Archive for FOMM
by Imran Ali
November 25, 2007 at 9:49 am · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, FOMM, Email, Messaging
Interestingly, prior to Debi’s trip to Orange Mixr a few days ago and her extensive analysis of the decline of email, there’d been some weak signals that serious people were beginning to address this topic quite publicly, speculating on the future of what was the internet’s principle messaging format.
Most notably, Union Square Ventures partner, Fred Wilson, gathered a group of individuals - including former Microsoft Exchange head-guru Tom Evslin - to brainstorm the future of email in a session procatively titled ‘SMTP is dead, long live SMTP!’. Fred’s group also included luminaries such as Matt Blumberg, Brad Feld, Phil Hollows and Jeff Pulver.
The trigger for this activity seemed to be various public discussions regarding the evolution of large webmail services into a consumer’s principle social graph and an interesting article from Slate. Here’s a round up of the most interesting commentary…
That last post, really sums up the debate - the discussion is really about the evolution of messaging as it shifts from one form and medium to another, driven by ethnographic, social and technological shifts.
by Debi Jones
November 24, 2007 at 6:20 am · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, FOMM
Orange, Europe’s third largest mobile network operator, held their inaugural Orange Mixr event this week in San Francisco. The event provided a combination of wine tasting reception and topical discussion. Attendees were invited by Orange Labs to engage on the topic and with one another. The topic, “The Death of Email?” is apropos given MM2’s focus this week on The Future of Mobile Messaging.
INTRODUCTION
The program began with an introduction of Orange Labs and describing the rise of SMS: “two-thirds of a trillion messages will be sent this year.” The indictments against E-mail were the typical: “outlook is limited,” “what about spam?,” and “kids use text messaging.” These complaints came from the executives of companies that provide SMS solutions. Of course, the issues of SMS spam and scams were ignored.
Another issue with the discussion was that only Outlook was discussed as a mail client. This created a cognitive dissonance persistent throughout the program. Outlook which is primarily an enterprise entrapment is weak in it’s consistent and constant communication capability when compared to Gmail. Gmail’s integration with Gtalk delivers presence along with a chat function into the E-mail experience. Presence is a linchpin feature for always-connected bursty communication. Within Gmail, one knows if their contacts are on line, their presence state and have the flexibility to choose immediate contact through chat or time-independent contact through E-mail.
A PARTIAL STORY
There was much made of the increased usage of SMS and the decreased usage of E-mail along with loosely coupled statistics on the transport mechanism preferences of teenagers. While perhaps a contrarian point of view, conclusions based upon vague and broad level data points leave too many questions hanging in the air. SMS isn’t solely a mechanism of person-to-person (P2P) communication. It is used for alerts, notifications, reminders, confirmations, marketing, advertisements, search results, directory information results, WAP push delivery, billing (PSMS) and etc. With so many uses, flat rate message tariffs and budding mobile marketing usage, one must expect ever increasing use of text messaging. And more salient, perhaps, is that we’ve yet to study the messaging habits of these youth texters once they’ve joined the adult population in professions and corporate environments. The variation in communication style and requirements for a 17 year-old cheerleader compared to a 28 year-old corporate attorney might include some shifts in messaging use and transport choice.
There are other pressures on email as the preferred communication transport including: dropping voice tariffs, the rise of picture and video messaging, and other behavioral shifts. One trend in behavioral shift is the use of the “missed call” notification. In an effort to be efficient, many subscribers have opted for returning calls listed in their missed call history list, rather than listen to voicemails. And subsequently, many have opted to refrain from leaving voicemails or sending email as the act of caller id delivery through simply placing a call is sufficient to notify someone that you’ve requested communication with them. And finally, email has been cyber-shifted by social networking services.
WHEN EMAIL IS NOT EMAIL
MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and all social networking services provide an E-mail message feature. These are often referred to as private messages which are saved for retrieval on the SNS website, and include, ironically, a notification sent to the user’s email address. The behavior of sending private messages is no different than the behavior of sending email. The distinction is, instead, a function of transport and storage. SNS stores messages in a database for retrieval on a website, while email stores messages in a “message store” for retrieval through either an email client or a website. So, ultimately, the distinction lies in UI.
Unfortunately, these issues weren’t addressed or even discussed at the event. Those who were solicited to comment on the demise of email, while somewhat balanced on opinion of a yes or no argument, represented mobile application developers. For example, Adam Smith from Xobni was invited to comment first, and Jason Goldman from Twitter was also invited to comment. Can you predict which side of the argument these participants chose? Of course, it was predictable.
What was less predictable was the commentary on the economics of providing SMS-based services. Namely, the absence of an easy way for young companies to share in the revenue they create by driving additional message traffic through the mobile operator’s network. There were additional complaints about the high price burden placed on small companies who must pay aggregrators and/or operators for the messages sent by their users, while they build a user base, and experiment with business models.
Orange representatives displayed disciplined restraint during this period of the discussion by remaining quiet and listening. No attempts were made to move the discussion away from these criticisms. Of course, the conflict is aptly described in the opening statements of this discussion describing the volume of text messaging traffic. What startup can generate enough messaging traffic to gain the mobile operator’s attention against billions of messages?
EVENT IMPRESSIONS
Obivously, the event was not short on content. Attendance was robust with roughly 50 people representing startup application development companies, a large company or two, indy technology press, analysts and corporate press. Any inaugural event has it’s challenges and the Orange Mixr wasn’t perfect, but it offered an interesting and occasionally spirited discussion along with excellent networking through a mix of attendees (a tad too Silicon Valley centric) and some lovely wine and appetizers. I’m eager to see where Orange Labs takes the Mixr concept and kudos to our hosts for this first effort.
by Debi Jones
November 20, 2007 at 7:05 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, Mobile Tech, Events + Conferences, Mobile Email, mobile social networking, Instant Messaging, FOMM, Venture Capital, Under the Radar, 3Jam
Venture capitalists Tim Chang, Norwest Venture Partners, and Veneet Buch, Blue Run Ventures, speak from an investors perspective on “The Future of Mobile Messaging.” While attending Under the Radar - Mobility last week at Microsoft’s Mountain View campus, I had the chance to ask Tim and Vineet about their predictions on the future of mobile messaging. They have different ideas about what will be the most critical aspects of messaging and the role of mobile network operators in those developments.
To toggle between the two interviews, click on the “Play Now” link associated with the interview you wish to listen to.
Tim Chang on FOMM [6:39m]:
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Vineet Buch on FOMM [6:23m]:
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by Ewan Spence
November 19, 2007 at 6:57 am · Filed under FOMM
I talked last week about what form the next big Mobile messaging would come from (see here), and today I want to go a little bit further and talk about how it will get to you. What’s surprising, looking at all the possible forms of future messaging (or new media, or Brian-ism’s, or whatever you call them), is that the transport mechanism is already there.
Either you’re going to be working with some form of real-time interaction, in which case you’ll be looking at 3G and defaulting back to a Wi-Fi connection if it is available (although I expect seamless switching to whichever option is cheaper for you to be part of the de facto setup in the next year or so), or you’ll have some sort of delayed ‘send something – wait – receive something – reply’ loop. And it’s in the latter where I think we’ll see messaging 2.0. Because all the building blocks are there.
The key is the transport mechanism. How do you get one chunk of data from one handset to another? And manage that with the least amount of fuss, with cross-network compatibility, and a high probability that the receiving handset will be able to understand what’s coming in. The form of the message can’t be fully predicted, but I’ll put money that it could easily be digitized, and sent as a discrete packet of data of up to around 500K (with that value rising alongside Moore’s law).
So what does the mobile industry have that provides cross network capacity, can handle discrete packages of data, is understood by the majority of handsets and (most importantly) already integrated into the billing systems of every carrier? MMS – The Multimedia Messaging Service.
Not only is it available, but it is still under-used. It can handle different formats of data, from still images, to video and audio, depending on the handset. And certainly in the UK if you receive an MMS that your handset can’t cope with, you can look at it online and get it there. But as handsets improve and functionality ramps up, I’d expect more and more handsets to be able to handle MMS as easily as email handles attachments.
The only thing stopping the next generation of mobile messaging is imagination. The form factors are there, the transport mechanism is there, the question is, are the entrepreneurs and VC’s there? And if not, why not?
by Darla Mack
November 19, 2007 at 5:46 am · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, Bluetooth, FOMM
In 2003 it was reported that 88% of the wireless minutes logged in the US were done so while operating a vehicle.
In January this year, Ford and Microsoft launched an exclusive, in car communication system that functions via Bluetooth or USB. It connects your mobile phone or digital music player and opens up a world of connectivity solutions right from the comfort of your steering wheel.
It’s funny… when you think of mobile you think of “something that is capable of moving”.
This is a breakthrough concept, especially for American’s because we spend up to 2 hours in our cars when commuting. Mind you, that’s not including time spent if and when stuck in traffic.
As you can see in the video, the technology is amazing. Besides being able to do voice calling and listening to stored music, which is already possible with some devices, consumers now have the ability to utilize audible text messaging.
I’m sure that many do, but don’t admit to sending sms while driving. I can remember back when I was a heavy UPOC user some members of the group would attest to sending a message while driving. Not a very safe thing to do, but with technology like this I can see those numbers increasing. How could it not? With the option being right there at your fingertips without having to move your hands from the 10 - 2 position.
But who is this technology for and why limit it to a Ford device? I can see this being popular with business users and the youth market. But what about the average user?
While the technology is groundbreaking in my opinion, I can’t see myself justifying it by the purchase of a new Ford or Lincoln vehicle. Hopefully something more stand-alone will be available. But if you are in the market for a new Ford this would be for you.
According to Ford’s Media site, SYNC will be standard on Lincoln vehicles and widely available on Ford and Mercury vehicles. In most cases, SYNC will be included as standard equipment on high-series models from Ford and Mercury – the Ford Edge Limited or Ford Focus SES, for example. On models where SYNC is optional, it will be priced at $395.
by Paul Ruppert
November 17, 2007 at 10:41 am · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, SMS, FOMM
I’ve plied my trade as a mobile executive by positioning an unknown value proposition, evangelizing it, mitigating customers’ risk, igniting revenues and swiftly harvesting market conditions. I’m not a long term prognosticator and having the privilege of a conversation with you I’m not claiming the title of futurist. Hence, from my practical perspective I think there are paths in plain view worth following for the future of mobile messaging. In short I think we are likely to see evolutionary not revolutionary change for mobile messaging.
The power of a short, asynchronous “snack†length communication has made text the dominant format. I really don’t think the service layer experience will change much. It will in fact increase and endure. Email to mobile and mobile IM are not “messaging†from my purist point view. I do think that messaging technology at the technical access layer will migrate outside of the network from where it resides today. And, I believe we are entering an upward slope of use from an emerging influencer which will lead to the next iteration in the messaging experience.
Flat clouds over the horizon
“Is texting terminal?†Not hardly. In reality we are at an adolescent stage for text based messaging. Only a dozen years from the first fully interoperable country market (the UK), the person to person (P2P) messaging segment continues to grow there at over 25% per year. SMS is a defacto “platform†and text messaging will increasingly drive “transactional†demand of its own use. What is “transactional†demand? It is when a standard or currency becomes so pervasive that it drives an inherent demand for itself given its universal use, application and acceptance. Think global currencies of record such as the US dollar and the Euro.
SMS text is the “currency of record.†That will not change. Ring tones, content, alerts, OTA, advertising, banking and P2P messaging all rely on SMS. The currency of record will only get stronger with globally scaled opportunities tapping traffic from the opening of the bottom of the pyramid consumer markets and ever more use by the developed market economies. Consider just how much more messaging will occur with the advent of full M transactions, machine to machine messaging, and other consumer services, as well as the emergence of “prosumer†messaging (enterprise services driven by consumer behavior) and you see a clear picture of SMS’ strength. Forecasts by TomiAhonen consulting predict SMS global revenues to break US$ 100 billion by 2008. 4 billion handsets by 2010 and average service margins exceeding 80%. According to Portia research, over 40% of the planet’s population can be reached via SMS. Very big numbers for texting which will not sunset soon. Unlikely that voice or other modality substituted messaging will depose text messaging or even alter it much.
Death of Hub & Spoke Architecture
Will the underlying technology of transiting change? Yes. After all this is technology and it is constantly in flux and under influence from a number of quarters. The shift will be from today’s in-network based short message service center (SMSc), to a shared, repeat shared, SIP based technology which resides between the networks and not within them. These shared access points will be more advanced than the shared carrier connectivity that is contemplated today. Current messaging architecture (in network) is a hub and spoke environment. The future of messaging lies in a flatter architecture with IP and Ethernet technologies, essentially an IP network cloud which resides between the mobile network operators. Why is it between operators? Because this flat, open architecture will be driven by the need/demand for access by adjacent segment offerings seeking to directly link to the messaging network.
This change in architecture will be driven by the pressure to open up access to application providers, content developers, handset manufacturers and adjacent web communities such as social networks–all as a result of the continuing growth of text messaging. The entire communications ecosystem will seek access, which will be the primary driver of change. In fact, this is already happening through the initial developments of the “mobile internet.â€
This does not mean the operators will lose their influence. Only Nixon could open China, and so it is in the interest of the carriers to craft the middle mechanism. The scope and scale of messaging requires an honest broker—best created by the carriers—which will be formed to manage access. This is not a novel operating model. From engineering technologies (3GPP) to cellco networks (GSMA), to phone numbering (Neustar) to the internet (W3C) there are numerous actors that could play this role.
It will be in the operators’ core business interests to shift to the middle. With the increasing volume and commodity pressures of messaging, migrating management to the “white space†will improve their business processes and lower their costs. It will not be the carrier network which will impart value, but the federated points of presence that impart the value. Just as financial markets have multiple access points, a migration to the “white space†between carriers and open access messaging is an inevitability, Somewhere just over the rainbow Dorothy, the operators will start to bind themselves to this technical shift from service to access knowing there is a greater future because of it.
The 15ers
The biggest changes in messaging will emerge from social networking services as they migrate to the mobile world. Twitter is the forerunner of this change. They deftly adapted their service to the mobile access point and there will be more to follow. Consider who will be the main drivers of the change–the 15ers. What are 15ers? If you’re over 40, they are already in your home. They live in a constantly connected bedroom culture. Most engage in more complex technically connected communications than a corporate executive with his blackberry and Outlook in and out box. They are your adolescent children coming of age in 2015.
The 15ers do not go “on line†and “off lineâ€, they just “are.†No difference. Distinctions, if any, are more about personas: home, school, web, gaming, search, or work. Their social facilitation is centered on technology from mobile to web. 15ers are the first fully digital natives. Their older European siblings grew basic SMS text, and the 15ers will alter the access points of messaging, going beyond peer to peer, to “4 moreâ€.
Messaging demands of the 15ers will focus integration along 4 dimensions of their lives and drive their behavior as adult messaging customers: content (my stuff), space (here, where I am), people (family, colleagues, and friends) and time (now). To 15ers the mobile is the nuclear link point, and as social networking services expand, they will become the first point of contact, which in turn will shift the access point to a flat architecture for messaging. These messaging channels of the future will require messaging capabilities in all 4 dimensions/vectors. The mobile platform is ideally suited for social networking services, and messaging is ideally suited for the 4 dimensions driving social networking services. The 15ers increasing use of social networking binds, and the resulting expansive demand and consumption of such services will be the force that transforms the messaging experience. Mobile will be the life infrastructure for the 15ers.
Is this the Canary in the Coal Mine?
These are just my top line telltales. Beneath the surface there are indicators that text is becoming the primary purpose of the mobile phone. In 2006, the UK became the first European country where the majority of all phone owners already prefer to communicate via SMS than through voice calls. According to JD Power’s annual survey, voice call minutes declined by 26% while SMS text messaging grew by 44%. In 2007, Ireland’s telecoms regulator ComReg had the same findings. Graying Boomers are catching on to it. Who knows where this might end up…that’s what I think the future of mobile messaging is.
Ok now it’s your turn. What do you think I missed or am wrong about? What do you consider when you think about the future of mobile messaging? Upfront I said I’m not a prognosticator. I prefer conversations. Please share your perspectives, critiques, additions, subtractions, bravos, taunts and tomatoes via comments. Thanks for your interest.
by Russell Shaw
November 14, 2007 at 8:44 am · Filed under Privacy + Security, Mobile Etiquette, Facebook, FOMM
I believe we are reaching a point in which the privacy-violating implications of mobile messaging are reaching a flashpoint.
I explored an aspect of this in a ZDNet blog posting I made yesterday. Seems as though we’re seeing the start of a trend in which students take camera-enabled cell phones (aren’t they all?) to school, take unflattering photos and videos of their teachers, attach these photos to SMS and MMS messages, and then post them on sites such as MySpace and YouTube.
These actions hit home for me. The girlfriend just recently taught photography to some vivacious middle schoolers. She’s described giddy kids taking pictures of their friends, their non-friends, and yes, even their teachers. And although these images were captured via camera, and not via camera phones, these kids all have cell phones anyway.
What’s to prevent their new-found enthusiasm and expertise from being applied to photos taken with their cell and then spread to each other as well as posted on the Internet?
And I need to tell you, we’re not just looking at kids, here.
While my mobile does not have video capture and MMS capability, It’s just a couple of clicks from my camera phone to a posting on my Facebook or Flickr photostream. If I were spurious or mean-spirited, I see funky stuff every day that I could photograph and either SMS or post. A homeless person pushing a shopping cart. A guy picking his nose. Even just something as innocent as a traffic jam- with license plate numbers revealed.
I guess my point is that while camera-enabled and video-enabled cell phones substantially enable us to obtain a more varied and ubiquitous view of our world, let us not just gratuitously use these tools just because we can.
by Imran Ali
November 14, 2007 at 6:19 am · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, FOMM
A couple weeks ago, my good friend Surj (aka GigaSURJ!) and I got into a late night videochat about the pain of video calls as his daughter Naiya caught her first glimpse of an unshaven Uncle Imran.
We figured that increased fidelity, convergence and imaging sophistication weren’t the only trajectories for video call products, but simplicity could provide enhanced emotional connectedness.
Imagine a phone that could only call one person, or deliver photomessages to only one other person. Sounds dumb right? But that very constraint could be its most elegantly singular function. So how about this…
- Two webcam-like devices, that are paired or twinned at the factory.
- ‘Get1Give1′ - one cam is shipped to you, the other to a loved one.
- Whenever the cams find connectivity they connect to each other - automatically and permanently. Zero-configuration required.
- Wherever those cams are in the world, they’re always connected to each other, like a portal between any two points on the planet.
The possibilities are kinda interesting, essentially permanently collapsing the distance between any two points - both physically and emotionally - creates a sense of intimacy that families, partners and even coworkers would welcome. The simplicity of unboxing a cam and just switching it on is irresistible.
We realised we’d actually seen such a device at MIT’s Media Lab, albeit on a larger scale; the iCom project provided always-on video connectedness for Media Lab’s US, Indian and Irish sites, helping students and faculty feel part of the same community of researchers. Also, I remembered the story of a friend in London who’d leave her Skype connection open all day to her husband in Helsinki, not to talk, but to be able to hear the rhythms of each other’s lives. Human Connectedness 
Surj, a resident of Oregon, was thinking of his Mother here in the UK; something he could give her that always worked, didn’t need calls or presence or sessions - it just helped to keep his kids in touch with their grandma.
Simplicity in design. I think we’ll be seeing more of it
by Imran Ali
November 12, 2007 at 9:20 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, FOMM
Today saw the launch of the One Laptop Per Child foundation’s Give 1 Get 1 programme; a chance for North Americans to donate a much vaunted XO laptop - ‘like a yellow bracelet‘ - to a child in the developing word, at the same time as receiving an XO of their own.
It’s easy to be cynical, but OLPC has attracted legitimate criticism of its educational foundations and also widespread acclaim for the XO’s innovative design; a low power screen, manual charging, mesh networking and most notably the Sugar user interface. With email, videochat, VoIP, IM as well as an integrated camera, microphone and intelligent mesh wifi - the XO is inherently a mobile communication platform.
Also, both hardware and software have been developed with open source principles, to the point where a ‘View Source‘ key directly encourages kids to ‘get under the hood’.
If OLPC’s vision goes to plan, expect to see XOs in the hands of millions of children across the developing world. This could be a profound and dramatic inflection point in the development of mobile communication, as a global generation of children and educators emerge where their principle messaging and computing experience is an XO, unshackled from proprietary software or imprisoned within telco networks.
A utopian vision perhaps, but nonetheless flooding societies with cheap, capable and connected computing devices will have some interesting implications for messaging and mobility in coming years.
by Ewan Spence
November 12, 2007 at 3:01 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, Devices, SMS, Mobile Tech, Platforms, Mobile Email, Nokia, Instant Messaging, Communication, FOMM
In all the fuss over technology, I wanted to take a step back and think about what the next form of messaging will be, and if we can’t do some logical thinking about it.
We all have five senses, touch, sight, hearing, taste and smell (and the arguments about there being a sixth sense too, that’s hard to explain, it’s a psychic connection, inside of your brain, so you can understand people like Shirley McClain are best left to The Animaniacs). Whatever form the next form of mobile messaging is going to be, it’s going to be using one of the first five.
While Nokia have piloted a touch screen with feedback (so that touching an on-screen key feels like a key), I think the vibrate alert on most mobile phones is about as far as we’ll get with touch – although I’m sure some enterprising programmer will come up with a morse code signaler it’s not going to be mainstream. Taste and smell are also something else I think we can safely ignore – scratch and sniff movies never made it out the drive-in 50’s movie scene, don’t expect Verizon to hail this as the next great boundary.
Which leaves hearing and seeing. So, audio, pictures, and moving images in some form or another. Seeing works for images and video is naturally a combination of seeing and hearing – plus of course we shouldn’t forget text or rich media (text, images and layout) content, which comes under seeing.
What about how it gets to your device? Well let’s talk timescales. You’re going to be having some form of communication with another person – and it’s either real time, or ‘delayed.’ So let’s take these and throw them into our senses and see what we can get.
Real Time Hearing
This should be obvious – it’s the core function of a phone, and what every single handset has to do. Important to remember that any service complements the full duplex audio of voice calls.
Delayed Hearing
An obvious way to supplement voice calls is to have an answering machine, where people can leave you messages for you to listen to at a later date. Again you’d be hard pushed to find a cellphone plan that doesn’t include voicemail in some form. And don’t forget a number of these allow you to forward just a voicemail to someone else, without actually having to phone them, Of course this is all network based, forcing you to dial in. It is possible on some smartphones to record audio, and then send that as data, so here’s one avenue that isn’t being fully exploited – although some carriers in the Far East make a great play on this.
Delayed Reading
Get some text, read it, and if you can, reply to it. Your classic SMS (Short message service) takes you to 160 characters, and MMS (Multimedia Message Service) originally took you up to 100K of textual data.
Real Time Reading
Strangely, the chat room experience hasn’t really made it mainstream on mobile phones yet, although you could argue that SMS just about manages to be real time with two people. Certainly the likes of IRC can run on devices (WirelessIRC running on Nokia S60 devices proves that to critical acclaim), but I’d regard the speed of text entry to be too slow for mortals (as opposed to 14 year olds) to do real time chat on current devices.
Real Time Watching
Video calls – the classic sci-fi of having a camera on you and conversing that way. It was demo’ed in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, and the technology is on pretty much every single 3G enabled handset. It’s here, it’ll improve over time, but are we going to see an uptake on it?
Delayed Watching
Think a mix of podcasting, video calling and voicemail and you have one of the missing elements in the matrix that isn’t talked about. It’s not something that the networks provide in their infrastructure directly, but there’s nothing to stop you doing a little home recording on your hone, and then get the option to send it on to other - normally via email or MMS, but don’t discount ‘broadcast’; options such as a direct upload to YouTube.
Breaking it down into the areas like that, and you see that the actual properties of a mobile message are all pretty much covered in today’s modern devices. So looking for gaps isn’t going to find the next form of mobile messaging. After all blogs had been about, and SMS had been about, but it wasn’t until Twitter came along that the idea of ‘blogging SMS’ took hold in the technology market (and even then people are still working out what Twitter actually is).
No the future of mobile messaging isn’t going to be filling a product gap, it’s going to be exploiting the existing technology in strange ways, with new twists, and a crazed mind coupled with some VC funding to let them work on it for six months. To be honest I can’t wait to see what the next idea is going to be.
