Facebook’s short tale and the mobile long tale?

The IPO of Facebook should have been the big NASDAQ event of the year…but after a few days it turns out that the Facebook story is short tale instead of fairy tail! However conclusions can’t be made over a few days, future will tell whether Facebook is able to turn his IPO into a long tail success. Mobile will be the key element in the success of Facebook’s long tail.

Convertising the connected customer

IAB – Belgium’s Think Digital at The Egg in Brussels today…After a great edition last year, I came with high expectations and in the end I got what I’ve paid for: Convertising the connected customer as the big challenge for every company, advertiser, …. the next 3 to 5 years. We’re entering great times where customers have a different media consumption, use different devices and connect through new applications. As a company, organisation (and advertiser for shure) you need to know how this will affect your business.  I’m going to quote a tweet a saw during the day to prove my point : “heard a lot about second screens today while many companies still struggle to use/optimize just one screen” . In this quote lays the challenge for everybody in us….society is changing, media consumption is changing, …. but companies keep doing business as usual…Time to act, time to change, time to start “convertising”

A future outlook! Small, mobile and interconnected!

Every year Microsoft and other companies release a look at the future of “things”.

The next two videos show us how the future might look like….3 elements are omnipresent: small, mobile and interconnected!
We leave our privacy at the mobile gate!

But be inspired on what is ahead!

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Mobile Trends for Africa – A bright future

Since I have a have a special bond with the African continent…I can’t neglect the on going mobile revolution which is empowering Africa.
Did you know…how the mobile revolution will empower en help Africa to build its way to success?

This presentation is a more intense background on how mobile will change the African continent in the next couple of years. Opinion leaders from all over the tell you why and how the  mobile revolution will connect, engage, empower and enchant the Africans!

2011 – Mobile payment era begins

A lot of rumours….and research by f.i. Forrester say that the era of mobile payments will have a lift off in 2011. With the launch of Near Field Communication (NFC) and other mobile payment tools customers will gradually switch to the mobile device to make their payments.

The how and why…easy the different technologies which are available will augment your mobile device to a paying device. Off course this will have a huge impact on commerce (on- and off-line).  A payment is becoming easy, fast and ecological! A short round-up on different available technologies:

• Near Field Communication: The Near Field Communication protocol makes your mobile device an active wallet. You just swipe your phone at a payment terminal and you’re done! No hassle with cards or other transactions
• Square, or other App supported payments: For App supported payments you need to download the App to the smartphone and use it to pay. Again easy and fast going, but more action is needed in this scenario. (f.i.) Starbucks has successfully launched his mobile payment service in January.
  Square is a bit different. You download the square-App and order the free Square device to plug into your mobile phone.  With the Square device you swipe your regular credit card to pay. The payment runs through your mobile phone/device, but still needs a traditional card.
• Visa, American Express, PayPal… and most major credit cards are working on different technologies to facilitate mobile payment…

2011 will be the launch path for mobile payment….Android and Blackberry have NFC services already incorporated in 2011-models (40 to 50 millions sales projections for 2011). Look at the presentation at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year.  Apple will probably have NFC on the iPhone 5 (to launch this year)…..which means consumers will be able to pay mobile (at least the early adaptors)! The huge challenge will be at the business side of society to have NFC terminals available to pay at! Salt Lake City equips his public transportation with the NFC technology, and the London Olympic Games (2012) will probably embrace NFC as well, … but we need a major shift in traditional retail to facilitate this new way of paying!
AND we need one standard NFC payment protocol, no 12 and so one different systems….one clear NFC technology. But as always a lot of competitors need to enter, and one will survive (cfr. Betamax/VHS – HD DVD/Blue Ray - …) Time will tell which one survives!

The mobile retail experience….as you recall is the future, and this is a step into this future.

Inspired by Thomas Husson (Forrester Research), Erika Morphy (E-commerce Times) and Christina Warren (Mashable)

How to mobil-e/ize?

It’s a hot topic….mobile….I’ve been writing about it already (you find my former posts on the bottom of this post), and now at SXSWi we see it happening. The buzz was out, and now it’s time to set things in motion….it’s time to MOBILizE!

We see numbers of mobile devices and mobile access to the flat world grow every day….predictions of 2014 (were mobile takes over desktop, will be sooner for western countries, worldwide 2014 is expected).

At SXWSi Googles head of Mobile and Geolocation, Marissa Mayer, talked about Google’s strategy for the mobile future.  Geolocation will be one of the keystone to match the digital world with the physical world through the mobile device.  Google’s figures on the mobile use show this shift, with 40% of all map uses are already mobile, and the HotPot app where you connect to your network through Google maps. Google is adding the location app on almost all of its services….Location, Location, Location = future of mobile web!
India is even considering to make geolocation mandatory as part of the mobile device/world….what are they saying about privacy?!
But then again, we’re all using Foursquares or Gowalla…so Google is just integrating their existing services….hopefully the pioneers of geolocation will survive!

Another milestone will be the use of the digital mobile wallet, already hot in Japan and Hongkong, but not yet in western countries. But again we see a shift happening….2011 will probably be a turning point in the use of mobile payment. Thank you NFC (near field communication) and the fact that financial and other western companies are ready….now it’s up to the customer to embrace this technology (besides SMS payment off course)!

To make shure you are MOBILizE, I’ve added a list with the 10 companies/apps you will make you ready for the mobile future (at this point). My guess is that we’ll see new apps/companies entering the mobile playing field….this is the connected future where digital (and flat) world meet the real world.

My older posts on mobile:

• Cloud 4 mobile
• Mobile will boost earlier than 2014
• Mobile World in numbers
• Digital Europe in numbers

Mobile in the education section:

• Mobile Future
• Mobile retail

Cloud 4 Mobile

Apple is feeding the rumours again for the cloud based version of iTunes….off course this is bound to happen one day, since the mobile era will need a cloud version of iTunes (f.i.).  Google is integrated the Google Cloud Connection to Microsoft Office, the re-launch of Google Wave…

Examples enough to show the mobile future is near, because in this mobile future we’re always connected, sync and in touch but those mobile devices need to have access to the same information, music, documents, …. thanks to these cloud applications this is possible and easy. Apple taking it one step further with the vertical integration through software and hardware, but once they opened up the cloud version of iTunes this means (hopefully) full access to iTunes from any device!

For businesses this is also a major step, because businesses can be run anytime, anywhere! SAP already delivers this service to his customers….just to give an idea on what this means for your business I have added a small video (not as a commercial to SAP but to give some insight on how a business is run in the mobile clouded era!). And if you think this is only for the few big multinationals out there, think again….through small (sometime) free apps (think Google Apps & Docs) even a small of medium enterprise can be run through cloud and mobile technology (and save money….less IT costs!)

Digital Europe in numbers – Trends are confirmed!

Comscore launched it annual report on digital and online Europe.  Free to download at their website!

But for those who are only interested in the hard facts and figures, I made a summary of the most important numbers.

• Europe is becoming more and more engaged in social media
  87,7% of the Europeans is engaged in social media (+10,9% over 1 year time!). 
  When Europeans are online they spend most of their time on social media, and mostly on Facebook (11,7% of the online time is Facebook time). Facebook mostly suppresses local social media initiatives like Hi5 (Portugal) and StudiVZ (Germany). When we look at online usage we see less instant chatting and e-mailing in the 15-34 category, while 35+ keeps on using e-mail (there is even +6% growth in this age category regarding mail use).

• Coupon sales are rising rapidly
  Not as big as in the US, but the hype is comming…As already posted!
  We see Groupon taking a large market share on coupon sales, but this is the trend to follow for 2011!

• Advertising on/through social network is booming business
  We see a significant rise in online advertising through social media.  This will also keep on growing through the next years

Besides these hard facts, the reports shows that 2011 will be the year were Mobile will step in and play a more important role into our society. And it’s important to see, which online tool young people are using (15-34 ), they are making the future trends!
In combination with the social media growth, this is and will be the challenge for business to deal with!

(graphics taken from the Comscore report)

Internet of “Things”

During a keynote @ Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Dr. Paul Jacobs (CEO and Chairman of Qualcomm) talked about how non-phone, non-tablet devices would connect to the flat world. In this “all is connected” world, the mobile phone would be used as a central hub between all those items.

Paul Jacobs looks at the mobile phone as “a device which will help you orchestrate the interactions of the things around you and provide real-time access to all sorts of info, including the people you meet, the places you go and the content that’s available there.” Off cours this means a lot of different developmonts are alreaady set in motion to make shure you can communicate with every non-device (f.i. local radio, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, satellite, NFC (near field communication)). The end-user won’t care how the phone connects but it has got to connect in the fastest way possible.

The Mobile web will be the standard for 2014….so we’re looking forward to seeing this technologies rolled out! We know Qualcomm has it chipsets ready so….wait and see?

But to give an insight on the Internet of Things a found a cool video on what Internet of Things means.

At this Qualcomm site you get an impression of what it means a wireless world with an Internet of Things.

Google Apps Store for PC’s

Encouraged by the success of their app stores for mobile devices like Apple and Google both are a similar time to shop for “regular” computer. With the launch of Google Chrome Web Store stuck his rival this week slightly the better of. On the Mac, the App Store is to wait until – probably – the first half of January.

The Chrome Web Store is accessible in two ways: through the Chrome browser (which you can download free) and through the same operating system in the course of next year will be found on some notebooks – at least – Acer and Samsung.
Compared with the Mac App Store, there are two essential differences. To start running the applications from all the Chrome Web Store ‘in’ the browser (or within the Chrome OS) instead of them physically on your computer to install them in the ‘cloud’ or stored on the Web. This has the advantage that your collection of apps available immediately on all your other computers, simply log in with your Google account, and voila. This approach does mean that you necessarily have to be online with your apps to get started. Some programs can therefore be used offline, from your computer’s cache. The most famous example is the Google Docs office suite.

Another difference is that Google’s applications are not limited to one platform. The Chrome browser (and the Chrome Web Store) is indeed available for Windows, Linux and Mac …. In other words, Apple gets a competitor that operates on the same platform. Which is obviously good news for Mac users, who can now shop hopping.

The layout of the Chrome Web Store is almost an unabashed copy of Apple’s mobile App Store, with familiar elements such as Featured, Popular, Staff Picks and Top Paid (some apps are indeed paying). The range of shops – as diversity is concerned, anyway – very similar and ranges from useful utilities on social networking apps to games. I haven’t counted the number of applications but it would now have more than five hundred. Whether that is much or little we know in January when the new software from Apple store opens its doors.

I’m quite fond of the PowerPoint alternative SlideRocket, the Social Media Dashboard HootSuite and we can play like a game Poppit. But I’m also very curious about your favorite apps from the Chrome Web Store. So share us your favorite apps through the comment section!