- IN THIS ISSUE:
- * Trend Watch
- * People Watch
- * Macromedia Update: MAX Conference Mobile Day etc.
After a long silence I have decided to start to write to my loyal subscribers again. As most of you know, I joined in March this year Macromedia Mobile and Devices as Director of Content Acquisition. The past six months has been an unbelievably busy and exciting period and more is to come. However, now it might be the right time to reposition this newsletter to provide some value to the community and to get your feedback to things that are close to my professional life these days.
I would like to reposition MEOW! as an independent blog of new trends, innovations and creative thinking in the area of mobile services. Another focus that might be quite complementary is to be the mini ‘People Magazine’ of the mobile content industry – in my rank as the number 28 on LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) out of 1.1 million members I definitely see a lot of new faces every day.
This issue will include some direct updates on Macromedia’s activities (MAX Conference in New Orleans coming up – see below) as I believe it will be valuable to you all.
Best regards,
- Tapio Anttila
- tapio@anttila.net
TREND WATCH
Lifestyle services are the future. In an increasingly competitive world of consumer mobile services, market segmentation and bundling of services has become critical. Mobile operators have so far lagged behind other consumer marketers in their ability to address refined segmentation and to build upon people’s passions. Just take a look at your favorite well-equipped magazine kiosk to see the wealth of passions the industry soon will be bundling services around. My question to you is: who are the three leading authorities for lifestyle segmentation in the mobile industry?
MVNOs are coming of age. In preparation for quite some time (Yahoo and GM (!) were seriously considering them in 2000) Mobile Virtual Networks are resurfacing and some exciting projects are in the pipeline. The reasons behind this include: 1) Virgin Mobile has shown it works and 2) mobile media is increasingly capable of delivering a brand promise over mobile networks and devices. The hot project of the day is AMP’D, the new youth-centric MVNO soon to be launched in the US, developed by the founders of Boost Mobile. http://www.ampd.com/
Relationship to the consumer is what media companies ultimately will want. This is what they don’t have today – or can you name too many exceptions? Movie studios, television and radio industry companies, newspapers, magazines – none of them creates a truly 1:1 relationship media experience with the end-user. This calls for channel-based mobile media services: SMS and MMS do not foot the bill of creating a true relationship experience but are rather complementary services to teh future cable television model on mobile devices.
Subscription model on mobile devices is not a ‘slam dunk’. I spoke recently with Mike Short, the Chairman of the Mobile Data Association in the UK. Mike was voicing the common concern on the European market that consumers are not buying into a subscription-based model of mobile entertainment but are rather preferring to buy ‘snack-size’ entertainment with transactional models like premium SMS. I would concur with him on that: I think subscription models work in situations where the value of the mobile media well-perceived and consumers are educated to extract that value on a regular basis. Otherwise we will be back at the adult industry pricing models where the service provider tries to get people to subscribe in the hopes of postponing the eventual cancellation by 6 months (industry average). This is no way to create sustainable value. The solution is to combine both the subscription and transaction components in an engaging way that leads to the eventual acceptance of the subscription relationship.
PEOPLE WATCH
I have been building my LinkedIn community as a way to keep in touch with people in the wireless industry. Social networks as LinkedIn are changing the way we build trust (as well as personal brands, quite frankly). Also, to some extent we now have for the first time visibility into other people’s trust networks and from there we can read about their focus, personal style, style of executing business decisions and so forth. Everything we publicly say or leave unsaid forms the basis of others’ perception on us (I know, my website was ‘dead’ for six months…). There are now over to 800,000 people in my indirect network on LinkedIn (with 862 direct contacts) so there is a lot to read about in my free time – no need to spend money on People Magazine…
Then there is the use of LinkedIn for business intelligence on top of lead generation and other more obvious uses. For example, one reads about the newly appointed COO of Square Enix, Ichiro Otobe. I am not connected to him but one step away, linked through four people, one of them being Timo Soininen, CEO of Sulake Labs who just had their US launch for www.habbohotel.com. Is there something going on here I don’t know? Remember, these are trust networks: I am connected to Timo Soininen so I am not supposed to tell you who his contacts are if he has made that information visible to me (he has not). However, the above information is revealed to any of his direct connections through the ‘social proximity map’ that LinkedIn makes available. Damn interesting!
Anyway, I hope business schools and companies are these days teaching the use of social networks for competitor intelligence. Enough ranting, let’s put down a couple of announcements. In order to access these people you will need to join LinkedIn – most of them are there! Just send me an invitation on their website www.linkedin.com to my email address tapio@anttila.net.
Ivan Lopez. My friend Ivan just moved to Los Angeles and started at Sony Pictures as Director of Licencing. He is excited about the job but does not like LA… we need to cheer him up - ivan@bettyandivan.com.
Bryan Biniak. Bryan left Moviso to head up the mobile arm of American Greetings – AG Mobile. That might be a place to look if you need a job… AG Mobile has amassed a number of wireless rights and is building branded mobile services for Univision and Island DefJam, among others. Bryan brands himself in the press as the junior version of John Malone. When at Ericsson, I was called Attila the Hun, the Scourge of God – I think that was cooler;-)
Greg Clayman. Greg has joined MTV Networks as VP of Wireless. As we know MTV has exclusive deals with Virgin (US) and Motorola (ROW) but the team also manages the wireless activities of VH1, CMT and ComedyCentral.
Are Traasdahl. Are is leaving Telenor Interactive to form a new company that will offer branded mobile content mainly on the US market and in cooperation with the US media companies.
Walter Adamson. Walter seems to be one of the leading industry analysts for i-mode and he has a blog at www.imodestrategy.com. He is setting up an industry initiative for i-mode together with the government of Victoria in Australia. As you may know, Telstra recently announced the launch of imode service by the end of November this year.
Axel Roselius. Axel recently moved to Los Angeles from Berlin. He is a seasoned interactive TV and new media veteran and he is looking for his next gig. You can take a look at Axel’s profile on LinkedIn.
MACROMEDIA UPDATE
- Macromedia MAX 2004: The annual Macromedia developer event hosting thousands of people will be staged in the wonderful and entertaining New Orleans on November 1-4. The event will include a full day (Mon Nov 1) of mobile sessions and more mobile sessions are baked into the main sessions of the event. Macromedia will be making important mobile announcements at the event and entire mobile management team will be present so this is the chance to come and figure out the mobile Flash business opportunity and to leave with all questions answered! Naturally I will be there the entire time as well, together with my new Mobile Content Team colleagues George Linardos and Brad Auerbach..
- http://www.macromedia.com/macromedia/events/max/
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Disclaimer: Opinions presented herein are those of the undersigned and do not represent the position or message of any company I might be affiliated with.
