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Off to Madrid for this evening’s Mobile Monday Madrid that will cover Mobile Advertising. The topic was on everybody’s lips in 2007 and was put forward by many mobile start-ups as THE revenue model of the future. Mobile Marketing and Advertising was previously covered at MobileMonday Barcelona in July 2006. Fast forward 2008 where we’ll focus on a reality check on the status of Mobile Advertising concretely today.

Speakers’ this evening include:

Philip Gontier, Sales Director EMEA, JumpTap Europe
Jefferson Wright Chandler, European Business Development Director at ShoZu Ltd
Juan Antonio Muñoz, Founder of Unkasoft
Iñaki Cabrera, Director of the Mobile Marketing Business Unit of Vodafone Spain
David Purón, Research and Development Engineer, Telefonica R+D. Open Mobile Alliance Requirements Development Working Group Chairman.

Manuel Alonso Coto, Dir. of the Master on Digital Advertising and Communications of the IE Business School will be the moderator.

I am really looking forward for the start-up presentations this evening, and also to Iñaki’s presentation on Vodafone’s Discovery Program, and David who leads the development of the Mobile Advertising 1.0 standards for Telefonica. We’re also going to launch a MobileMonday Madrid Kyte.tv channel tonight, more on that later here.

The event is fully booked!

2007 was a very prosperous and exciting year for mobile technology in general, still we’re just at the beginning of a new era of more magic to come in the mobile and web convergent area’s. So, traditionally I’m writing down 10 Mobile Trends for the coming year, always a good personal excercise how close one is predicting mobile market trends and an indicator of what I think will matter in 2008.

Read my Mobile and Wireless Trends for 2007 and check for yourself my gut feeling on what happened yet and what is still to come. It seems very obvious and easy but predicting trends can be tricky, just try it for yourself! Check also my del.icio.us for some interesting predictions from other technology blogs I bookmarked during holidays. One of my favorite readings during holidays is still Carlo Longino’s and Russell Buckley’s yearly predictions at Mobhappy. Do check them out!

So here are my Mobile and Wireless Trends for 2008:

1. Google’s Android and the Open Handset Alliance will definately take off in 2008. While the iPhone is doing probably the best job embracing mobile and web convergence, the Apple OS is still a closed system and used by a rather small market segment of users. Nokia’s Nseries - though all remarkeable devices - didn’t produce any breakthrough Symbian OS changes last year and is still too buggy to go mass-market - I don’t see my sister or father perform a device software update; which leaves the opportunity for Google and the Open Handset Alliance to get the new Linux-based operating system Android on several cutting-edge smartphones before year-end. Mobile OS, a truely competitive space in 2008!
   
2. The Rise of the Mobile Social Networks. M:Metrics released some promising data mid-2007 on the rise of the Mobile Social Networks. With the big social media networks all going mobile in 2007 (Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Bebo, …), this trend will continue to rise in 2008, sustained by more flat rate introductions on different markets.
   
3. Apple will be seriously attacked by the music industry on its own, once disruptive, iTunes business model. 2008 will be the year of further downfall of DRM and the raise of watermarked audio-files. With Sony BMG planning to drop DRM - the last of the Big Four record labels with Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and EMI Music, to throw in the towel on digital rights management. The end of DRM might embolden a host of new, online download venues initiated by the Big Four in its searches for a successful digital strategy. Note also the rise of new business models (!) giving away DRM-free, ad-supported music downloads, like the recently founded Rcrd Lbl by Peter Rojas. Read my DRM Free at Last! for a recent overview and links to previous posts on this topic.
4. Telefonica will introduce the 3G iPhone. To be announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February?
5. The return of the Location-Based Services. Since Nokia introduced the Nseries N95 with built in GPS, Location-Based Services are becoming exciting again. A new wave of mobile services and applications build on the location of the user (cell-ID and/or GPS) will see the light this year, driven by the open Google Maps API and flickr’s geotagged photo function. Read also my early 2005 coverage on the formerly known MoSoSos.
6. First iPhone competitors coming to market. Nokia will introduce a serious competitor for the iPhone. It has the hardware manufacturing intelligence and knowledge to come up with its own multi-touch screen interface. Biggest challenge for Nokia (and other manufacturers) will be to keep the OS user-experience as simple as the iPhone. Expect some great innovating devices from HTC too in 2008! (checkout the HTC Touch Dual).
7. Mobile Video Blogging starting to taking off. Though still to be used by early adopters, mobile video blogging tools such as Kyte.tv mobile are already doing a great job with Floobs and KaZiVu also looking very promising (both still in beta), not to forget about YouTube Mobile. All eyes will be on Seesmic however that has the right start-up vibe - instigated daily by its impressive experienced shareholders (and web 2.0 icons) and its very active beta-testers community. Imagining Seesmic to be used on your mobile phone is an easy one, the challenges for Seesmic are to bypass the complex technical issues and delivery of its great idea.
8. Mobile search, as already predicted last year will continue to be one of the most important and most used mobile applications. I keep this one in my list adding that some new players might disrupt the big Search market players, not having figured out the real mobile search issues such as accuracy, context, relevance, latency and the correct display of local and niche results.
9. PRM (Personal Rights Management) and Privacy policies and procedures will be high on the agenda for every entreprise and conscious connected individuals. Already talk of the connected crowds at LeWeb3, opening the Social Graphs might appear cool in your social media community but has to be done right! As a starter, check out Dataportability.org and watch Robert Scoble explaining his recent portability issues with Facebook.
10. Twitter and the breakthrough of the ultimate Mobile Presence Tool. Yes, Twitter is the utlimate mobile presence tool, since it’s the easiest to use (through SMS and mobile web access), and most accurate to stay connected at any time from anywhere… Jaiku has a definately a richer client but Twitter is the most easily integrated into most of your social networks, checkout MoodBlast that can simultaneously update multiple chat clients and web services presence tools. 2008 will also see the rise of lifestreaming apps like Tumblr, surprisingly simple on the web and looks great on your mobile phone.

Some of the downers of 2007:

- the sudden death of great blogger Marc Orchant - my deepest sympathies to Marc’s family.

- the whole blognation’s saga - one nation, many bugs…
- and just recently Om Malik’s heart attack - wish him strength, get well soon, Om!

Definately an urge for all bloggers not to forget about their daily excercise, no less!

I wish all my readers a great and magic 2008!

After december’s MobileMonday Barcelona event on Location-Based Services, the next MobileMonday Madrid event of December 17 covers Mobile Social Media.

Social Media has gone mainstream this year with popular sites such as MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, Flickr to only name the most popular. Social Media is the catalyst to the democratization of content publishing, transforming people from content readers into content publishers. Many of this social neworking & tools and sites can already be accessed from the mobile phone but the real challenges are lying into making all this user-generated content easily accesible on the phone in the right context while staying connected with your social network of friends wherever you are.

Another interesting line-up to cover and discuss this topic:

Jonathan Wood from SoonR, will explain how they deliver access to computer files and applications across converged networks by linking mobile devices to remote computers;

David Whitewood from trutap - who recently showcased at Under The Radar - Mobility event, will present their easy-to-use and free mobile service that combines all the elements of a young person’s social life into one application;

Christian Wiklund from Wichro will be presenting the 1st Wichro product, called ZKOUT. ZKOUT will be beta launched during Le Web 3 conference in Paris and launched to the public in Q1 2008. The service creates a bridge that connects your online and real world social networks;

Andy Abramson, author of VoIPWatch will talk about Mobile VoIP and Social Communications, as the blend between Social Networks and Social Media;

and Jaime González Rodríguez from Telefonica I+D will talk on Mobile Data and crossplatform (Mobile / Web / TV) services and the impact for Telco’s on their own service portfolio in order to harness the true potential of Mobile Social Media.

More details at MobileMondayMadrid.com. Attendance is free; all you need to do is register and/or confirm your presence for this event at www.mobilemondaymadrid.com/subscribe/ and reserve one of the 150 seats available. Book now to avoid being left out, this event is going to be a blast!

Image © SENSEable city lab MIT - wikicity rome

After some hectic weeks, trying to get blogging back to normal…

The next MobileMonday Barcelona event on December 3 covers Location-Based Services. Since Nokia introduced the Nseries N95 with built in GPS, Location-Based Services are becoming exciting again. Google Maps API and flickr’s geotagged photo function shows we’re heading to really interesting services build on the location of the user. Next Monday event has a really c00l line-up:

speakers include Fabien Girardin - who will present WikiCity a MIT affiliated project that features innovative ways to understand and communicate the dynamics of the city; Börkur Sigurbjörnsson - who will talk about two research prototypes from Yahoo! Research Berkeley: ZoneTag and TagMaps; Andres Ribera of Spanish startup Hipoqih, a Google Maps mashup that aims to create a mobile social network with GPS geolocation and Ilja Goossens, of yoMedia (Netherlands), who will talk about their video content delivery platform linked to outdoor advertising. Don’t hesitate to register and/or confirm your presence for this event, only 150 seats available.

Not sure who ever organised 3 MobileMondays in 3 weeks - no I won’t advice it, unless it is to come and watch of course but it’s the way we had to get our act together to start the events in Madrid and get the rhythm right. All in all, I think we were able of keeping the right quality level we’re aiming at for every event…

After the succesful opening event of MobileMonday Madrid and the Mobile Web Applications topic covered in Barcelona, the next MobileMonday Madrid event on November 12 covers experiences from the UK Mobile Market. The UK has one of the most active emerging markets in next generation mobile data services, together with France, Germany, Italy and Spain. We want to learn about the experiences from some of the best positioned people in the UK Mobile industry and explore new market opportunities.

For this event we brought together Mike Short, VP Research and Development at O2 - Telefonica, Ray Anderson, CEO of Bango and Christopher Moisan of Taptu to share with us about their experiences and new business opportunities. The panel will be moderated by Ricardo Pérez from IE Business School.

All details and speakers’ bios at MobileMonday Madrid website. If you’re in the neighborhood, don’t wait to book your seat, the opening event was fully booked after 2 days only.

Here’s some thoughts and a short wrapup of the Mobile 2.0 event I helped to organize in San Francisco. It was the second time this event took place, organised last year by Mike, Daniel, Gregory and Peter. For this years’ event, they asked me to join the team and I’m really glad I took the decision to participate, I truly believe this is only the start of more interestig things to come produced by this quintet

The event was really great! Being part of the organizers committee and having a good view of events happening around the globe, this is a really exceptional event, connecting the transitioning and convergent worlds of web and mobile; exceptional because some of the best heads in mobile are spending a day together discussing and exploring the opportunities and threats of what we call the next generation mobile services. Unique since it brings together both a local (Silicon Valley) and a European crowd, something essential in todays’ global economy. Innovation is happening everywhere, the world is flat.

Understanding the potential of the mobile device as a connector of objects and people in the near future is a must and I think this event is the best I have seen in this area, covering essential topics such as Social Media, User Experience, Usability and Design, Disruption, Emerging Technologies, New Business Models brought by thought leaders from all aspects of the mobile ecosystem, including investors, mobile carriers, device manufacturers, and mobile application developers and web technologists.

I was not alone with my thoughts since Tomi T. Ahonen send us this text note during the event: “Wow, this room really holds probably more of the true influencers of the actual future of mobile than any other event I have ever attended. Impressive!”

And what about these notes from Oliver Starr, who was live blogging for Blognation during the conference:

There’s one last disruption I’d like to mention and it might be the most sublime disruption of them all. The power that will be realized by the 250 plus individuals that took that time and invested the money to spend a day deep in discussion about the next generation of mobile. The cumulative increase in knowledge realized by the attendees at this event will spread out into the world in waves. Perhaps some will be small ripples, a few rolling whitecaps, but combined, we are looking at a tidal wave of new knowledge, shared ideas, and new alliances that have the power to change the world we live in profound ways.

Knowledge is not power. Knowledge wielded effectively is power. As I look around the room as we reach the waning moments of the 2007 Mobile 2.0 Conference, I can’t help but wonder if the people in this room realize the incredible, explosive potential that each of them now has should they apply in any measure the intelligence they’ve gained in the ten hours spent here today.

I specifically like the size of the event, crowded with some 250 attendees, speakers and press yet small enough to have a chat and connect with nearly everybody present.

Here’s a set of resources from the event I could find of as of now. You can track the ongoing discussions using Google Blog Search tagged “Mobile 2.0“.
Richard MacManus has been LIVE blogging the event (incredible how fast he writes!):

• Mobile 2.0 - The 7th Mass Media & Business Opportunities
• Mobile 2.0 Launch Pad Part 1
• Mobile 2.0 Launch Pad Part 2
• Taptu Launches New Type of Mobile Search

Oliver Starr’s live posts here on blognation.

Mike Rowehl’s Mobile 2.0 wrapup.

Dennis from WAP Review has an amazing writeup covering absolutely everything top to bottom.

Russ McGuire’s review on Mobile 2.0: Mobile Internet vs. Mobility

Barbara Ballard posted about how many in the audience were using laptops.

Tony Fish pointed out the Mobile Web 2.0 list of resources setup in netvibes.

Enrique C. Ortiz quick review.

Kelly Goto has a detailed post from the fireside chat.

Carlos Domingo posted his draft panel notes here.

Atakan Cetinsoy from MyStrands blogged his impressions here.

Marc Davis Flickr pictures ZoneTagged Mobile 2.0

On top of the reviews, some interesting discussions are heating up, starting with Rob Tiffany’s complaints why Windows Mobile was not used or not even mentioned during the event… Read Enrique C. Ortiz on spot reply to that question.

You can view my introduction to Mobile 2.0 on Slideshare; check also the Google’s move into mobile slide exchange project we just launched, together with Raimo van der Klein.

I created a Flickr group here, open to anyone. Anyone who has pictures of the event and a Flickr account, please subscribe to the group and forward them to the group from within your Flickr account.
I wanted to thank again our sponsors of the event: Nokia, Shozu, Vodafone Betavine, Taptu, Jamba, Mippin, Webwag, Rulespace and Swisscomm for the excellent wi-fi connections. Without them making this happen would not have been possible. Hope to see you all next year again!

I’ll be back with an update on conversations and posts around the event next Monday in the Carnival of the Mobilists # 96 which I’m hosting again here at mTrends.

Gregory just pinged me that the Mobile 2.0 Event, scheduled for October 15 in San Francisco is nearly sold.out - only a few seats left. Don’t be left out and register now. Full program details and speakers list on the event website. There are still sponsor opportunities open. If you’re interested, you can contact me directly.

It has been a crazy two weeks… I just got back from the Mobile Web 2.0 Conference in London, a lot of great folks and impressions. More on this later here… But before that, I still need to wrap-up the MobileMonday Global Summit adventures from last week

Checking my mailbox, I received some private beta invites from Taptu, a new ‘open’ Mobile Search application. Founder and CEO, Steve Ives showed me a demo last week in Helsinki and I was delightfully surprised. I gave him a hard time finding some unusual music artists and the app always returned a lot of relevant info and song previews to listen to, all nicely designed in a super simple design interface - reminded me of the Google early days, but then on mobile, very promising…

In fact, Taptu bought one of the earliest mobile search apps around (I blogged about it 2 years ago here), and is thus, amongst others, crawling the wikipedia index for results. Steve came introducing his new technology - as he calls it Social-assisted Search, at MobileMonday Barcelona in April on a panel with Google, Yahoo! and JumpTap on Mobile Search. I remember thinking one needs a lot of guts and talent to start with such an adventure and such a competition in sight… meanwhile Taptu secured an A-round of funding and has 30 people working on the technology in Cambridge. Russell commented yesterday that it might be kind-a late to enter the Mobile Search market but I give them a fair chance.

Anyone can sign up for the private beta, but invitations will be released on-the-go during this month until public beta release during the month of October. So feel free to send me an email if you would like to receive a private beta invitation.

You can follow Taptu’s adventure status on their blog - http://www.taptu.com/blog/.

On October 15th, in San Francisco, Mobile Monday’s Barcelona, London, and Silicon Valley together with the Open Group and SomeBazaar will present the 2nd Mobile 2.0 conference. This will be a one-day event, held at the Grand Hyatt in Union Square, covering the latest in mobile innovation and disruption.

Next to Tomi Ahonen’s keynote on Social Networking and Communities, there are four panels with topics on User Experience, Usability, and Design, Disruptive or New Business Models, Emerging Technologies and a look on Mobile 2.0 from the VC Perspective. Two series of great new Mobile 2.0 startups will be presented in the Mobile Launch Pad.

The conference is bringing together some real mobile industry thought leaders from around the world, such as:

• Tomi Ahonen, 3G Author & Mobile Blogger
• Brian Fling, Blue Flavor
• Kelly Goto, gotomedia
• Risto Lahdesmaki, Idean Enterprises
• Carlos Domingo, Telefonica
• Christian Lindholm
• Tony Fish, AMF Ventures
• Ozzie Diaz, HP
• Jean Marc Frangos, BT Group
• Patrick McVeigh, Warburg Pincus & SoonR
• Stephan Noll, T-Venture
• Voytek Siewierski, Mitsui & Co, Venture Partners
• Olaf Groth, Qualcomm
• Rich Wong, Accel Partners
• Russell Beattie, Mowser
• Marc Davis, Yahoo!
• Ron Mandel, Adobe
• C. Enrique Ortiz, eZee inc.
• Kaj “HeGe” Haggman, Nokia
• James Pearce, dotMobi
• Peter Stark, Sony Ericsson
• Daniel Graf, Kyte.TV

Daniel, Gregory, Mike and Peter asked me after the Global Peer Awards to join the organizing committee, something I didn’t had to think twice on. I like the spirit of the team and the global reach of this event. There has been a lot of reflexion and discussion on what to cover and who to invite, to me it’s a rather unusual but original event that tries to capture what’s going on in mobile and focuses on the Mobile Web and Disruptive Mobile Innovation… I can’t wait until October 15

Check out the agenda on full details of speakers, timings, topics, etc. Last years’ (first ever!) Mobile 2.0 conference was sold out in 1 week, so don’t wait too long to register, seats are limited. Registrations are now open at the Mobile 2.0 Conference website. Early Bird Special $145 if you registered before October 1, 2007. Regular Price $185.

Stay tuned for more news on the conference here at mTrends!

I know how mTrends looks great on a PSP and on a Nokia N800; I haven’t seen my blog however on the iPhone, but I suppose it looks ok - the iPhone features Safari, the most advanced web browser ever on a portable device.

UPDATE => Kelly sended me some shots of mTrends on the iPhone, looks pretty cool, I cannot see from the screenshots if all my sidebar widgets work and if the feed subscription functionality works automatically in the mobile Safari browser… Anyway thanks, Kelly!

Since it’s going to take a while before everyone is able to buy an iPhone, and before device manufacture competitors catch up with Apple, browsing the Mobile Web stays somehow a non-standardised fragmented experience for most people. I have been writing about this confusion before, now it was kind of weird reading this ’strikethrough’ story from Scobleizer on how the iPhone gets confused with the mobile version of the Google Reader. Note that the Safari browser shows the desktop web pages - the ‘real’ internet, as most people know it; Robert just got confused with the different - mobile web - URL’s to browse to.

Now both ways to acces the internet will most probably have to live next to eachother on mobile devices since no real solution is in sight to converge the mobile web as ‘one real web’. There’s the ‘full’ browsing experience possible on the high-end devices like the iPhone, PSP’s and for example the Nokia N800 and then there are the ‘adaptive’ browsers that will adapt at it’s best the existing web page to your phone, like Nokia S60, Openwave and Opera browsers and others like Google Mobile transcoding normal web pages so they fit the mobile screen.

But what about the Mobile Web users?

To my view there are 4 different types of mobile web users to distinguish (some with a combined use), people who:

1. want to read their favourite feeds (through mobile browser or standalone applications)
2. browse websites and pages (using Nokia, Opera Mini or Safari browser on the mobile)
3. search from within a browser using Google Mobile, Yahoo! oneSearch, …
4. use standalone apps/tools to connect to people or communities like Jaiku, Twitter, Fring, Google Mobile Maps, etc…

Currently I use 1 and 4 the most, since browsing the web on the mobile is simply still too annoying and slow and searching on my phone not context relevant for me as it is now; I read feeds and use standalone apps to connect to people and find locations, that’s it. With the coming of more and more webapps, RSS tools and communities going mobile the coming months - YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Netvibes, and alikes - some of them already there - the ways to get to those apps will become even more diverse, not to mention about how to handle correctly Mobile SEO.

For a simplified any (txt) feed ‘works on any device’ solution there’s still the real pre-cursor of the Mobile Web, Winksite. David Harper writes in this Love the Mobile Web post, how Winksite makes it easy to publish mobile Internet sites and build simple mobile connections via mobile phones:

“Winksite is the first standards compliant mobile Website builder that also includes RSS-driven content deployment and mobile-tuned community features such as forum, chat, and polls. This approach delivers fresh content, fast-loading screens, and universally accessible community features to you and your audience. The Winksite service is a free and fully hosted solution. No software install on your phone is necessary to view a Winksite powered mobile site. Learn more about how it works.”

I’ve had mTrends on Winksite since a while now just because my blog was always accesible on most phones, now for anyone who wants his internet blog or pages to be displayed correctly and available on ANY phone, I think Winksite is still the best option. Check below how MobileOK my Winksite blog is using the dotMobi’s MobiReady Report generator.

BTW: great tool! I like the way it displays information on pricing and speed of different networks to acces your mobile web pages.

To close this post, I would like to add this paragraph from Dave’s post on The mobile Web is not just for phones anymore:

“Gamers and their WiFi connected version of the Internet have been largely ignored by Mobile & Web 2.0 publishing and community platforms. We’re changing that. Whatever you choose to build at Winksite will now be served up optimized and fully functioning to the Sony PSP browser and Nintendo DS Lite Opera browser over WiFi connections. With the DS-Lite in mind we provide a fast loading and readable version while in overview mode. The PSP is delivered a version that eliminates the horizontal scrolling (and reduces the vertical scrolling) required to read posts and chat with your friends.”

Right attitude, Dave. Keep going!

What about you? I’m interested in your experiences and opinions