But I’m back. The plan I have in mind is to dig further in the areas where I am very excited about the potential there is for mobile centric solutions. One is completely and utterly entertainment related and one is life changing. Yes, I like extremes and do not see a contradiction there either. There is much to learn between different verticals.

Anyhow, the first area is online dating, where we will see an explosion in the mobile channel. In Europe during the last 12 months mobile access to online dating services has grown by 50%+ according to Comscore. Go figure. Disclosure: I run a company in this field – Acemob.

Secondly, many types of social business are well suited for strong mobile components. One thing I have done during my blogging break has been to study social businesses more. It has been very interesting and rewarding. I will develop some themed here over time. As a warm up go have a look at Ushahidi for a brilliant example of what can be done.

Stay tuned!

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The fact that you can be anonymous probably is a catalyst for some people’s dark/non-creative side and they quite soon start plagueing the community. Their popularity takes a hit though in all cases. I have seen some almost hitting as low approval ratings as George W. Bush did towards the end of his presidency. The good thing with a working community is that is becomes quite self-policing. If the community ower or the reason for the community really is an integral part of and player in the community there will be a very strong sense of respect between the members who have an honest and real interest in the longevity of the community. And the anonymous driver can make people have a great time as well. You can be someone else or a better self or a funnier self without lowering the quality of the community. Shy people dare more. I have seen people meet and get married in some of our mobile communities. The feedback we get from these people really make a strong impression and gives us in the team a reason to go on. Long live the Force in communities!

I fully understand Trent Reznor becoming fed-up with it all since he must have dedicated considerable time and effort with his online community. When the pile of bad stuff gets too big it is easy to cave in. However, seeing the reactions in the comments to his “I quit” post, he clearly have a majority of peers who speak up for him. In itself a proof of a well working community. I hope he’ll get back to it when the tour is over and he has had time to recharge.

So, I choose the Good Side and see a very positive trend here: The niche communities with one clear subject and reason to connect have a bright future. The large more generic communities with very large corporate goals like monetization of the user base and exit strategies risk loosing their purpose. Here I want to say that I have nothing against making money with communities. I say that that money makeing has to be intimately linked with the interest of the community and the members. And it must be made clear to the community. Do not hide the fact that you are a business. Well, if you are. Many communities are not there for profit and should not.

Irrespective of what community you build, have a purpose and reason to connect people around a subject. This is extra important in the mobile industry where some communities have been created because it is technically possible. Those are not long-lived alternatively have very high acquisition costs and churn.

Lastly a congrats and push for my friend Beata Wickbom who is featured in an article on social networking in this article (Swedish only).

LBS has been one of the long lasting hyped functionalities in mobile services. One of the classic cases is the location aware advertising model. I am walking down a street, approach a Starbucks and voila I get an MMS with a voucher for a half-price latte. Only thing is, I need to be signed up to or have downloaded an app that tracks me in realtime. But the big challenge is the targeting. Just because I am approaching a Starbucks does not mean I am in the mood for coffee. I might be on my way to the health clinic next door to Starbucks for an appointment with a cognitive therapy expert to kick my caffeine addiction.

But location awareness has a strong value added in many cases. Lately I have spent much time thinking about LBS in the context of dating and matching. The reason being the recent launch of Souldate (that I am a shareholder of, to be clear and transparent).

In the dating scenario locaion awareness makes a lot of sense. Even without precise realtime location a la GPS. Just a quick positioning at sign-in of the service that is then used to rank all matches in order of geographic proximity without revelaing the location of any member adds value. As a user you know that the people at the top of the list match your criteria and vice versa, they are also the ones nearest to you. Since dating services are all about getting people to meet in real life, I know that the top results are the ones that most likley are easiest and quickest to meet up with.

Makes sense? Let me know what you think. Take the poll!

A few years back I had the same expeience when Openwave analysed another US carrier’s deck. In that study the community Lifestylers was deemed the most sticky service on the entire deck. 

So communities/social networks hit it off with the mobilistas. Unfortunately the advertisers are slower to warm up to the mobile social networks. The big brands, and marketing budgets, are not comfortable with an environment they do not control. By definition you do not control a place built entirely on user generated content and interactions. This limits the options in business models somewhat. If you have eCPMs below 1 USD it is difficult to carry a company entirely based on advertising. It can be done, but it’s a struggle. 

Do we need braver advertisers or should we accept the current state as a fact? The very involved user in a social network might be hard to reach with ads at the moment they are engaged in communicating with others. However, if the brand or product can become part of the conversation we have a totally different ball game.

At the moment I think what we lack the most is good creative work in the campaigns that the advertising gurus come up with. This will not change until mobile becomes an integral part from the start in a campaign. There has to be a story and interaction features that speaks to the users. A high frequency exposure in a mobile social network can become a “scavenger hunt” part of a broader campaign for instance. When mobile is seen as a value adding component that can make a difference in a campaign we will start to see very powerful campaigns. We will also see ad-funded mobile services flourish.

Disclosure: I am the co-founder of Acemob, the company behind Lifestylers.

There were a few thems the I picked up. Mind you I went to CTIA with my mobile social networking, advertisig and multi-player poker glasses on. That was my mission to learn and sell. As you might know I am one of the founders of both Acemob and Souldate, and these ventures are what pay the bills these days. Here we go:

1. Business models

Everywhere I went, the theme was business models. On the panel I sat in on, on the show floor at the parties at night, business models where a common theme. What’s happening here then?

One big change is the on/off deck distinction is about to fade away. On-deck is not the only way to get distribution these days. Operators are realising this and are opening up for easier access to their portals. They can thereby also cut some staff costs as well.

The effect of this is that the content provider will have to carry more of the marketing cost and get the full responsibility for discovery. It also means the operators will have to stop milking their abuse of the billing monopoly they have. Stealing 30-40% for a transaction that Visa charge 5% for is not viable in the long run and is hampering innovation and growth. Please read this great post buy Steven Spencer on this subjet and app stores etc. 

2. Advertising

Advertising is cool, but in most cases will not be enough. Additional revenue streams with virtual goods or freemium is needed. There are probably some arbitrage possibilities or rather timing gains to make to go build a user base in a virgin market when CPCs are very low but rising. However you are then banking on that you keep the users long enough to make money on them when the advertising market is more valuable. A risk, but it might work. It’s about timing and guts I guess.

3. Role of Social networks

In our panel we had some interesting exhanges about social selling. Both Glu and iPlay see the social networks as a distribution channel. Nothing is more powerful than word of mouth, so they try to tap into social netoworks or use social networking infrastructure to give their fans the tools to sperad the word. One cool service I came across here was mpowerplayer. Baiscally it is a social seling tool. Web based play of java games with community features built in to facilitate spreading the word. iPlay use this for their recent launch of their Fast & Furious game. With links to the portals and decks where the game can be bought. This drives revenues and is one way to facilitate discovery, one of the main challenges in selling stuff in a small screen world.

4. Health

I also noted mHealth being a trend. This came from other reports (and here) and comments from people I talked to in Las Vegas. Unfortunately this was an area I missed to cover entirely personally, but hey you can only do so many things. The good thing is that it is now on the radar. My personal belief is that it is a huge area where mobile really can make the world a better place. The formation of the Wireless Health Institute in San Diego is one milestone.

With these words I will head for the ol’ egg hunts and whatnot. See you after the weekend!

Big brands trying mobile marketing need to be aware of that they are about to invade the most private and intimate screen in the world of marketing. As MobileYouth point out the strongest position you can get is if you provide a social fabric and a lot of bang for the social currency buck for your customers.

Get out there, participate instead of pushing broadcast marketing messages. This will put marketing and communications departments in tailspin, since you need to be 100% transparent as well. The marcom departments have often taken the gatekeeper role here. Mobile internet offers the world’s largest and most powerful  direct response machine. Twitter, texts, Facebook mobile and Bambuser are only the tip of the ice berg in terms of tools the consumers have to talk with, about and to you.

As you can see I am warming up ahead of today’s panel at the mobile marketing seminar here at CTIA. It will be fun. You will read more here about it as it happens.

I like all honest trial-and-error efforts. I rather trust someone searching the next big thing rather than the person who says he already has. This is all about testing and listening. Test. Listen. Test. Listen What do the users think of it? What works? Are the users we care about saying this? The latter is the hard part of course. Anyway, I really hope Telia is on to something to spread mobile social networking to the masses.

Short and sweet this post. But hey, its Friday. Enjoy the weekend! I am heading out to Las Vegas and CTIA next week. Drop me a line if you want to catch up.

• 62% do not yet view their mobile device as an extension of their computer.
• Only 23% feel that they have more or the same level of control over their mobile device as they have over their computer.
• 70% have never downloaded an application to their mobile device.
• 67% want to be able to choose their mobile applications for themselves, rather than have their carriers choose for them.

So basically the consumer says: I know what I want, let me choose and make it much easier to use and earn the trust for me to spend time and money with you/your service.

Trust is a big thing here. The carriers have been shocking numerous consumers with data charges, content providers off-deck have been ripping off customers with unstoppable subscriptions schemes etc. This is changing to the better though. We are getting transparency in pricing and the scamsters are being reigned in. 

The play book going forward must be to offer choice, easy access and most of all “it”, the x-factor for the specific target groups. What can this service/product do for me?, is the question the consumer wants answers to. Fast. In about 3 seconds on your site/deck/ad they need to get what’s in it for them. There is no recipe for this part. Here the gap in conversion can be huge. My experience is that rapid prototyping and adjust as you is what works best.

Currently I am involved in launching Souldate (site in Swedish), a new mobile dating service with localisation. We are adjusting and tweaking the service daily. We started off with pretty scary conversion numbers. A few workdays later we have improved them substantially. In this case will market the service in multiple channels. TV is about all we are not using. Customer registration is done in any of three channels – SMS, wap and web. This means we have to constantly evaluate to see what we should focus on.

But all this work with constant improvements are lost if the  hygiene factors trust and transparency are not in place. Here we all have to pull together to change, blow whistles and make sure we earn the trust of our customers. Without it we can pack up and go home.