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… Germany, Spain and Belgium to go live in 2009 …

Blyk, the new mobile network for 16-24 year olds funded by advertising, announces its next wave of European expansion into Germany, Spain and Belgium in 2009, following its announcement to enter the Dutch market earlier this year. Blyk’s rapid expansion is subsequent to its UK success where members embraced the Blyk concept so quickly that its annual member targets of 100,000 were reached six months ahead of schedule, establishing it as a powerful new media for connecting advertisers with young people.

Blyk’s CEO and Co-founder, Pekka Ala-Pietilä said, “There is a great opportunity for Blyk in these markets. Our research shows that young people in Germany, Spain and Belgium are interested in the Blyk proposition because they want to interact with brands they like in exchange for free communication. Our success in the UK, illustrated by robust member adoption, has proven that Blyk is a youth media that works and we hope to replicate this success as we enter new countries. We are also working to attract local talent who share our enthusiasm and can help build Blyk into a significant youth media in other countries.”

The press release mentions Blyk has run over 900 campaigns in the UK for brands such as Coca Cola, STA Travel, Penguin, Buena Vista, L’Oreal and music artists The Kooks and Alphabeat with an average response rate of 29 percent, an extremely high level for any media platform. For example, Penguin’s campaign to promote Nick Hornby’s new novel, saw 7 out of 10 members engage with the publisher in a dialogue.

Blyk will make further announcements related to activities in each of these countries in the near future.

I asked the company about the choice of operator network they’ll partner with in the next expansion series of countries but Blyk replied it hasn’t taken a decison yet… I can only think about this perfect strategy having the operators to fight to get the popular brand on their network… Ahead of the curve as we say… To follow!

I didn’t expect Blyk was going to grow that fast on other European markets. I’m looking forward the brand launches in Spain, I’ll have the advantage my daughters will have 16 by the time Blyk launches here, so it will be fun to discover the added-value services with them and get their direct feedback

FYI Leif Fågelstedt, COO of Blyk is participating to the Mobile 2.0 Europe conference next week in Barcelona as part of the Open Business Models panel moderated by Mike Butcher of TechCrunch UK.

The Mobile 2.0 Organizing Committee announced the selection of the presenting start-ups at Mobile 2.0 Europe on July 4 in Barcelona. Some 70 mobile start-up companies applied to present at Mobile 2.0 Europe conference. The committee was delightfully surprised with the quality of the ideas and technology of the start-ups coming from many different corners of Europe and the world.

Here are the selected start-up companies.

PRE SERIES A companies

kooaba (Switzerland) - Mobile Image Search
Mobiluck (France) - Mobile Location-based IM, Chat and Social Networking
Secufone (Netherlands) - Mobility and Safety
Unkasoft (Spain) - Mobile Advergaming
ViiF (Germany) - Mobile Entertainment Community

POST SERIES A companies

Futurlink (Spain) - Proximity Marketing
Nimbuzz (Netherlands) - Mobile IM and Text Message Service
Mippin (UK) - Mobilizing the Web
Palringo (UK) - Vocal Instant Messaging
Taptu (UK) - Mobile Social Search

Early-Stage companies

The presenters in this category will be announced the day of the event as to maintain the suspense.

During the event, all panel participants and organizers will vote their best Start-up in each category; the winner in each category receives an invitation to present at the Mobile 2.0 Event in San Francisco on November 3, 2008.

Pekka Pohjakallio, Vice President, Suites Management and Marketing, Services and Software at Nokia will introduce the conference with a keynote.

Participants will enjoy C-Level speaker and panelist participations from other mobile industry players, such as AdMob, AMF Ventures, Atlas Venture, Bango, Blyk, Debaeque Capital, Fjord, Getjar, Google, itsmy.com (Gofresh), Nokia, M:Metrics, Orange, Stradbroke Advisors, T-Mobile, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Trutap, Vodafone, Yahoo!, and ZYB. The sessions will be moderated by some of Europe’s finest bloggers including Mike Butcher (TechCrunch UK), Peggy Anne Saltz (MSearchGroove) and Raimo van der Klein (SPRX Mobile).

Check the full speaker list and program agenda here.

There is a lot of interest from the industry to attend this event. Early-Bird tickets at €99 and Standard tickets at €149 are already sold out. Currently, there are some 20 tickets left at €199 (breakfast, lunch, coffee and networking cocktail included), after which tickets will be on sale at €299 (prices all excl. VAT). Attendants can purchase their ticket online at Amiando Mobile 2.0 Europe.

We are also organising a meetup with our media partner TechCrunch, the evening after the event; please contact Mike Butcher or info@dotopen.eu for more information on this event.

Our Partners
Our thanks to our partners Nokia, Palringo, Taptu, Telefónica Movistar, Vodafone, Yahoo!, Bango, eBuddy and Mippin for their invaluable support.

Four weeks to go for the MOBILE 2.0 EUROPE conference and the program gets more and more exciting. Last week, Pekka Pohjakallio, Vice President, Suites Management and Marketing, Services and Software at Nokia was added as a keynote and Charlie Schick, Editor-in-Chief for Nokia Conversations will talk about Social Media as the fusion of mobile and internet, exploring the ties into the Mobile Semantic Web.

More than 70 startups registered to participate to the event. The Mobile 2.0 Europe selected start-ups in 3 Categories (Seed Capital Stage, Pre Series A and Post Series A) will be announced next week.

The Open Platforms and New Application Areas Panel is also confirmed and will be moderated by Peggy Anne Salz, chief analyst and founder of MSearchGroove

Panelists include:

• Ray Anderson, CEO and founder, Bango
• Javier Pérez Dolset,CEO, Zed
• Alex Romero, Director Partnerships, Yahoo! Connected Life Europe
• Daniel Appelquist, Senior Technology Strategist at Vodafone Group
• Peter Vesterbacka, Founder Some Bazaar

You can view complete speaker profiles here.

The Early-Bird tickets at € 99 and Standard tickets at € 149 are already Sold out. The next 50 tickets (Standard 2) are available at € 199 (breakfast, lunch, coffee and networking cocktail included). Late tickets will go at € 299 (prices all excl. VAT). So, don’t wait any longer to reserve your ticket if you’d like to attend. You can purchase tickets online here at Amiando Mobile 2.0 Europe.

Some free tickets will still be distributed on the Mobile 2.0 on Twitter channel, also handy to stay updated on latest news and updates on the event

Together with media partner TechCrunch, we’re organising a meetup the evening after the event; if your company would like to sponsor this meetup, please contact Mike Butcher or myself for more details. I can’t tell much more as of now, I’ll leave that for Mike to announce, but it’s going to be outside and near the beach

The MOBILE 2.0 EUROPE conference is heating up! More than 50 startups have already registered to participate to the event. The Mobile 2.0 Europe presenting start-ups will be selected in 3 Categories (Seed Capital Stage, Pre Series A and Post Series A) - any start-up with a mobile application can apply. If you haven’t done so yet, you can still apply by filling in the online application form, deadline for submission is June 6, 2008 at midnight CET.

Taptu, Telefónica Movistar, Vodafone, Yahoo!, Bango, and Mippin joined us as sponsors to support the event and we’re going to announce some more high-level speakers the coming days.

Please take note that the Early Bird registration closes on May 31 (tickets at € 99,- only!), after that date tickets will cost €149,- (breakfast, lunch, coffee and networking cocktail included).

If you’re a blogger or press and you’d like to attend, please contact me directly.

Follow Mobile 2.0 on Twitter for news and updates on the event.

Tomorrow morning I’m off to Vegas for the CTIA Wireless. Some intense days ahead, lots of people and companies to catch up with. Monday I’ll be at the Mobile Jam Session, another fully booked event organised by Caroline and me. Check the agenda and speakers here.

I’ll be checking out the Showstoppers event to check out some new US startups, the new stuff at Nokia, a Buzzd dinner, the MM2 Roundtable discussion, a couple of other dinners and many networking cocktails…. will definately try to catch the mobile girls at the GoMo News Party. You can check a complete CTIA Party List here by Eric Chan.

Looking forward to meet with the industry collegues and friends, the start-ups, the carriers / operators and VC’s, especially in the Mobile 2.0 area. Anyone who wants to catch up with me, send me a note or send me a direct message on Twitter.

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!

The future of online TV, music and video content is going to be personalized and recommended, Mystrands just released a personalized online video service called MyStrands.TV. Nothing really mobile just yet but sooOOO cool I had to blog it here.

My teenage daughters and their friends TV viewing patterns changed completely the last year: they just don’t sit and watch TV anymore, they sit in front of the PC with their friends, deciding themselves what to watch, receiving links and recommendations from their IM peers - now I just need to get another free wi-fi connected pc or laptop connected to the plasma screen and they’re all set for the perfect interactive viewing experience

I had the pleasure to discover the new MyStrands service a couple of days ago and it’s really adding value to just watching YouTube video’s - MyStrands.TV is powered by MyStrands APIs and the music videos come from YouTube. Logging to MyStrands.tv proposes you an endless playlist of music videos that are personalized specifically for you…. based on your music listening history and recommendations. The first time you might find that the recommendations are based on existing channels, genres and a-like artists but actually this new recommendation tool is proposing music and concert video’s of my favorite artists based on my existing MyStrands profile, now isn’t that cool?

Richard MacManus researched the Top 10 YouTube Videos of All Time a couple of weeks ago at Read/Write Web. He mentioned that “7 of the top 10 are music videos. So music videos are something that people want to watch online and there is a need for an easy way to organize or personalize this.”

Typing some of my favorite artists like Roxy Music, Miles Davis and Serge Gainsbourg for example brings up an excellent choice of all-time music video’s and concerts, a real delight to see some stuff again I hadn’t seen in years and discover some new video’s I didn’t know about.

Watch the recommended video’s on the right, the recommendations are really excellent, you can view more vid’s of the same artist or a similar one - or jump to another artist, view the community people who listen to this artist as well; you can favorite video’s and send them to friends. To me, this has been a great experience with many pleasant surprises and my kids LOVE it!

FYI: If you don’t have a MyStrands account, and you just want to try out MyStrands.TV before deciding whether to sign up, just type in the name of an artist and MyStrands builds a custom music video channel for you.

I believe MyStrands is taking a major step towards how online media is going to be consumed in the future, it’s community-based, personalized and with recommendations from peers and friends.

More links on MyStrands.TV personalized online video service here:

Mashable - MyStrands Launches YouTube-Powered Custom TV
TechCrunch - MyStrands Launches Music Video Discovery Service, MyStrands.tv
Read/Write Web - MyStrands.TV Launched - It’s last.fm For Video

And oh, for mTrends readers and mobile enthusiasts, if you haven’t MyStrands Social Player installed on your mobile yet, click here to download MyStrands for Symbian; you may also want to visit MyStrands labs page to check out their latest beta.

(disclosure note on my MyStrands involvement here)

Next week I’m heading north to participate and enjoy the 3rd annual MobileMonday Global Summit! The event will take place on September 10th in Helsinki, Finland.

The 3rd annual MobileMonday Global Summit brings together leaders from mobile business. Around fifteen hundred participants from around the globe are expected to attend the conference held at the Wanha Satama Fair Center. In the same spirit as the monthly MobileMonday meetings held in over 50 hotspots around the world, the MobileMonday Global Summit brings together mobile industry influencers from down the street and around the world.

On Sunday - the day before the summit, we gather with most of the global MobileMonday chapter organizers and on Monday the Global Summit program opens with the Executive Morning with keynotes from some of the best thinkers in the business. In the afternoon there are various sessions covering three main themes: Mobile Entertainment, Mobile Marketing and Social Media.

I’m invited to participate in the Mobile Social Media Panel, including Kathie Legg, now at Yahoo, Gregory Norman from The Open Group and Bruno Bensaid from MobileMonday Shanghai, China. The panel promises an interesting discussion on this topic with views from Europe, US and Asia.

There is also additional excursion to Saint Petersburg, Russia. The local MobileModay Chapter will organize an event for decision makers, who are interested to meet local business leaders.

I’m really looking forward next week to meet the chapter organizers again. Since I decided to start MobileMonday Barcelona this has been a great ride organizing great events on a monthly basis, some with international reach such as the MobileMonday Global Peer Awards earlier this year druing 3GSM. I have met lots of interesting people from around the globe and the network keeps growing every month. Stay tuned for more news coming soon on new events here.

After the Saint Petersburg trip, I’m staying another day in Helsinki to meet with local start-ups. Anyone who would like to catch up with me, please get in touch by email (click my name in the sidebar on the right).

What I like most in Nokia’s strategy is its constant ability to look forward and move ahead with the changes. Nokia Flagship Store announcements already positioned Nokia with an independant retail strategy, it’s obvious that once there, there’s a different world on top of selling devices…

There has been a lot of fingertip heating since Nokia launched its Ovi Internet Services, a predictable, but smart move by Nokia for regular mTrends readers The idea is to pull the Nokia Music Store, N-Gage, Nokia Maps, and all future Nokia services into a single gateway of integrated service offerings. You can view yesterdays’ webcast anouncements here.

Nokia has been very active in the convergent area’s of internet and mobility services. With a solid 38% marketshare (some 900 million active customers!), the company has always played a leading role in the mobile value chain and knows a lot about its consumer habits. Nokia also has been releasing some really great N-Series devices since last year, the experiences gathered from those popular high-end devices are now finetuned and sharpened resulting in 4 new mobile devices (to be released before year-end).

I have been lucky to be able to experiment with Nokia Maps and I like the service a lot, it’s actually an awesome experience available on a mobile phone. The N95 with its build-in GPS makes geographical search really context relevant and opens the path for a lot of new kinds of services linked to locations. Personally I believe more in a user-driven community services and tools build model for the future such as Plazes and Dopplr build on Google Maps api’s but time will tell which services consumers will finally choose for and use.

The N-Gage portal is all about Nokia’s next-gen games (reserve your player name now!) where game fans will have more and more options to play multiplayer games in a constantly connected world - Instant Media Now! Web 2.0 has had a huge influence on the game development with regards to user-generated content, social networking and general connectivity. Watch Digital Chocolate in this next-gen game content space, not to underestimate the - also yesterday anounced - Sony-Ericsson Playstation Phone, yes… real device convergence is happening!

Another great move into internet service offerings is that Nokia and Microsoft have joined forces to provide customers with a new suite of Windows Live services specifically designed for Nokia devices. Starting today Nokia customers in eleven countries with compatible S60 devices can download the new suite enabling access to Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Contacts and Windows Live Spaces. Smart move knowing there’s some 465 million Microsoft Messenger clients today!

The downside of that deal (and biggest surprise to me yesterday) was not the anouncement of the Nokia Music Store itself but the decision that Nokia will use Microsoft PlayReady technology for “flexible access to digital entertainment“. Flexible? How flexible is the next question to me then, while Apple unveiled a higher quality DRM-Free Music with EMI on iTunes in April, Nokia goes the opposite direction with Microsoft?

I tried to find more detailed information on how restrictive the DRM will be but couldn’t find anything relevant but this Microsoft PlayReady White Paper, despite the many anouncements yesterday. BoingBoing reported the new music store will allow for over-the-air downloads,

“currently priced at 1 Euro a song and 10 Euro-a-month all-you-can-eat subscriptions that will work on your PC. (It’s not entirely clear if you’ll be able to download songs to your PC on the all-you-can-eat and also sync them to your Ovi-compatible phone. The verbiage I’m seeing is “streaming,” so it seems unlikely.)”

Most probably Nokia will decide on a country-per-country basis, depending on the distributor. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to sound as a pirate protecter but I’m just worried as a consumer. mTrends readers know about my rants and experiences with this topic (for an overview check my DRM Free At Last! post).

I’m completely in favour of the OPEN DRM model (buy once, use everywhere!): I buy the digital content once but I am able to carry and transfer the song/video/movie everywhere on my different devices and pc’s and share it with my family and friends. Companies really need to learn to TRUST the consumers, illegal downloading always existed and will always exist in a minor form but as a consumer I can only urge to give us a fair DRM, especially for those consumers who want to buy digital content.

One more example here below of how DRM-restrictive content works for the consumer - and then I really hope I don’t have to write on this anymore

On my summer holidays, besides my fully stored N95, I took a 2GB USB-stick with me with full of music (legally bought CD’s imported as mp3’s) to be played wherever the occasion appeared. Now when compiling my summer music collection, I mixed up with some songs I bought on iTunes… At a certain moment, at a party, someone was asking for some kind of artist I had on my music-stick, we copied it to the iBook available connected to the speakers, when everybody around the pool was excited to hear that song, the machine responded “need permission to play this song, please fill-in your password” - hell, we weren’t even connected to the internet. Now, you think this is fair? Flexible? Helping the artists? Create more business? Come on (big) guys, please get real!

NOTE: it would be great if any Nokia or Microsoft rep could provide some details on the DRM restrictions that will be used (or not) using PlayReady

Got invited last week by Nokia for their new mobile sharing community platform called MOSH. I must admit it’s great to be invited to all exciting Alpha and Beta mobile testing, still it’s quite difficult to test them all in-depth with a lot of workload on the shelves these days. However, as with anything good in life… quality, curiosity and surprise always make a good cocktail and make you want to try out things immediately before others.

MobSharing, a term originally coined by Mike Evans in September 2005, didn’t figure in my 2007 predictions but was already mentioned as a future trend in my 2006 predictions and now it’s finally here from Nokia Still in closed Alpha, but with the advantage we won’t have to wait another couple of years for it to get a critical mass…

“Create, Upload and Share all of your mobile content”:

MOSH is a content sharing site where community members upload, distribute and manage content to be viewed and enjoyed on mobile devices. With MOSH, anything from applications like mobile games, to videos, blogs, songs or photos are now accessible and distributable on your mobile device.

How does it work?

There are three key elements to MOSH:

1. A website
2. A mobile website
3. An application for mobile devices (available for download on Nokia devices only)

The website is your main source for accessing the wide range of content available through MOSH. It is here where you can create your profile, upload content, manage your collections and specify which selects to send to your mobile device as mobile feeds.

The mobile website is where users with both Nokia and non-Nokia devices can access mobile feeds and view the MOSH service.

I played with it for the first time today and the interface looks simple & smart, ideally for the creation of mobile social media: users can create ‘collections’ around topics, tags or keywords to organize content which can be ranked, ‘raved’, filtered and shared.

While the service is optimized for use on Nokia devices, the service is compatible with all mobile handsets, provided they support the kind of content you are downloading and that you are able to access the Internet.

One quick remark: how do I know the content or apps I’m uploading is compatible with what kind of devices? Creating some groups of phone categories might be handy for the users here.

I’ll keep you posted with more feedback and mosh moves of course.