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!

      

Live from the Globes Internet and Communication Conference, I just had the honor of hearing Craig Newmark - the man who started and still runs Craig’s list. What an amazing man!

During his talk he didn’t make any revolutionary statements, yet his clear, modest, focused and pleasant manner cut through the fuss, buzz and trash we hear all over. A few golden nuggets:
1. Feel and follow through

2. We take no advertising…no advertisers to make happy.

3. I’m the George Costanza of the internet

4. Listen and try hard to so something about it

5. I refused banner ads - didn’t feel right…I was happy and making enough money…

6. Twelve years later…I do full time customer service

7. We trust our community and they respond in a trustworthy way

8. Treat people in the site in the same way you want to be treated….

9. we don’t take money….we owe no debt.

That’s it. I realize now that reading these statements doesn’t seem like a big deal but the “Craig Package” the way he speaks and delivers is admirable. If you think about it, this is a perfect analogy to the success of his site. It doesn’t seem like a big deal, its totally simple, totally honest…and hugely successful. Makes you think!

      

“Obi-Wan: The FORCE can have a strong influence on the weak-minded…”

Replace “Force” with “Money” and this sums up Microsoft’s problems. Its not talent, not creativity, not assets, not brand… Just money. Not because money doesn’t enable you to achieve things but because it blinds you of the talent, creativity and assets that exists within.

I read with interest several blogs / articles (1, 2, 3) that rationalized the pros and cons of a possible Yahoo-Microsoft take-over / merger / strategic partnership. Most of them, of course, vote against or think a partnership first makes the best sense.

Personally I say “Forget Yahoo” - Microsoft’s only way out is Microsoft itself!

But not today’s Microsoft. Tomorrow’s. I believe Microsoft can reinvent itself (OK - Vista isn’t a good start) and become a leader in personal and enterprise digital services.

So with a gross cash reserve of $50bn, why not go on a little shopping spree? Why? Because all that is bad in Microsoft, I believe, starts with that. Father Bill and Co-Father Steve should tell their kids the allowance this year just got cut and they better get creative if they want to stay at home.

The big conglomerate needs to do something TOTALLY different. Something COLOSSAL to break the status quo, something that can bring REAL change and not incremental.

Like what? Like become an umbrella to 10,000 start-ups. All using Live, X-Box, MSN etc. as platforms - INSTEAD of letting these platforms becoming THE company. Convergence has cleared the borders between enterprise and consumer applications, mobile and PC, desktop and online. The old fashioned corporate divisions will not be able to sustain progress, spur innovation.

Create robust R&D centers at the core of the corporate, encircle them with brandless, nameless platforms / services (currently Live, MSN, etc.) and let new mini, independent COMPANIES (not business-units) run new products / services on them. Don’t tie them down ‘Microsoft inside’ only policy - create a loose but synergistic relationship that will benefit both sides.

Let natural selection take its effect and like a mega VC select which companies you keep funding, which you cut off, spin off and or continue to nurture. Drop what become legacy structures and regroup to smaller, fitter units. This eco-system is much more likely to create a rival to Google [in its respective field] than Microsoft in its current form. In fact, this way there is no Microsoft that can be ‘attacked’ face on.

The “loose form” corporation will be a much more formidable (yet friendly) adversary then one giant gorilla. With no anti-trust issues to carry like a hump on its back.

The biggest difference between Google and Microsoft at this point is that Google needs to take-over / merge to grow and Microsoft needs to dismantle. This is why merging with Yahoo is a mistake. Its the opposite of what Microsoft needs to focus on.

Reminds me of the famous “Opposite George” episode in Seinfeld when George comes to the realization that in order to succeed in life he need to do the opposite of what he always thought was right “I’ll tell you this, something is happening in my life! I did this opposite thing last night. Up was down! Black was white! Good was… bad [Seinfeld]… day was night [Elaine]”.

Dwelling into the micro analysis of a Microsoft-Yahoo ’something’ is NOT what needs to be discussed. How Microsoft finds its FORCE back WITHIN - is.

      

Last week I attended a rare event - the GarageGeeks get together/conference/party hosted under the title “A peak into the future of TV”. Talk about a hard core event - as you can see from the short vids and photos, it’s a real junky (but funky) garage, in a real industrial zone, with very little space, plastic chairs, no real food, coffee or toilets but it GOD DAMN WORKED! Something about the surreal surroundings made it feel like we are are actually talking about a real revolution (which it is). The fact Jeff Pulver pulled a surprised appearance added to the hyped but underground ambience and left me with some very good impressions, albeit, like I said, offbeat surroundings.

All the photos and the video you are about to see were taken with my digital companion, the Nokia N73. There is a case in point about the revolution of broadcasting already - I created over a 100Mb worth of video with my mobile phone, posted it on the net, blogged about it and now you can watch it.

Below is a link to Pulver’s presentation (10+8 minutes - I had to split into two because of YouTube’s limits). In it, he articulated his vision in a very succinct and sensible manner. I think that anyone interested in this space should spend the time to watch what this down-to-earth thought leader has to say. My ‘fished’ headline out of the video would be “Pulver says - RSS to lead future of TV distribution” the rest I leave up to you [Another case in point is that I’m no Tarantino of the mobile video world but I hope you appreciate the art].

Pulver on Future of TV - Part 1

Pulver on Future of TV - Part 2

My own take in the whole “Future of TV” symposium is more about “Future of Marketing”. Current global spending on advertising tops half a trillion (yes trillion) dollars - funneled towards TV, newspapers, billboards and magazines. Within five years, once the internet will establish itself as THE bearer of entertainment - with its innate capabilities of micro filtering, geotargeting and dynamic personalization - the dumb tube (I mean TV) and the recycled paper held together using glue (I mean magazine) will not be able to compete.

I see a huge and I mean HUGE tsunami of ad dollars racing towards this space. And guess what (and this is a big WHAT) there is no existing eco-system, service or technology that can handle that!

I predict that in within five years we will witness a whirlwind of startups trying to come up with services, technologies, protocols and whole eco-systems to help solve this problem. I am not predicting the death of the magazines… I’ll keep reading them as well as my morning newspaper but where and how I watch TV is a whole different story. And since most of that half a trillion is spent there… don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Having focused on Pulver (and my blah blah) kind of took the thunder away from the rest of the presenters at the GarageGeek event who all did a great job. Amit Or, a colleague of mine and Co-Founder of InLive blew us all away by embedding live graphs that were the result of us calling InLive’s IVR system - into his power-point…in real time! a whole magic show by itself.

Lastly, kudos to Yuval Tal and Dror Gil (and anyone else I missed) for organizing such a COOL event.

      

The video you are about to watch is very special:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOXoplVTcfY

I didn’t plan on take this footage or write about it, but it turned out more than post worthy. What you are witnessing is the first time my son has ever used an iPod. As you can see, for him its bliss. A simple, innocent, unpretentious, pure moment where beat meets mind and mind moves body. That, in itself, is probably of no interest to anyone but myself, so why do I care to put it here and write about it? Well, encapsulated in this moment are a few notes that represent how far we have advanced and how backwards we still are:

1. Past sharing = take a vinyl to a friend and play it. No piracy issues. Today = filetype? zune? iPod? player? protected? criminal?

2. Past song=song. Today Song=song/rintone/truetone/mp3/wav/drm/vidclip/cover/bitrate

3. Past music capacity = house shelf space. Today = disk space = $ dad will pay for next iPod.

4. Past 1000 songs = truck. Today 10,000 songs = pocket.

5. Past music = moving parts. Today music = on the move.

6. Past sharing = serenade. Today sharing = P2P

7. Past selling point = city center. Today selling point = planet earth.

8. Past phone = speak. Today (mobile) phone = another music player.

9. Past download = garbage in the house. Today download = music from net.

10. Past (corporate) promotion = Top of the Pops. Today (self) promotion = myspace.

11. Past recommend = talk to friend. Today recommend = something.web20.com

There is no doubt we have come a long way. A very long way. The biggest open issues remain compatibility and legality. The fact that 30 years ago it was easier to go places and “just play a song” whereas today it turns into a techno_legal symposium is mind boggling.

Over time this absurd will be resolved. By the time my son will be my age he will be able to continue to do what everyone should when listing to music - simply, innocently, unpretentiously, purely… dance!

      

In my humble opinion headlines such as ‘The death of web radio?” or “The last days of internet radio?” are nothing but the opposite of what will turn out to be the actual result. If I had to give a 10 year outlook, my guess is that the government agency behind this current farce (CRB) has more to fear about its long term existence than web radio does. And that is (probably) the very reason it has chosen the weakest rival possible to try to prove there is a reason tax payer money funds their activity.

This was their last mistake. The nail that will seal their coffin. Ten years from now when the whole DRM / Copy Rights / Royalties issues will be solved using a completely private, voluntary and extremely efficient systems - historians will view this current battle as being the one that lead to the turn around in public awareness. Talk about choosing your battles right….not!

If they raised the royalties by so much as a penny, they would have made much more. If they could actually develop a business model that makes sense that would have even contributed something. But greed and power have caused greater empires and ceasars to fall and this will be no exception.

The public has awakened, the battle may seem lost, but its far from it. No government agency or corporate bureaucrat can stop a swell of change like the internet is creating. Not in radio, not in TV broadcast or elsewhere.

What is the end game for this? Kill the Internet radio? In an early stage industry there is so much more money on the supply side. Do us a favor, get your act together and create the opportunity. Wanna talk about making money? Get music actually heard, then tax the royalties from referrals to Amazon and iTunes. That makes so much commercial sense. This is synergy. This is convergence.

If you stick to this greedy pricing structure then you would ultimately:

1. Collect less taxes

2. Drive media outside the territory / industry

3. Get everyone to focus beating the system rather then on working with it

4. Lower incentive to develop technology, services and probably future royalty eco-systems.

Government wrath has never done any good other then get more conscripts in a time of war. Even then if it fights the right/just wars people will volunteer.

In 1610 the establishment didn’t like the fact Galileo published an account of his telescopic observations of the moons of Jupiter, using this observation to argue in favor of the sun-centered Copernican theory of the universe against the dominant earth-centered Ptolemaic and Aristotelian theories.

In 1614, from the pulpit of Santa Maria Novella, Father Tommaso Caccini denounced Galileo’s opinions on the motion of the Earth, judging them dangerous and close to heresy. Ultimately landing Galileo under house arrest.

In todays terms exhadurated royalty increases are the equivalent of putting internet radio under house arrest. Its not day light execution but the target is supposed to fade away.

I got a news flash for the bureaucrats - Father Tommaso Caccini won the battle but lost the war - you will too!

To learn more and and voice your opinion go to www.savenetradio.org

if you are still not convinced, read Tim’s plea (Pandora’s founder)

      

Before you read this post be so kind as and take our quick test survey on your mobile. Simply surf to:

de.mobiode.mobi

Before pointing out that “this can easily be done on the web, why the hell is he sending me to my mobile?”, bare with me, this has educational value. My only disclaimer is that proper use of the system would also mean receiving the link directly on your phone, but I guess the cost of sending messages was a factor.

What you experienced took me 5 minutes to set up.

Mobiode lets you create a survey and publish it in seconds. This is not new. The neat thing about Mobiode’s service is the following:

The surveys are adapted to WAP and therefore allow you to distribute the survey/poll to any mobile. This way you can reach your customers outside of their usually PC settings.
And on top of this:

1. Its extremely easy to set up the survey
2. There is a basic account that lets you publish one survey at a time for free. Not a money back guarantee. Not a 30 day trial. Free.

If this weren’t simple the whole package would not be worth it. While Mobiode doesn’t look as smooth or schique as 37signals, the execution is just as simple. And it makes all the difference.

I opened an account in seconds. Created a survey. Sent it (to myself first) and then to friends and collected the stats. No hassle, no complications, no ‘read the fine print’ - just did it.

The ability to connect to your users on their mobile and gain feedback in such a simple manner is of high value.

I recommend taking a look.

      

MacNN reports that “iPhone makes rare appearance at CTIA - Apple’s iPhone has surfaced in the public eye after a long absence”. Have we all gone insane? I mean, I wrote a poem about it but even that can be excused as a ‘momentary lapse of reason’ driven by the peer pressure that surrounds the digiworld we live in.

A few months passed and I thought we all kicked our hangovers by now. There are still open issues such as battery power, touch screen usability, price, quality of service (no one really knows) etc.

When you encounter a beautiful craft for the first time you tend to ignore the obvious impediments and focus on the romantic and the fantastic. That’s great. Then we should snap out. That is what separates the “men from the boys”. The responsible adult can get excited but also keep realistic.

I found this hilarious widget on apples website - the sasquatch news tracker. If you haven’t snapped out of it yet I this one is for you. Never miss a public appearance, a mysterious unveiling, a behind the scenes glimpse…ooooh

having said that…I still want one badly

      

This is not a real news flash. It just makes sense. Here is why:

Its not long before we see these icons added to the www.google.com/a page

All that remains is to fill in the $__,___,____ for the figure.

On a more serious note. 37signals , the smallest-biggest SME SaaS provider released “Highrise” a new contact, lead management tool (see the most updated review on mashable).

My bet is that Google is already having talks with 37Signals. These companies are so compliant it just makes sense.

In a totally unrelated event (TheMarker’s Internet Convention) - Dr. Yoelle Maarek Director at Google’s R&D Center in Haifa-Israel, said Google does not aspire to compete with Microsoft. After repeating the mantra of “we organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” she went on to say Google is about moving data to the net (only to organize it and make it more useful, of course). Well, the recent launch of Google Apps its a definite “military march” as far as Microsoft is concerned.

If you run a small business (and this will apply to Fortune500 in 5 years as well) you have got to make a decision - how do you set up your communication infrastructure? how do you manage your enterprise? How do your workers, clients and suppliers collaborate? etc. etc.

Without dwelling into a long “KPMG type” of analysis, Aner’s recent experience of selecting an online provider for his business applications proves the point. The bottom line is that he is very close to running his business “Microsoft free”. True - this is not competition - its more like a brutal hijack!

As if taken out of a sci-fi movie - users are being snatched into a new parallel reality were ‘things’ are managed away from the desktop, where new software is not measured by the length of the feature list, where the interface is simple, prices are fair and the language is friendly.

Google Apps is a step in the right direction but it doesn’t deliver the 1-2-3 punch. And we all know that Google likes to knockout.

The 1G mail was a huge knockout.

Now let’s connect the dots. Out of all the good companies which provide SaaS today, which one, joining forces with Google, could deliver the 1G knockout or more like the 1MT (mega ton) punch? I believe its 37signals.

This is why I believe tomorrow’s headlines will read “Google to acquire 37signals”

      

A year ago, following TheMarker’s “Com.vention” (a very high profile Internet convention in the local Israeli scene) I wrote a post about my Uncom.ventional thoughts.
I pulled this post out of the closet when I registered this year, to recap my after thoughts. This time I am adding my ‘bet’ in advance. My notes are inline in CAPs - tell me what you think:

• Internet Access - All the conventions I have been to in the past 2 years had wi-fi. In all of them going on line is a nightmare – no connection, slow connection, bad connection – am I missing something or are the organizers cheap?

THE ANSWER IS YES - AND NO CHANGE THIS YEAR.

• Web 2.0 - to be cool or to be fool?

HMMM - STILL A TRICKY ANSWER. YOU DEFINITELY HAVE TO BE MORE SOPHISTICATED THIS YEAR BUT MORE OF A CHANCE TO BE A FOOL

• Truth or Dare? - How can an Ex entrepreneur, now successful VC panelist answer the question “Are we witnessing the emergence of a second bubble” with a straight face? He as well as many other “guru’s” fluked their way into money during the big bubble – what do they know?

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING - AND THIS TIME I HAVE PROOF (TO BE DISCLOSED AT A LATER DATE)

• Yossi Vardi 1 - Israeli’s go- “Remind me what Yossi Vardi did after ICQ?” The rest of the world - “ICQ is one phenomenal success – respect”

THE ULTIMATE PRIME MINISTERS/ PRESIDENTS PENSION PLAN - WELL PAID LECTURES.

• Yossi Vardi 2 - Having said that….does every dot.com convention in Israel have to turn into a Yossi Vardi “we are not worthy” fest?

YES - ALSO KNOW AS “VARDIGRAS”.

SERIOUSLY THIS TIME - HE IS A TRUE PHENOMENON WHO PROMOTES THE LOCAL INDUSTRY A LOT

• Dress code - Do lucky individuals who have made a huge exit get an automatic ‘pass’ to under dress? Will I do that (not if…when ).

YES…AND YES

• Babble’bation - Is the internet the mother of all channels or just another channel – I heard “definitely yes, but in certain ways not, when it comes down to it we’ll have to see how it plays out”. Oh’ by the way, it was the same person who gave that answer…hiding it in a cleaver 10 minute babel’bation . Some panelists have no shame.

NO SHAME - PANELIST ARE UNDER AN OBLIGATION TO MAKE 20 SECOND ANSWERS AT LEAST 2 MINUTES LONG (I SAW THEIR CONTRACT )

• The Google Shadow - There was a Panel called – “How Google disrupts and creates businesses” - copy paste the answer from the above. Its like dah…can I get some answers please…

HERE’S A CHANGE - NOW ITS HOW DO OTHERS DISRUPT GOOGLE FROM MAKING TONS OF MONEY. SEE ANER’S GREAT LAST POST

• The Blogsphere is a myth - Amit Shafir - President of AOL’s premium services said that the recent blogging / self reporting trend will come and go – unofficial quote - “the effectiveness of writing and distribution is maximized through centralized portals” (such as AOL). Is he a fool or prophet? BTW – he admitted that he gets much better information by speaking to his 14 year old daughter then he gets by paying tons of $$ to marketing research firms at AOL – with that I won’t argue.

IF SOMEONE TURNS OUT TO BE THIS STUPID THIS TIME - I AM PULLING MY MEGAPHONE OUT AND INTERVENING

• The Long Tail - I was exposed to the “The long tail” theory for the first time – like it! This is the one time I am for the tail that waggles its dog.

MY GUESS IS THAT ITS NOT GOING TO BE MENTIONED AS MUCH. IT WAS A HOT BUZZWORD LAST YEAR. THIS YEAR DRM, UGC AND MOBILE SEARCH ARE.

• ROI - Conventions in general – wasted time or invested time?

NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO BE DAMM MEASURED. WE ALL NEED SOME TIME AWAY FROM THE OFFICE TO REGROUP AND SEE EACH OTHER FACE TO FACE. PRICELESS. AND DON’T GIVE ME THIS “OHH NO I LOST 8 HOURS OF EMAILS AND MEETINGS…BOOOHOOOO”

• Real time blogging - What’s the maximum sentence for breaking the blogger’s sacred law #23? – you must report live from any visited convention floor with short and succinct posts loaded with info and smart insights.

WILL PROBABLY NOT DO IT - SEE WIFI EXCUSE ABOVE.

BOTTOM LINE - WE GO, WE MEET, WE ENJOY THEN WE COMPLAIN…AND REGISTER AGAIN THE NEXT YEAR.

SEE YOU THERE.

      

Shnick-Shnack is not a word you’ll find in Webster or in Wikipedia but it should get there soon. In one of my recent trips to Europe, someone quoted a big shot CEO for one of the leading mobile operators as saying early in 2000 that “ringtones are shnick-shnacks” or in other words “irrelevant” OR “not significant” ….yada yada yada, 7 years later, they have generated a multi-billion dollar industry.

The context of the conversation was one of humbleness. One should not dismiss what seems like a shnick-shnack service at a wave of hand, with a dismissive ..“…this will never catch on…” attitude. Sometimes people want shnick-shnacks. Sometimes shnick-shnacks let you get personal, express yourself. Fontip is just that kind of thing.

Is this shnick-shnack of what

Incredimail is another perfect example for a shnick-shnack service. Do you really need it?No. Does it solve any technological barrier? No. Is it innovative in a way that can’t be duplicated? No. Yet these are ‘VC type’ questions. People have psychological motivations and drives and look for services that answers such needs regardless of passing the ‘investment benchmark’ checklist.

If Fontip is first to serve the need to personalize sms’s and does it well, there is no reason why it can’t be a huge success. Making communications personal (and cool) has landed Incredimail with a huge install base with around 50 million client downloads!

Will Fontip follow suite? I’m no prophet but there is no reason why they shouldn’t. There is no reason why out of the billions of SMS users there will not be enough ‘personalization’ freaks that will go ahead and down load it.

Competition may come from the handset providers, with them creating built tools or similar services, but with such a wide audience there should be a room for them all.

Is this another 7 billion dollars shnick-shnack market, probably not, but the power of shnick-shnack has surprised before.

Gil Rosen

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The death of the Mobile Operators’ Closed Garden and the Dawn of the Smart Pipe
by Gil Rosen

Friday February 23rd 2007, 6:40 am
Filed under: web 2.0, freedom, business, Gil Bio, user experience

3GSM was overwhelming - Any trade show that takes you more then three straight days to walk through is. From system integrators, content providers, enablers, device manufactures - the industry has indeed matured.

Out of the hustle of such a big event, there is one mega trend that I’d like to focus on - the death of the closed garden and the emergence of the smart pipe.

To understand why this is happening I think we need to quickly examine the role of the ‘Garden’ and see how it came to be in the the first place.

Many Internet years ago, when the world wide web had just started reaching mobile devices, when such devices were few, when they were expensive and of with horrible quality of service - mobile operators felt obligated to fill the default Internet home page with mobile adapted content. This, in turn, was supposed to have given users a good enough reason to surf from their mobile. The mobile content market was non existent and there was simply depth for users to find their own content. In addition, the companies providing mobile content were inexperienced and scarce. WAP was a techie buzzword, but all consumers got was a poor and slow experience, very much inferior compared to what they were getting used to on the PC.

Ego was (and still is) another factor. Yes, pure ego. Mobile operator executives believed (some still believe) that the mobile Internet should not be free as the “PC” Internet. The basic “rational” was that since they controlled the ‘gateway’ already they could and should control the content. This attempt is similar to what AOL has done very successfully for a long time - provide your subscribers with a content portal through which most of the content was consumed.

Most users have supposedly basic needs and when information is prearranged for them - they supposedly just use it, many times being unaware of the rich world beyond the fence. In the regular (PC) world it would be unheard of to have your ISP control your content but in the mobile world it became the de-facto reality.

The accumulated result drove many operators to try and develop in-house content divisions whose sole purpose was to fill the portal with content and services. Since part of the problem was the scarcity of the content, this was a necessary evolutionary step for the mobile Internet to develop. Someone had to get the snow ball rolling.

Today, I believe, the snowball has reached its critical mass ad guess what? People want more. Almost all new devices come with Internet connectivity, screen quality is good, connectivity fast/er, mobile content is abundant, mobile applications easy to install, WAP is rich, an open mobile billing ecosystem is in place, there is an understanding that the mobile web is different (more passive then active), services and sites have developed accordingly and most importantly users are getting more sophisticated. They actually know how to reach the web, save bookmarks and change default settings, all in all leading to the maturity level required to change the closed garden model as we know it.

My argument is not that the portal is dead, but that it can no longer be closed. Operators must focus on two major and parallel agendas:

1. Provide users with selected, popular, edgy content through the portal - a good example is mobile TV. Mobile TV broadcast is not mature enough to be outside the portal.

2. open the portal and work hard on partnering / enabling third party, independent, niche content/service providers serve users directly. Let users roam the mobile Internet world and reach places that are far from the portal as could be - and actually promote it. When more users will roam free, the more they will understand how to use it better and increase their data consumption, overall benefiting the mobile operators more then anyone else.
The almost incredulous statement I am making is that there is such a thing as mobile Internet. There isn’t! The mobile device is only a terminal. The Internet is the same Internet only viewed by a different lens. Its the years of indoctrination that have led most people to perceive them as two separate universes.

For several years now I have heard Mobile operator executives fearful of what they call becoming a dumb pipe. I don’t know who invented this word, but the psychological association in it has made the industry paranoid of what can be (and in my mind should be) the modus operandi for making loads of money - and its far from being dumb.

Becoming a pipe that effectively channels content while creating adequate processes for billing, content delivery and quality of service assurance (and a ton of other things) is very sophisticated, far from dumb. Dumb is thinking you rule the world. Smart is understanding your users want more choice then you (as an operator) can ever supply. Happy customers and loyal. That is the focus.

Focusing on loyalty through openness and wide selection of added value service, whether in house or external, is the right challenge ahead. Trying to win ground by holding on to something that is not yours is a battle all ready lost.

Gil Rosen

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Conference mania – the tree holocaust!
by Gil Rosen

Wednesday February 07th 2007, 4:15 pm
Filed under: freedom, social, business, Gil Bio, user experience

I am hectically preparing for 3GSM in Barcelona next week. A great venue by all standards. As a presenter, there is a mountain of collateral to prepare - the service overview, the technical white paper, the content provider offering, the mobile operator offering, the stand background, the poster, the this, the that.

So here I am trying to do what most people do before a show and then it strikes me what a waste it all is. We all know but hardly admit that most of these papers will be thrown away or at best looked at very briefly. And what do we do about it? Nothing.

This stupid (sorry, couldn’t find a better word) march of industry clones that exchange papers from one hand to the next and on to the closest waste basket. We often even deliver the paper overseas and back into our offices and then throw it or put it on some shelf to stand there as a silent testimonial “we were there” … but rarely look at it again. The one or two times we do take another look is come preparation time for the next show – then we pick it up and see what interesting ideas we can use for this year’s show – and so the paper parade continues and no-one is shouting that the king has no clothes.

It’s not that the information within is useless, it has some (limited) value. That too is usually filled with empty promises and a stack load of buzzwords. That I could take. But why for heaven’s sake do we need to kill so many trees in the process?

The same info, the same sheets should not leave their original electronic formats. They should stay on websites, PCs, USB drives, you name it – put please do not print it.

We can be very critical of our politicians for not doing enough to save the world BUT WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT IT in our closed garden? NADA.

I would like to see the first mobile / web / telecom etc. tradeshow pick up the challenge and declare – PRINTABLE MATERIALS ARE BANNED!

Simple and to the point. It will not harm the venue quality, even help it. All these carry-on bags are useless. You want to give me something – tell me where to look it up online, transfer me an electronic file. Anything but paper.

It is we that are destroying the forests in Brazil, not someone else! Its about time we put an end to this killing spree.

Gil Rosen

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