Below the highlight of our latest Mobile Monday Amsterdam event: Gerd Leonhard. I met Gerd at the Club of Amsterdam in 2003 and there he talked about the future of mobile music. He was incredibly spot on as a futurist back then. In the presentation below he explains his vision on the future of mobile content during 45 minutes in a passionate way. Recommended viewing!
Our next Mobile Monday Amsterdam event on Monday June 1st, 2009 will feature seven world class mobile internet speakers, each covering a different aspect of mobile internet and sharing their long term vision. The speakers are:
Howard Rheingold (Smart Mobs guru)
Jamais Cascio (Mobile Science/Sustainability guru)
Joseph Pine II (Multiverse guru)
Robert Rice (Augmented Reality guru)
Alan Moore (Mobile Society guru)
Andrew Grill (Mobile Advertising guru)
Eric Petersen (Mobile Analytics guru)
This will clearly be our landmark event. More information will follow at Mobile Monday Amsterdam website. All videos and presentations will be streamed and can be seen on our website afterwards. I really look forward to this event as a lot of Dutch and international mobile passionate people will be there, even from around the globe some MoMo chapters will be there. If you want to attend this free (!!) event, please drop me a note on [email protected].
Great overview, recommended viewing. Watch the part on China and mobile. I was recently in China for one week with 40 Dutch entrepreneurs and innovators in digital media. It was my highlight of this year so far. Impressive stats on the Chinese mobile market like 550 million mobile phone users, 56 million mobile internet users (while 3G services are just one month active in this huge market) and China Mobile is 4 times the market value of Vodafone and thus the largest mobile operator (MNO) in the whole world. Clearly, in a few years most mobile innovation will come from China due to their incredible ambition, growth (potential), economies of scale and availability of hundreds of thousands of highly educated and eager mobile/IT graduates across the whole mobile ecosystem. Yearly, that is ;-) Think about the implications of these numbers for a few minutes...
I have posted on Augmented Reality as a key trend since February 2005 when I started blogging. It still one of the topics I really enjoy. Below you can watch a short demonstration video on how our mobile phones (already using an old Nokia N95 !) will be the most important (and seventh) mass medium around from now on.
In my view Augmented Reality is the logical evolutionary endpoint of normal barcodes, shot codes, QR codes, RFID and SkuAir latest (branded) barcode. Mobile Augmented Reality seems to be the most intuitive technology. However, all mentioned technologies will co-exist. Mobile Augmented Reality is in my view relevant for more classic, static, long term, social, historical and nonprofit information on large object/subjects from large distances, the different (bar)code technologies are relevant for commercial, ecological, short-distance, timely, dynamic and ad hoc purposes while RFID has a very broad range of possible applications (medical, logistical, short range).
Some questions I have are:
- What will be the impact on the classic (mobile) search engines in terms of reach, usage and relevancy when Mobile Augmented Reality really starts taking off ? Search engines are indirect, take a few clicks and centralized. In my view, the decentralized, direct search capabilities of Mobile Augmented Reality apps are more consumer centric and will lower the impact of search engines over time. How will Google respond to Nokia in this respect ? Interestingly, yesterday Google announced a a new precision image search technology based on content analysis of the image at hand (a PageRank technology for images !)
- When we consider the four segmentation levels of our digital and physical world (me, my social network, my peers and the market/the public as a whole), how will Mobile Augmented Reality apps and information be structured and presented to the end user while he is coping with information overload, physical targets, spam, irrelevancy and shorter time spans/concentration bursts ? In my view the augmented digital information layer will be primarily be fed with tags/information/alerts from my own past (personal) usage (me -> emomapping for example based on GPS data combined with the AR layer) and my social network (e.g., TripIt, Dopplr, Twitter, Hyves LBS, Jaiku, Facebook etc.). In some cases a digital AR layer with tags, comments, ratings and recommendeded flags from my peer group or even the market as whole will still be useful but its impact will be lower relative to the current situation. Its emotional distance is larger relative to me and my social network with all its lifestreams/lifelogging boosting the notion of living parallel lives. This is an intensified way to explore the physical world.
- Will the usage of mobile augmented reality apps boost serendipity on the local, physical level or will it boost planned behaviour in advance with people optimizing/maximizing their lives (e.g., planning all highlights of best rated objects on my peer- and market/public at large-levels while consuming the bottom-up my social network and personal information on objects while physically near). I believe it will be the former scenario: more ad hoc, bottom up, exploratory search behavior using mobile AR. Go with the flow, spontaneity, Power of Now flocking and exploration. Smart Mobs realized.
Great post on the Long Tail blog by Chris Anderson, Fred Wilson and Michael Cader on the business or revenue model options for online media properties. With strong relevance for offline media/events and digital marketing as well. Below the business model options.
I would like to see the category 'research / metadata ' included here as most advertisers are quite interested in the metadata / research within (social) media companies. This goed beyond the stated "Sales of User Information" below as it includes all the information/comments/widgets a user associates with a topic, brand and/or product. These insights can be used for trendwatching, emergent co-marketing & partnering deals and new business development.
"1. CPM ads ("cost per thousand views"; banner ads online and regular ads in print, TV and radio)
2. CPC ads ("cost per click"; think Google ads)
3. CPT ads ("cost per transaction)
4. Lead generation (you pay for qualified names of potential customers)
5. Subscription revenues
6. Affiliate revenues (think: Amazon Associates)
7. Rental of subscriber lists
8. Sale of information (selling data about users--aggregate/statistical or individual--to third parties)
9. Licensing of brand (people pay to use a media brand as implied endorsement)
10. Licensing of content (syndication)
11. Getting the users to create something of value for free and applying any of the above to monetize it. (Like Digg or Reddit but also Open Source Marketing in broader terms)
12. Upgraded service/content (ed: aka "freemium")
13. Alternate output (pdf; print/print-on-demand; customized Shared Book style; etc.)
14. Custom services/feeds
15. Live events
16. "Souvenirs"/"Merchandise"
17. Co-branded spinoff
18. Cost Per Install (popular with top Facebook apps who can help others get installs)
19. E-commerce (selling stuff directly on your website)
20. Sponsorships (ads of some sort that are sold based on time, not on the number of impressions)
21. Listings (paying a time based amount to list something like a job or real estate on your website)
22. Paid Inclusion (a form of CPC advertising where an advertiser pays to be included in a search result)
23. Streaming Audio Advertising (like radio advertising delivered in the audio stream after a certain amount of audio content has been delivered)
24. Streaming Video Advertising (like streaming audio but in video)
25. API Fees (charging third parties to access your API)"
Better Than Free is a new blog post by Kevin Kelly with a lot of buzz on the web this week. It is about the evolution of business models and value creation on the web. Important piece of thinking, especially for all those involved in the digital content/entertainment business. In my view this post resonates with the attention economy and the emerging business models within social networks/platforms (recommendtions, social economy). Additionally, people pay in my view increasingly for experiences (physical and social) and context and less for the content itself. Both are relatively scarce.
"When copies are super abundant, they become worthless. When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable. Well, what can't be copied?
There are a number of qualities that can't be copied. Consider "trust." Trust cannot be copied. You can't purchase it. Trust must be earned, over time. It cannot be downloaded. Or faked. Or counterfeited (at least for long). If everything else is equal, you'll always prefer to deal with someone you can trust. So trust is an intangible that has increasing value in a copy saturated world.
There are a number of other qualities similar to trust that are difficult to copy, and thus become valuable in this network economy. I think the best way to examine them is not from the eye of the producer, manufacturer, or creator, but from the eye of the user. We can start with a simple user question: why would we ever pay for anything that we could get for free? From my study of the network economy I see roughly eight categories of intangible value that we buy when we pay for something that could be free.
There are 8 key value drivers : Immediacy, Personalization, Interpretation/Support, Authenticity, Accessibility, Embodiment, Patronage and Findability"
"In addition to being able to search for objects, residents can now look
for information--about hobbies, for example--in each other's profiles.
Dzwigalski says she expects that being able to search profile
information will improve Second Life's social features.
Before Linden Lab announced its new tool, third-party companies, such as Electric Sheep,
were working on their own to improve search in Second Life and other
virtual worlds. "The search capability in the worlds has been
historically quite basic," says Giff Constable, who leads the Electric
Sheep's software business unit. Constable says that his company was
sending bots into Second Life to pick up virtual objects and extract
data from them in order to compile search results. "The analogy would
be to Alta Vista in the early days of the Web, before Google came
around and became able to rank things for popularity," Constable says.
He adds that his company hopes to take advantage of the new search tool
from Linden Lab and will focus on providing additional tools for social
networking and e-commerce."
Just finished my favorite week of this year encompassing two key events : Mobile Monday Amsterdam (MoMoAMS) and PICNIC / PICNIC07 (also known as Cross Media Week Amsterdam). In one word: inspiring ! Both were in the second edition. Below some recommendations and sharing from my side...
Mobile Monday Amsterdam : Mobile Communities As one of the founders and organisers I found it very thrilling to see around 230 internet, mobile and marketing professionals in one room. Among them many of the leading twitterazi, thinkers and innovators in the Netherlands. The presentation by Tomi T Ahonen - author of Digital Korea and Communities Dominate Brands and leading mobile thinker (Mobile as the 7th Mass Medium) - was impressive. You can find in presentation and video format on our blog : presentation and video by Tomi T Ahonen on Mobile Communities. Some take-away case studies: Kart Writer, Flirtomatic, CyWorld, Any Question Answered (AQA), mobile idle screen tickers and OCR recognition/translation software for mobile phones. The presentation above contains more mobile community examples than the video. It also includes the best mobile internet sources around as recommended by leading thinker Tomi T Ahonen. PICNIC / PICNIC07
Presentation of Jyri Engestrom from Jaiku the next stage for social objects/networks/graphs and FaceRank instead of PageRank. FaceRank is based on social proximity (same connections), physical proximity (offline closeness), shared social objects and shared taste/values. Jyri was our first keynote spreaker at Mobile Monday Amsterdam. I was enthrilled by his deepening of his vision in just a few months. Definitely, one of the leading thinkers on social networks in my view.
PhotoSynth with a incredible zoom-in and zoom-out function with breathtaking beauty and precision. Good to combine with Pixsta and Etsy.com
Pablos Holman with a terrific and funny talk on different practical hacking stories and cases
Stefan Sagmeister with an outstanding and highly creative overview of his work, just stunning !
Alex Steffen with heartfelt stories on the environment and practical and positive case studies helping our world to be a better place. This video from TED by Steffen shows us the way
Jack Meyers on branding and marketing in virtual worlds. En passant he gave a terrific overview of digital marketing trends worldwide, even on behavioral targeting !
David Burden with a sublime presentation on the Metaverse Roadmap, Second Life, Augmented Reality, Mirror Worlds/Google Earth and Lifelogging. And how they interact and converge. One second favorite speech of this great week. Thrilling ! Soon you can download his presentation in this link from Platform Virtuele Werelden (PVW) and Jack Meyers prezzie is already here. Staggering to see a live presentation of real-time flight information fed into Second Life from Google Earth, opens up huge possibilities. Also, communicating with your 2L avatar using RSS. David will speak later this year on the Metaverse Summit where I can see him again :-)
Portable Social Networks: a great workshop with Jyri Engestrom, Marc Canter, Dick Hardt, Biz Stone, Yme Bosma and many other leading thinkers. This was highly content driven (moving/synching/federating social networks, Identity 2.0, microformats, openID, lock-in, business models) and inspiring. I felt like witnessing the leading edge worldwide in social networking brainstorming for yet unknown solutions to complex, urgent and important problems and issues. No final answers as yet while I left the room but it was very special. I really hope these kind of sessions will become more commonplace going forward.
Dennis Crowley on social networks, tagging the real world with cases like Sharkrunner and Plundr. His prezzie resonated strongly with the one from David Burden integrating real time, real data within games, virtual world and alternate reality games.
Adam Greenfield on Urban Landscapes, Gaming and Computing. Mobile Devices + Shared Visualisations+Tagging = Social Object = Jyri's presentation :) Extending the insights of Jyri Engestrom on social objects on location as a social object. More later in my blog and presentations
eLens from MIT as an insightful example of city guides with personal and social overlays
The Urban Garden: self organised bus stop with user generated content/tagging, craigslist data, narrowcasting and feeds from ubiquitous computing
Emotion Maps and Biosensing
Ben Cerveny on serious gaming, game culture, simulations, multidimensional and visual representations of pervasive and ubiquitous computing combined with augmented reality and GeoWeb. This was my ultimate highlight of this week. Shivers all over ! Complexity Science applied to games and real life. An extension of David Weinbergers' presentation on Everything is Miscallenous integrating different external data sources and categorizations on real life and serious gaming case studies. Here your can see his video from the LIFT Conference this year. His talk on PICNIC07 was different however, in my view even much better.
And of course all the dinners, talks and networking before, in-between en afterwards. Thanks to all who contributed, helped and organized ! See you soon at another inspiring web 2.0/3.0 or mobile event. I am planning to go to the next Mobile Monday Amsterdam (november), LeWeb3 (december) and Metaverse Summit 2007 (december; as a speaker, my first international speech on an inspiring event on lifelogging, augmented reality, web 3.0 and virtual worlds together with a.o. Jamais Cascio and David Burden).
This post on Technology Review on EveryScape shows us the evolution of Google Earth and other virtual worlds. Google StreetView is similar to EveryScape but the demonstrations on the website of EveryScape are more spectacular in my view, especially the demo on the MIT building. Happy exploring !
"Everyscape CTO and founder Mok Oh says that the transition works
because it simulates people's real-life attitude toward moving from
place to place. "Getting there is not what you want," he says. "Being
there is what you want." In the future, EveryScape hopes to add more interactive features to
help businesses function virtually. Future additions might give users
the ability to buy merchandise inside a store with the click of a
mouse, or might add a virtual maître d' that could help visitors make
dinner reservations at a restaurant and recommend items on the menu."
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