by Ewan Spence
January 28, 2008 at 9:24 am · Filed under SMS, Communication, Acquisitions/Mergers, Crowdsourcing
How do you tell an influential group of people that something really important is happening? Well the traditional way of getting your message out is the press release – and there’s a certain amount of legal requirements for trading companies that mean the press release will always be with us in the future – but as Web 2.0 and technology continues to become entwined with grass roots marketing and news, the landscape ois going to thorw up some interesting ways to look at communication.
One f those was last week’s announcement by English Football team Newcastle United. They’ve been looking for a new manager for some time, and announced their signing last week. The normal way would be the press release from above. Not this time. What were the main stages to the announcement? Well the press conference/press release was third. Before that, news went up on the website.
But before all of that, the first official news was blasted out to all the Fan Club members by an SMS text message.
I love the fact that the people that care most about the club were the first to be told; and that anyone who got that text message was very likely to jump up and tell everyone else close by that Kevin Keegan was coming back to the club. Not only have you continued to develop a superb relationship with the fans (Newcastle United are probably second in terms of rabid supporters in England, just behind Manchester United), but you’ve created a little viral message bomb all on your own.
Being able to harness people power to get your message out is going to become ever more relevant in the Web 2.0 world of tomorrow. Companies are going to be looking to make their users into evangelists – which in turn not only drives up the user base of the project, but also reduces the money spent on traditional advertising. The recent Le Web conference in Paris is a prime example of this. Everyone in the tech.conference circles was aware the event was happening – and over 1500 delegates proved the marketing worked. Total amount spent on advertising and marketing the event? $0.00.
Mobile Messaging 2.0 is not just about how the message is delivered, but how people react to that message. With a bit of planning and fore-thought, web 2.0 can not only complement the traditional methods of B2C communication, but enhance and increase the effectiveness of the message. There’s going to be a lot of innovation in this space as well, watch out for it!
by Russell Shaw
January 17, 2008 at 2:17 pm · Filed under SMS, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Payments, Acquisitions/Mergers, predictions
Now that I’ve finally gotten used to writing “2008″ on my checks (I still pay a few bills offline), I guess it is time to act like some of my co-inhabitants on these screens and post my own Mobile Messaging Predictions for 2008.
Ready? (o’course you are or you wouldn’t be here.
In no particular order of probability, they are:
The trend toward “free” texting will continue. Carriers, at least in North America, will bundle texting into overall pricing plans. Not that they wouldn’t raise the price of the overall plan to incorporate texting fees that used to be billed separately.
Twitter will be sold. Question is, to who? Google bought a competing app. Facebook might be a natural fit. I am thinking maybe AOL?
With 3G networks closer to reality MMS will really be multimedia-enabled. You can count on that.
iPhone will lose its AT&T Mobility exclusivity in the U.S. Not due so much to the hackers unlocking the iPhone to be used by other carriers, but Apple will realize the five-year exclusivity window is too long to forego potential revenue from non-AT&T customers stuck in the middle of their service contracts. A substantial payment from Apple to AT&T and things will loosen up.
Cricket Wireless will ally with another type of service provider to produce a triple-play. On my VoIP blog I’ve long been suggesting an alliance between energetic upstart Cricket and VoIP stand-alone Vonage to battle the triple-play offerings of the big service providers. K then, how’s a Cricket-Vonage-Boingo alliance sound?
Five more to go. (Blogger scratches head, a bit of ew-w-w- gross dandruff flakes descend to keyboard).
We’ll see the growth of dedicated Spanish-language dedicated mobile services. I envision an existing cell carrier teaming up with a Univision for a branded MVNO service. That’s service, not just a “press two” Spanish language channel.
More rich media adverts on mobiles. Not on record at especially wanting to see this, but faster mobile speeds, manic advertisers wanting to reach you everywhere- flippin’ inevitable.
Mobile payments will grow. There’s a bit of creative tension here between the mobile Web security experts at banks and merchants that want to “SSL” everything, and the mobile operators who need to facilitate their Web browsers to accept SSL seamlessly. There’s a movement toward reconciling those two imperatives.
More touch screen on mobiles. Apple, of course, is doing it with iPhone, and users tend to think it is cool. So why not in newer models of competiting handsets?
And finally:
Mobile search will still suck. Even Google hasn’t gotten it right. When I perform searches for these sites on my BlackBerry, too many non-optimized-for-mobile sites still seem to come up. That’s not even to mention some search results where you can just sniff the stink of jive mobile SEO jiggering that got some listed search results sites up there.
