devices serve them, what are the future devices - don’t try to capture all at once. Define an acceptable experience, aim for the core and spread.

On a more macro level ‘the industry’ better get its act together and start to pin point preferred OS’s, browsers etc. and not let this jungle take over. There is no doubt that when the environment will be more standard, a plethora of new services will evolve.
5. AJAX (Web 2.0) meets WML / XHTML (Mobile 0.5 ) - not a problem! The mobile and PC web experiences are not meant to be the same. Stop raping the mobile phone with overly rich ‘web like experience’. On the mobile it is highly important to focus on simple and fast flows so not having the rich PC environment is not as big disadvantage as you think. A good and simple WAP page, can provide the required experience. In any case just like I mentioned above - focus on value (and now I am adding..) usability first and technology second. All in all exciting times are ahead. The paradigm shift I am seeing is that the mobile device will be my ‘handy’ extension to my mobile life…which can be used and enjoyed on the mobile device but has extensions on the PC and TV as well. As such, when designing such services one needs to think of the three dimensional ‘fused’ world we live in, serving real life / valuable scenarios and NOT focus on connecting two or three technological dots.

      

I’m developing a growing addiction to Podcasting. While blog reading can become tiring, I simply enjoy listening to Podcasts. As a matter of fact, I am listening to Seth Godin articulating about small being the new big as I am writing this particular entry.

I have been looking for a cool mobile app that would let me browse and hear podcasts during rush hour traffic. Podcasts work well with a PC. They are also a natural fit for iPod, but with one HUGE caveat - the requirement for two separate decisions - online (to download) and offline (to listen). Live mobile access to podcasts seems like a natural requirement for me, but so far I haven’t been able to find any good service and would appreciate some good pointers.

Oh yeah, Marketing Voices, Podtech and Entrepreneurship are great podcasting starting points for Web 2.0 Marketers, gadget lovers and Entrepreneuers. Trasncripts are porvided with most of the sessions.

      

iSee thy iphone and iThink
Will my iWallet weather in iBlink

iDream thy iPod iHave will stretch
and into an iPhone will iMiracle create

Hey Steve iHope, iDream thy truth become
iDesire thy iPhone to be my one.

iHope thy wait will be iShort
iPatience can not uphold

Oh thy iPhone what have you done
An iChild and iDiot I have become

When you look at the iPhone, whatever you think about it - one thing can’t be ignored:

THE DESIGN IS NOT JUST THE SURFACE, ITS IN THE TOTALITY OF THE PRODUCT.

Noone can escape that notion. Just like fractals, the closer you look, the more evident the design DNA is.

Take the Motorola razor, the winner of numerous design awards and undoubtedly the phone that saved Motorola. The design of the clam shell is unique, the phone’s dimensions are impressive but when you look beyond the skin its shortcomings are in abundance - Motorola have failed to expand innovative physical design to the other ‘parts’ of the phone. Motorola traditionally deliver one of the worst graphical user interfaces of any mobile phone on the market today. There is a total disconnect between the shell (literally speaking) and the inside.

The revolution that Apple brings to the mobile phone industry is its TOTALITY, and its not ‘clam’ deep.

I sometimes look at the Razor with all its awards and think that Motorola might have fluked it.

Why? because it was inconsistent with anything they did in the past, because ever since they did it, their biggest innovation has been to change its colors, because its all about the clam and not about the GUI. It’s a very good design fluke.

Is the iPhone a fluke?

All of the lame prophets (myself included) of the iPhone imagined an iPod with a keyboard. We took two existing bricks (phone and music player) and imagined how they looked after a head on clash.

Apple’s approach was different. To come up with what we see today there must have been such a revisit to the whole concept of the cell phone, that the WHY’s must have been flying left and right. Why keyboard, why right, left,center key - why, why, why. And when the pieces were put back together (with talent of course) the outcome is as great as the guts it took to do it.

Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and company had more resources and time to focus on phones and yet what we see every year is an iteration on the year before. And when they do come up with something innovative (Razor shape), its good enough for them, they’ll take care of more innovation next year/release/model. They (mostly) treat mobile phones as plastic commodities that need better screen resolution and memory for the next release. in contrast and much like the iTune-iPod symbiotic relationship, iPhone is not only about the inside and out, they planed a whole eco-system.

Apple has yet to prove the iPhone is a big seller, have yet to prove its reliability as a cell phone, have yet to prove their sustainability in the mobile industry - that is in their future. What they have proved is that design and engineering should be and are meant to be one of the same. That separating the two creates less than perfect results.

Design is not king - Design-geneering is.

      

Finally…..

Hey, I think they waited so long, now it needs to come out equipped with a camera also. No multimedia device can be without one …hope that won’t delay the plans to 2008

      

I just returned from a four day trip with the family. That is my family, myself and 2.5 suitcases full of unneeded luggage (the notorious “Dump the Closet” system which sucks in mainly woman - you don’t choose what the kids are going to wear so you just bring their closet).

Anyway, I took my 4mpx Canon and the Nokia N73 equipped with a 3.2mpx camera with me. Before this vacation it the thought of leaving the Canon at home was inconceivable. I used to own a Sony Eriscsson with a 2mpx camera, which was very cool, but not nearly a real camera. Pictures were OK but once less then optimal lighting conditions set in the quality diminished quickly.

Not so with the N73.

When you say “camera phone”, you usually don’t mean a camera but a phone with a cool add-on. With the N73 this is not the case. Equipped with 1G memory card, I took 10’s of photos, a few short videos and came back a happy camper. The Canon didn’t even leave the hotel room. You can always use Picasa or Photoshop to apply your own special touch, but its really not necessary. Look at the below…honestly…does it look like a phone took that photo?

Press photo to see larger version

The N73 and the SonyErricson k800i make an important mark in the age of convergence. A Camera Phone (CP) TURN to Camera and a Phone (CAAP). The AA nuance is not trivial. This means I will probably not upgrade my 4mpx Canon rather prefer an upgraded release of any CAAP that will be equipped with a better lens. True - camera’s are not dead but pocket cameras are dying. For us, casual snappers that fill our Picasa / Flickr web albums with loads of senseless family, friends, you name it moments….a CAAP generation will be the obvious choice.

Now where do I see the regular digital camera market going? First of all it’s about innovation. A wi-fi phone, a super slim phone (that doesn’t hurt lens quality) Anything to make it super cool and worthy of carrying it alongside my CAAP. I can imagine more JV’s in the likes of SonyErricson - A NokiaNikon etc. is not something that would surprise me. In the same way the iPod has to be equipped with a 20G-40G memory for me to consider it over my …once again phone. Here too the manufactures will have to keep on their toes and provide extra value over an above a developing CAAP category.

Whichever way you look at it…the chasm has been crossed. Long live the CAAPs….

      

Many people mistakenly think YouTube is only about bloopers. YouTube is also the best music video station in the world right now. Much better than middle-aging MTV.

Check out YouTube’s results for:

Snoop Doggy Dogg - Drop it Like it Hot

Beck - Cellphone’s Dead

Justin Timberlake - Sexy Back

Pearl Jam - Jeremy

The fact you can find every music video you can think of is cool but anticipated. It’s what you can find IN ADDITION that makes it so exciting.  Acapella versions, live versions, professional and amateur covers, interviews, bloopers, related videos… WOW.

The problem with YouTube as the new MTV is not copyright issues. I am sure Justin Timberlake is happy with the exposure on YouTube just like Eddy Vedder is or the current indie rising star.

The problem with YouTube is still with the poor quality of video streaming. The basic watching experience still sucks. Simply put. Internet technology has not caught up yet with the social habits.

      

Like most Israeli conferences the W.U.D started late. Over the past 10 years, I participated in who knows how many venues and I can’t recall ONE that started, proceeded or ended on time. Anyone in Israel care to rebuttal? Is it unique to this area?Anyway - I am not here to complain. Far from it. The World Usability Day (Israeli Venue) was well organized and educational. One of my colleagues, Amnon Dekel who is the VP User Experience at TriPlay (the company I co-founded) gave a very insightful lecture on the usability of smart phones. Does smart = usable? Good question – u can check out my own experiences in a previous post. Anyway a few worthy notes from the conference:Some great sentence which makes you understand the company is in “usability trouble”: + when the CEO/VP MARKETING etc. says “As a user…” he talks sh#@. We are never the users, we never were, we never will be. For consumer/mass market online services, we (the software development / start-up / u name it) are the most biased group of freaks who represent no one but ourselves. + “Internal testing shows….” – shows what??? That QA liked it?, the engineer who worked on the damn thing for 6 months understands how it works?. Don’t fall into that trap. If you want to know what people think - ask real people.

+ During registration the audience was handed out with 3 color papers – Red, Green and Yellow. These came in handy during an interactive panel discussion in which the audience voiced their opinion using the Green-Red-Yellow papers. Green for AGREE/GOOD; Red for Don’t AGREE/NOT GOOD and yellow being the undecided. We used it to ‘group comment’ on anything from Skype’s user interface to the interface of ticket machines in train stations. Guess what, it works! This is a great way to have large crowds participate without causing a big mess while gaining instant feedback.

+ Usability people (in general) are tormented by the fact that in most companies, the engineers call the shots. Usability people are used to being called in to clean up the mess before launch or after a dreadful release. Otherwise they are usually no more influential then Director level and are way over powered by CIO’s, CTO’s, VP R&D etc. While this is (mostly) true I say stop whining. Its up to us (usability experts…or as in my case, usability advocate) to stir up more mess and punch some sense into the ‘masses’. If we are such usability experts, I’m sure we can find an effective way.

+ Using images such as the below is a great way to drive the ‘usability argument’ home. Look at the two pictures below and think which store you would rather buy your next PC from and have a better experience doing it (leading to up-sale, second time purchase etc.). If its so obvious in retail, why don’t people think the same about online services?

+ Why do social networks work? – who are the idiots that write blogs , contribute to Wikipedia, etc. Why do they do it? what drives them? And most importantly how can we know it’s just not going to all of a sudden…stop? This is an extremely interesting and important subject to understand. Anyone dealing with the web 2.0 / social media world should get a basic grasp of the social participation phenomenon – Prof. Shizaf Refaeli’s gave a speech about his recent research. Check out the “publications” section on his home page - http://sheizaf.rafaeli.net/

+ My own 2 cents - Launching is a very important part of your usability study – you will never gain complete insight before. Thinking that academic, endless usability “due process” will result in flawless delivery is a misconception. Running fast, making mistakes and fixing them is better. If you want to know how to do it – you MUST read Getting Real by 37Signals. Its available for free reading at https://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php That’s it for now. More notes would make this post unusable. I will make a quick update once UPA Israel post the day’s presentations online.

      

I traded in my RAZR V3 and got the Nokia E61 this week. The E61 is heavily promoted by Orange and I couldn’t resist the QWERTY keyboard.

The bottom line is that I love it! I loved the RAZR as well, but the V3 fat boy wasn’t really it, and the Q is not a GSM phone. The E61 is the first REAL smart phone I see from Nokia. The previous Symbian based ones were featured phones, not smart phones. The E61 is WiFi enabled (huge plus!), has a wide QWERTY keyboard (a must!) and despite it’s size fits rather well into a pocket. Email works like a charm, but the real surprise was the browser! Rich HTML, smart mobile centric navigation, escellent screen resolution. Mobile browsing is actually fun and easy! Way to go!

It seems like the PDA days are over. Smart phones have won the battle and that’s good news for Nokia and bad news for Microsoft. As Russel Buckley summarizes well:

“The last bastion for the PDA is the US, with over 50% of worldwide sales. Maybe, that’s why Microsoft think the battle of Palm v Windows is even vaguely relevant to the big picture. As I wrote over a year ago, it’s like two bald, old men, fighting over a comb. Even Palm seem to have realised this today.

Next target for the mobile is the stand alone MP3 player, about to be consigned to a historical curiosity, as one of the fastest product life cycles - from launch to extinction -ever to be launched.”

      

This essay / post is about a theory that has been gathering dust in my drawer for a while. A recent post by Philip Wilkinson in Crowdstorm’s blog “The Feature War in Social Shopping” made some of my crusty memory cells spring to action…yada, yada, yada - I am writing this post. Its still work in progress but I prefer releasing these raw thoughts and creating a discussion rather then to continue to dwell in this with myself. Once completed I believe it may offer a different way to analyze current trends, services, consumer psychology in the digital consumer industry.

What is Digital Zen?

Digital Device:A device that can read, write, store and transmit information

Zen: enlightenment that can be attained through meditation, self-contemplation.

Thus, Digital Zen can be defined as a feeling of calm and satisfaction, attained by using digital devices to help live life. No fuss, complications, frustrations, where is the dam manual?, what format does this support? Need to restart, Its only for Windows, Its not available in this network etc. etc. Rather use the most basic intuition to operate, upgrade and connect.

The Digital Life Scale

The digital life scale is a theoretical map that describes different stages a person my be in vis-a-vis his interaction with digital products and services. Not just one product or service but rather his over all experience, expectation level, satisfaction level and most important digital life journey.

STAGE #1 - Digital Denial
Won’t use digital devices, don’t want to use them, feels the world is too dependent on them and wants to live like ‘it used to be’.

STAGE #2 - Digital Puberty
Start using digital devices and services such as cell phone and email and feel contempt. Some people at this stage are not hungry for more and others, out of positive experiences look to grow their usage.

STAGE #3 Digital Life

A regular consumer / user of digital products and services. From music storage devices, emails, IM’s and PDA’s – the digital life feels connected …yet at times not effective and time consuming.

STAGE# 4 Digital Zen

A state of mind that is NOT possible to achieve today (please write to me if you think otherwise, have experienced it yourself or know someone who does). This is only possible when all devices communicate and allow seamless transfer of information. This is the place where technology should be….a place where it serves you instead of you servicing it. As can be seen by the graph below, digital zen is not a quantum leap from digital life but the delta to get there is the x factor many companies and industries pursue endlessly.

Another benefit of being in the ‘Zen Zone’ is the fact you reached a plateau. There is progress but its not characterized by rapid changes for good or for bad. Its where the digital environment blends flawlessly into a users life.

A change in the technological environment (or just growing old and becoming out of it) may throw you back into a digital imbalance stage (the next downturn level) which, in turn, forces you to climb back again or just give up.

STAGE# 5 Digital Overload

When a good thing turns bad. Too many connections trying to provide services that are not useful and are too complicated and operate. When you spend too much time thinking what to do instead of just doing it. People in this stage often revert back to Digital Puberty because that seems to be the place where they can remain in control OR progress back to ‘regular’ digital life leaving the pursue of Zen to others.

Personally I am currently living a Digital Life with Zen far out of site. Windows, Apple, GSM, CDMA, MP3, WMV are all but in the way. And that is just on the OS/ network side..what about usability and reliability?, still a long way to go.

      

There seems to be a wave of new releases among social networks, putting together yet another serious attempt at positioning competitiveness along the mobile axis. Treemo launched a well built mobile-focused social network. I tried Treemo and it works well, if you excuse the delivery of Video clips to mobile devices via MMS vs. via streaming. I personally don’t find a 6 second truncated video clip very entertaining, and I am still looking for the streaming options to be supported. Right now, the major holdback is with operators open infrastructure, or lack there of, but the evidence from DocoMo, Japan clearly supports this direction.

Wadja is also bankng on mobile features, offering free SMS to members of it’s network. I agree wth Pete Cashmore that this is not enough and that Facebook and MySpace already covered that base.

What I find much more intriguing is the potential for subject oriented, vertical, social networks. A genuine common passion is a much better sticking glue then a feature, any feature, and a start up cannot win a feature war with MySpace. Social networks that successfully aggregate people with a real common interest are verticals that I believe can develop to stay, but they need to be built in fundamentally different way then the horizontal ones.

      

Desktop SMS was the flavor of the month for a brief period in 2002. it’s back! Or is it