The French hospitality with the Eiffel Tour as the back yard

Welcome to my back yard...

Facebook is turning 5 and we are getting a free token, someone said boorrriiinnnnggg?...

Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg writes, “To express our appreciation, we’ve created a “Thank You” gift, which will be available tomorrow in the Facebook Gift Shop for you to to give freely to others. In the spirit of celebrating connections between people, we encourage you to use this gift to give thanks to your friends, colleagues and family members with whom you are connected on Facebook.”

The gesture is appreciated and part of the “mutual faith strategy” towards the loyal users of facebook. I would of expect a more exciting way to celebrate the occasion that involves maybe an interactive program/activity, surprising design and features or even an interesting web campaign. but who knows, they might surprise us after all.

Social networking and web mobile usage

Social networking has been a driving user to be upwardly mobile. Facebook's mobile website grew from 5 million users at the beginning of 2008 to 15 million by November. The downside is that it does not support operators all over the world.

According to tech analysts eMarketer, more than 800 million people will access social networks worldwide on their mobile devices by 2012, compared with 82 million in 2007! It’s time for mobile social applications…

Some figures (http://www.news.com.au/) - Mobile web surfers go online looking for music (43 per cent), games (33 per cent) or sports news and results (32 per cent). Other users shared photographs (70 per cent), ringtones (46 per cent) and music (46 per cent).

Introducing smarta.com – LinkedIn watch out

Clean updated design with the slogan of “Think Create Growth” characterizes the new business networking site for entrepreneurs - smarta. Attractive look and feel, which implies that a serious though and strategy is behind this site for entrepreneurs. Yes I definitely feel comfortable at smarta.com…

The site is more than just a networking place it’s got interesting case studies, video diaries and business oriented content and tools. The real value is the ability to set a new business in 30 minutes and feature short video and advices on varies sides of starting and growing the business.

Users will be able to interact and communicate with different business owners and entrepreneurs, create events, groups, access Q&A forums and review case studies.

The entrepreneur of smarta is Shaa Wasmund that is backed by the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, Vodafone and commercial law firm Mishcon de Reya. Even Bebo founder Michael Birch has decided to invest in it as well.

Spikko - free SMS from PC to Mobile

Spikko enables you to send free SMS from PC to mobile. Spikko solution doesn't require any downloads (telemessage, Triplay) and it's simple and straightforward. Just create a new email to number@spikkosms.com.

The interesting part is the cooperation with the operator. the SMS from PC to mobile is free but the reply SMS is charged for a lower fee than standard SMS fees. The business model is based on rev share between Spikko and the operator.

I like it because there is a value for the consumer - free SMS and attractive fee for the reply SMS. The operator is gaining a new market that is already there and now is leveraging it. Sppiko with it's creative, simple product can create interesting cooperations. I real challenge for Spikko now is to bring users and for this they either need the collaboration of the operator (I wouldn't count on it) or smartly promote it through viral marketing, SEM, PR and affiliate marketing.

Video conferencing for iPhone – it’s about time…

Apple plans to introduce video conferencing to future generations of the popular handset. The lack of video capabilities on the handset has been a major downside among customers. Tero Kuittinen, a Global Crown Capital analyst, said the iPhone must adopt a higher quality camera with video capabilities if it wishes to remain competitive with rivals Research In Motion, Samsung, HTC and LG.

Nokia has video conferencing in most of the 49 new devices launched every year but is this tech advantage is a real benefit to the leading handset manufacture? Apple will probably close the tech gap but will Nokia reposition itself as a cool, innovative and attractive brand? Time will tell they are sure trying so with the OVI.

As for the camera capabilities, after switching from my Nokia N95 8GB to Nokia E71 I can say that having a powerful, high quality phone camera (relatively of course) is useful and a basic requirement of our generation…

Nokia's second acquisition of LBS start up

After acquiring the start up Plazes http://plazes.com/ in 2008, the next lucky company to be acquired is Bit-Side. Bit-Side http://www.bit-side.com/ , which is a German based company with 39 employees is expected to be integrated into the Nokia Service Unit.

Bit-Side is a media-sharing software company with several products such as entertainment and games software and media –sharing programs for Androis, iPhone and Symbian.

Bit-Side is expected to focus mainly on Nokia maps. Seems like Nokia is looking for location based social networking. The company has strategically decided to expand and improve the navigation/LBS/maps etc in order to gain product competitive advantage and slowly move towards offering software as a complimentary product or stand alone.

Modu Gets $7M from Qualcomm; but would it be enough to actually launch the device?

I started hearing a different music from Mudo’s employees in the last couple of months, after the MWC 2008. Modu has an interesting idea but would the $7M be enough for the R&D completion, production, operation, marketing and sales?

It makes you wonder if for this competitive and dynamic market a low budget penetration strategy is recommended…think about the iPod massive global campaign to get into the music players market in 2005…It seems like a successful market penetration would need deeper pockets.

After raising a gigantic figure of $100M this round is not as promising but is probably crucial for the next period. Nevertheless, raising any dollar at this challenging time is impressive.

Nokia website change – is it the best execution to its strategy?

Align with the company's strategy to become an Internet leader; Nokia launches the new updates on the main site http://www.nokia.com/ . Nokia's continues effort to penetrate the new OVI services in the market is finally revealed at the home page. I actually wondered how long it would take Nokia to distribute OVI services through all their channels, especially the main site.

Talking about it on their home page is a significant move but is it enough? Let's say I'm interested at finding out about Nokia games, why doesn't it have a link to N-gage and each of the services from the home page? Now I need to choose a region and then a minimum of 4 clicks (in cased I know what OVI is…). I'm sure Nokia's aim is to drive more traffic to it's' sites, so why not make it easy and accessible?

Nokia's multi-brand strategy (Nokia, OVI, Mosh-mobi, ect) should be re-examined as it may confuses consumers and not necessarily being as efficient as possible…

Mobile Persuasion

Interesting presentation, iPhone Vs Nokia Tube…is it a lost battle? Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Mobile Persuasion

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: mobile design)

I have a dream – Personal Home Page

Getting daily invitations to join social/business networks, blogs, websites, search engines and many other online initiatives emphasizes the amount of web traffic we all consume. On one hand, information is transferred quickly and the amount of data is gigantic. On the other hand, web usability has still along way to go to meet customers’ needs.

The “Favorite” option on your Explorer, Mozilla, or Chrome is indeed helpful in managing web favorite sites but is it the ideal solution? It requires an active search of “pulling” the info required. An easy to use platform “push” based is an opportunity.

Google obviously has an interest at creating a one stop solution for all it’s web applications but is it the perfect solution?

I have a dream that when I open my laptop I will first open my personal home page with a drag and drop option for all my web data with a personalized design and recent updated news. I have a dream that my personal home page would have several widgets for search, email accounts, calendar, all contacts and easy access to my favorite sites – business and personal. I have a dream (agreed with Google) that all my info, favorites, blogs, sites would be organized clearly, efficiently and comfortably…

Mobile Trends for 2009

Taking into consideration the global economic slowdown, leading players at the mobile industry will have to adjust quickly and provide more source of revenue or increase existing channels to compensate decreasing mobile usage. Here are major trends for revenue growth:
1. SMS usage growth – despite of the economic crisis SMS usage is expected to grow, especially among the youth segment but not only.
2. Mobile advertising and ticketing/ coupons. Instead of receiving the invoice or ticket to your email, which is definitely not the best solution for the environment, customers will start receiving it as a MMS to the mobile. Easier, convenient and environment friendly.
3. Content and more content
4. Location Based Services – but not necessarily paid services. Google, Nokia and other players offer free maps; the trend of paying for navigation is yet to come.
5. Social networking on the go – the revolution of facebook, flicker and twitter will expand to the mobile as well.
6. Mobile Internet – dramatic increase of internet usage and a larger variety of services offered
7. Touch screen/ high end devices – for niche market
8. Mobile security – preparing the surface for mobile frauds and scams. Having access to growing information and billing methods
9. Bluetooth is becoming an advertising platform. Finally marketers will start to acknowledge this technological advantage for promoting products/services within a geographical area.
10. Quick Recognition/ 2DBar Codes – campaigns on newspapers and billboards that provide user with very fast access to information – anything from an SMS to a mobile link, to an application download. QR reader should be installed on the device (Nokia, Android devices).

Mobile market slow down

The worldwide economic slump is predicted to impact global mobile market. 2007 was a successful year to the industry with 16% growth. This year global sales are expected to reach only 10-11%. Taking into consideration that most of the growth will take place in emerging market.

As per the devices, a large majority will be low - end mobiles for the low – end markets. The profit margins for those products are lower than the high- end products. It is becoming more and more a game of number.

From the manufactures perspective, the SME will struggle and it seems like the leaders will manage to leverage their dominancy in the market for the long run.

Goan beach vacation

After quite a challenging flight we have finally arrived… (Excellent flights, both aircrafts were half vacant but still need to complain about something :-) the taxi from the goan airport took us to palolem beach in less than 2 hours. At first sight you get a bit of shook – welcome to India – cows conveniently walking in what you may call a street, dogs, no exact roads and how can I describe the smell… after asking our driver to take us to a quite nice place he took us to Neptune Point which is just at the south point of palolem. Palolem Tranquil, idyllic and laid-back, Palolem is a beautiful beach in Goa so get ready here we are for the best vacation ever.

Neptune Point – beautiful sunset, great sleep, the ultimate quite but I was extremely determined to find even a better place as far as the hut’s concern and thought about getting the beach experience. Apparently it was a good idea and luckily found a nice, green, beachfront resort like – ciarans - http://www.ciarans.com/.

Ciarans – fabulous 5 days spent with new friends Ro & Mike from the UK and Paulina form Poland. Ocean-view Cottage - Double cottage with en-suite bathroom, outdoor ground level veranda seating area overlooking the beach and ocean! Amazing food, beautiful clean beach and pure fun, this is what I call paradise with IL…happy, happy, happy

One of the things that amazes me is the “me 2” approach of the micro business environment, they are all selling the same things, no differentiation, no branding/marketing/sales strategy (I probably went a bit too far). Very hard to make money if you are selling the same thing as your neighbor… one important basic lesson – be unique, different and create real value for your potential customers.

Startups management adjustments

While mature companies might have the experience, strong brand, successful solutions and most importantly deep pockets with ongoing revenues; start ups have innovative solutions, a vision and if they're lucky, an investment from a recognized VC . Obviously, this is an opportunity for the survived companies to lead the market naturally with fewer competitors and become a dominant player so what should be the KFS for accomplishing those goals?

Well like always it depends, depends on the stage of the start up. If the product development is in an advanced position, it is not the time to cut on business development and marketing resources. It is much recommended though to outsource certain positions and jobs and strengthens the focus of the organization. Obviously in a seed and early stage it is important to continue the R&D. But once again, being focused and align with the product/startup strategy while maintaining company's operation scope.

Most importantly, delivering the message of efficiency, responsibility and management control, is a key success factors for startups to survive hard economic times and even flourish and grow in the long term.

Execution, Execution, Execution

Understanding the importance of mobile operating system popularity, apple continues to penetrate into the mobile market with the 3G iPhone, that sold 1 million devices over the first weekend last month and with the new app store. The ability to download applications (1000 different application) is the integration of the mobile hardware and software and this is the real battle between the mobile giants: apple and Nokia.

Nokia also offers a wide variety of games under N-Gage, music stores, photo and video sharing and uploading for free, maps and navigation services. Having the platform of Ovi and Nokia software market, the company's aim is to build a third party developers community for the S60 Symbian platform.

The race between the two giants is not over as a third player is expected to get into the game with a new free OS Android by google. Once they all understand the market roles it's all about execution, User interface, usability and value for money, the real celebration for the consumers begins…

Italian solution to Parking and Amnesia

Mobile 3.0?

Gaming, mobile TV, social networking and Internet mobile are the hottest trends for the 2008 internet. It’s been around for a while now and the industry is now focusing on commercializing the long tail treat…following the Internet Com.vention today it seems like the industry entrepreneurs and decision makers (from the technology side) might be running at a speed world record whereas the mass market is left behind. While the innovation of the mobile and internet arena is boosting, the question left is how fast will the consumers adjust to the new invention and adapt the value added services…

Mobile Trends for Developed Markets in 2008

Mobile Operators facing Increased Competition on their Core Business:

• Increased competition: MVNO, Fixed Operators and ISPs
• Threat on revenues: Price pressure on SMS and voice, regulatory constraints
• Reducing costs and generating new revenue streams: 3G investment, FMC strategies

Mobile Operators aim is to generate higher Revenues from Mobile Services through Value Added Services such as:

• Internet Applications Entertainment – Video/Music/Images/Mobile TV
• Messaging
• Advertising/M-Commerce
• Gaming
• Navigation & LBS

Main trends that are identified are:

• Content Management Platforms - Users are consuming more content.
  Content and rich media are catalysts of ARPU. Solutions include: Management, Personalization, Content Adaptation, Marketing, Rich Media (Video, Music, Games).
• Device Interface and Usability Technologies - Users are adopting new sensor-driven technologies such as touch-panel displays, enhanced camera phones and gyros. All of these rising technological solutions are part of the drive to allow integration of advanced applications into mobile devices such as Gaming, Video & Music, Healthcare, Commerce and IT.
• Mobile TV / P2P / VoIP - The established communication platforms will remain the leading source of revenues. Emerging technologies and new business models are changing the way consumers pay for these services (VoIP) leading operators to develop more advanced services (MobileTV).
• Internet & Mobile Convergence - Internet and mobile convergence will change the way consumers use the two platforms. The consumption of media will no longer be the same in killer applications such as UGC, Social Networking, Advertising, Search and Instant Messaging.
• Mobile Advertising - Advertisers are offering new revenue-generating models in the mobile space led by new value added services such as Sponsored Calls, SMS, Search and Content.
• Personalized Services - Specialized features and phones designed for targeted services and applications will allow a segmentation of users.