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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.

Choosing the 1st summer weekend to edit a Carnival of the Mobilists was probably not a great idea at start, but it turned out well for me reading all contributions after siesta in the shade on a Sunday afternoon, with a fine mix of the latest albums of Osunlade, Jaga Jazzist, Terry Callier, Ron Trent & Jerome Sydenham, Hercules and Love Affair, and The Herbaliser as a background… laid back and inspiring!

Luckily there were not too many entries this week due to the fact that many mobilists have changed the “blogging from home” to a more “hectic travelling the globe” lifestyle. Ubiquitous computing has progressed tremendously but hasn’t yet provided us with the perfect tools to keep the blogging up to speed from wherever we are.

Not too surprisingly more than half of this week’s contributions are on the “Location-Based Applications and Services” topic. Better get used to the coming hype words, since they’re going to be everywhere the coming months/years… Geotagging, location tracking, Assisted GPS (AGPS), location based advertising (of course!), location based aggregation, cost per location, zone detection, location based social media, location stamps, location reporting strategies, discovery, sensoring, geocaching, spatial data, geographically-oriented communities, location-based (life) streaming, social mapping or geo-social networking applications, etc.

Realising how advanced we may be with our ideas and technology these days, I still had to wonder where this week’s contributors actually lived? So, how come no-one is using an online tool to know about one’s location? How about then using this on the mobile?

This brought me to the idea of creating this week’s Carnival of the Mobilists map so you can read the entries browsing the map or just by reading this post. If you find out you’re near to one of the mobilists, who knows you might soon bump into him/her

But hey enough now as an introduction… let’s hear it from the mobilists themselves!

Read all this very interesting and insightful posts on LBS:

Mobile 2.0: Addicted to LBS by Tarek Abu-Esber (London, UK)

Top 10 Location Based Startups to Track by Zhou Wenhan (Singapore, Republic of Singapore)

Add context to your photos with Geotagging by Sachendra Yadav (Hyderabad, India)

Convergence or cooperation? by Igor Faletski (Vancouver, Canada)

Has Google won the location battle already? by Andrew Grill (London, UK)

Which GPS Reporting Strategy is Right for You? by Patrick Brannan (St. Louis, Missouri, USA)

Check also my contribution this week on this low-tech location-based urban travel guide from Louis Vuitton, called the Louis Vuitton Soundwalk.

My take is that location itself will become obsolete soon, it is something technical the user doesn’t really want to know about, unless he/she needs to read a map… But what about the many people who can’t read a map? Voice-activated GPS is one of the widely used GPS solutions, but what about all the services being build around locations? Who is around, interesting things to do, places to visit, find places? Top down information vs. bottom-up user-generated content?

I believe it’s more important to develop services based on discovery, but linked to your social network of friends, and contacts who can tip you on the best stuff and who can leave valuable comments about places and events - it’s about the value and quality of the recommendation. That was probably one of the missing pieces in Nokia’s LBS strategy and why Nokia bought Plazes.

Other topics this week:

Mobile Workforce

Hiring Opportunities and Redundancies in the Converged World of Telecoms and Mobility by Justin Oberman (New York, USA) and pointing to an Interview by Ajit Jaokar (Oxford, UK)

Mobile Advertising

Interesting presentation on Using mobile social networks to target advertising… one day by David Cushman (London, UK)

And more on context: NFC interaction by Barbara Ballard (Lawrence, Kansas, USA) and must read on Updates from mobile phone researcher Jan Chipchase by Bryan Alexander at Smart Mobs and Rob Knight entered this Video Interview with Ray Haddow and Tom Farell from Nokia.

And last but not least the ongoing discussion on Mobile Browser vs. Native Applications:

Browser as an application platform by Gábor Török (Miskolc, Hungary)

Apps on smartphones = Geek. Apps on Facebook = Fun. Why? by Dean Bubley (London, UK)

When Will Facebook Take Apps Mobile? by Carlo Longino (Las Vegas, Nevada, USA)

I also wanted to inform that Mobile 2.0 Europe is now fast approaching. Tickets are selling fast, so if you’re interested, don’t wait last minute to order your ticket, we’re heading for a full house. You can check the full program and complete list of speakers.

You can also follow latest Mobile 2.0 news on Twitter.

Also of your interest might be the Mobile 2.0 link exchange and discussion room we created on FriendFeed. When this goes mobile, it’s going to be next place to be Subscribe and join here - http://friendfeed.com/rooms/mobile-2-0

That’s it for this week, I learned something more this weekend and got to know some bloggers I haven’t heard about before, that’s what it’s all about, right?

Monday, June 23, 2008. Carnival of the Mobilists 129 edited by Rudy De Waele (Barcelona, Spain)

Next week, Andrew Grill is hosting the Carnival of the Mobilists at http://www.andrewgrill.com/blog

Whilst the whole industry is looking at location-based technology solutions as the new nirvana, Louis Vuitton enters the digital mobile space with a series of value-added content products using low-tech location. Creativity at its top!

The Louis Vuitton Soundwalk, a unique location-based urban soundtrack, produced in collaboration with Soundwalk is a cutting-edge audio guide, available in six languages, offerring a vibrant portrayal of three Chinese cities – Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai – following the footsteps of the three greatest icons of Chinese Cinema: Gong Li for Beijing, Shu Qi for Hong Kong and Joan Chen for Shanghai.

Ideally for people travelling to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, each hour-long soundwalk features a story whose narration perfectly synchronizes with the itinerary - the voice of the narrator geographically guides the physical visitor in real time through an area of a city or a district - accompanied by the signature sounds of the city.

Original soundtracks composed by Kubert Leung and Albert Yu. Shan Sa (”The Girl Who Played Go”) and Mei Feng (up-and-coming young Chinese author), have written these journeys much like film scripts —- subtly blending reality and fiction to offer a cinematic experience in the heart of the city.

Each Louis Vuitton Soundwalk are available in six languages: English, French, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean and Mandarin. Each Louis Vuitton Soundwalk can be purchased separately in six different currencies: 17 USD, 12 EUR, 8 GBP, 2 000 JPY, 140 HKD, 130 RMB.

The mobile Java MIDP 2.0 client, powered by Clicmobile, will be released on July 4th; this version adds exclusive mobile content such as images, texts and maps to the audio lifestyle experience.

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.

The next Mobile Monday Madrid on June 16, 2008 in collaboration with Bango will dive into statistical data and analyse mobile usage, under the topic Mobile Analytics with some experienced players from the industry, including Patrick Dost, Director General, Nedstat España; Sixto Arias, managing director of Mobext (Havas Digital Mobile Marketing Division), Sarah Keefe, VP Marketing, of Bango and Andres Lozano Sanudo, Head of Spain, Portugal and LATAM of Nokia Interactive Advertising.

As usual, a networking party will follow the conference. 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 week I’m going to spend most of my time in London starting with an event I’m really looking forward to, the Being Digital Mashup Conference on 10th June and organised by Simon Grice and Tony Fish.

The purpose of the event is to debate the commercial, investment and tactical issues that matter when delivering and designing digital services that rely on variety (mashup) of information, data & services. The event has seven themed debates on advertising, identity, content, location, social, retail and search across the important platforms of web, mobile and TV. In each theme there will be leading demo companies showing why it is real and how advanced some actually are. You can check the full speakers list here.

I am not sure if there are still tickets available (I believe the event is - or nearly - sold out). Registration is here.

NOTE: “Being Digital” is also the title of a great book, written by Nicholas Negroponte; it was the book I read in 1995 that spearheaded me inside the digital age!

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 next Mobile Monday Barcelona on June 2, 2008 will be held at the Auditorium of Barcelona Activa and covers the topic Micromedia, exploring user-generated microblogging content and tools. The session will include Hector Milla from Balzac.TV, Tony Fish from AMF Ventures, Mireia Fontbernat from QIK and Alberto Tognazzi from the Movil Film Fest.

Networking:
As usual, a networking party will follow the conference where participants will enjoy a glass of cava while sharing experiences about life and work. Attendance is free; all you need to do is register and/or confirm your presence for this event at www.mobilemondaybarcelona.com/subscribe/ to reserve one of the 150 seats available. Book now to avoid being left out!

• 19h00 Registration and Pre-Networking
• 19h30 Micromedia sessions and discussion
• 20h45 Cocktail and Networking Party
• 21h30 End

Venue:

Barcelona Activa
Llacuna 162, 08018 Barcelona
T. 93 401 97 77
barcelonactiva@barcelonactiva.cat
Metro: L1 (Glòries)
Bus: 7, 56, 60, 92, B21

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 I’m off to Madrid for a day of meetings, and for the next Mobile Monday Madrid that will cover the topic of Mobile Entertainment with some experienced players from the industry, including Pablo González, B2B Manager of Zed Iberia; Ricardo Mena Muñoz, Marketing Director at Digital Jokers y Mayhem Studio; Jaime Lanchares, CEO of Unkasoft and Luis Esteban, Managing Director at Arvato Mobile, who will share with us their vision of the future on Mobile Entertainment. Check all details on the webiste.

From Madrid, I’m flying to London for 2 days for the MEX Mobile User Experience Conference and the MEX Mobile User Experience Awards, hope to see you there; and ping me if you’d like to catch up.