Photo - Daniel Appelquist
I spent yesterday at the Mobile 2.0 Event here in San Francisco. It was nice to meet so many of my readers and fellow mobile bloggers. This is a world class event and a real bargain. I don't think there's any other conference were you will find so many of the movers and shakers of the mobile world gathered in such a relatively intimate setting. It was fast paced and went very smoothly, hat tip to the organizers Gregory Gorman, Daniel Appelquist, Mike Rowehl, Rudy de Waele and Peter Vesterbacka who did a great job of lining up speakers and panelists and keeping things rolling on topic and on schedule.
Here are my impressions. I'm sure I missed a lot. There are quite a few other accounts on the web to help you fill in the details. I hope I got everyone's name and ideas right. Please jump in with corrections if I didn't.
- Richard MacManus's has a four part series of live blogged posts at Read/Write Web. Richard covered Tomi Ahonen's inspiring and optimistic Keynote, and the two Lauch Pad sessions where startups had 5 minutes each to show their stuff; Launch Pad 1, Launch Pad 2 and one highlighting Taptu's presentation.
- Oliver Starr at Blognation also live blogged covering the Keynote, the User Experience panel and the Venture Capitalists panel.
- Mike Rowehl, wrapped up his experiences as an organizer, panelist and observer at This Is Mobility.
- Rudy de Waele has his slides here
- Rudy, Daniel and others created a huge Flickr photo pool
The day began with mTrends' Rudy de Waele's Opening Remarks defining Mobile 2.0. It's not Web 2.0 gone mobile. Instead Mobile 2.0 is about exploiting the mobile device's ubiquitous nature and unique ability to use context including location, the user's social networks, address book, calendar and synchronization.
Tomi Ahonen followed with a Keynote centered on the concept that mobile is the seventh mass media. The first six being print, recorded music, movies, radio, TV and the internet. Mobile can do everything the previous 6 can plus it adds unique elements. Mobile is:
- Personal
- Always on
- Always carried
- Has a built in payment system
- Provides the most accurate audience info
- Is always present to indulge creative impulses
Tomi then highlighted some application areas exploiting mobiles unique capabilities, most of which are also making significant amounts of money:
- An English/Japanese cameraphone OCR translator.
- UK carrier 3's See Me TV - which offers user created videos that cost 50 pence each to download. The creator receives 1p per download. 3's three million subsribers downloaded 14.2 million See Me videos last year.
- In Korea when applying for a credit card, the default is for the payment system to be on your mobile only, plastic is an optional extra.
- Mobile Social Networks; Habbo Hotel has $35 million in annual revenue even though the average user spends only $5/year. 43% of all Koreans participate in CyWorld. 30,000 businesses advertise and/or sell on CyWorld. Dating site Flirtomatic has 60,000 web users and 20,000 mobile users. Flirtomatic is doing so well selling items of endearment like 3.5 million virtual red roses per year that they have done away with all subscription fees.
Next up was the User Experience Panel moderated by Brian Fling from Blue Flavor. My takeaways:
- Carlos Domingo (Telefonica) - The iPhone has raised the UX bar. It also emphases the browser as THE platform for mobile apps.
- Carlos - A consistent UI is more important than who (carrier, phone vendor or 3rd party) "owns" it.
- Kelly Goto (Gotomobile) - Mobile apps are too complicated, users don't understand them, designers need to simplify. Kelly liked Helio's GPS applications though.
- Christian Linholm (ex Nokia -"father" of the Navi-Key and S60, author, consultant) - Web apps need to have a local cache so that they are faster and can function where there is no or poor connectivity.
- Christian - Emerging markets have special usability needs like voice enabled apps for illiterate users, simple solutions
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posted by Dennis Bournique
October 16, 2007 @ 10:44 pm
7 View Comments
