Mobile Touch Web vs. App Stores

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Written on Monday, February 08, 2010

I got an interesting e-mail from one of my readers recently (thanks!), about a report on the Evolution of the Mobile Touch Web, from the mobile search engine Taptu. This is the first attempt at a comprehensive map of this ecosystem that I have seen, so I am sharing it with you all so that you can see the stats and numbers for yourself.

There's a presentation on SlideShare (visualising a report is always nice!) so that you can quickly go through the key findings.

From the relevant press release:

Shipments of Mobile touch screen devices are already 20% of global total, and estimated to increase to 40% by 2015. The 1st wave of content optimized for mobile touch screen devices were apps, which provided the opportunity to create a customized experience for users on mobile touch devices. Apple’s App Store, the most successful example of an ecosystem of apps, has led this wave.

We are at the beginning of the 2nd major wave of optimized content - the mobile touch Web, Web sites that are optimized for touch screen devices. The mobile touch Web runs on any mobile browser and provides new opportunities for businesses specifically mass market mobile commerce potential.

...

Taptu has analyzed, categorized and measured more than 100 million sites on the mobile touch Web and classified them by 20 categories and 200 sub-categories.

Today there are already more mobile touch Web sites than mobile touch apps; Taptu measured 326,000 sites on the mobile touch Web this month, compared to approximately 148,000 apps. In total, the mobile touch ecosystem is over 0.5m properties which represents millions of pages, videos and individual content items.

Taptu anticipates the mobile touch Web will double this year alone to more than 500,000 sites in 2010 and more than 1 million sites by the end of 2011.

Taptu observes a much higher proportion of games in the App Store (18% compared to 0.9%) versus the mobile touch Web. This is to be expected, since apps deliver a much richer, more interactive gaming experience than the casual games available on the mobile touch Web.

Interesting stuff.. Looking forward to seeing how much of this will evolve the way Taptu is predicting.

Location-Awareness in Social Networks

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Written on Thursday, February 04, 2010

Location is big in 2010 and it looks like it is finally going to be the year when it really hits off!


Location-Based Services (LBS) have been around since.. forever (my Master's thesis was on one -- and I remember finding literature on them from the 90s) but they have always been the sort of thing that was failing just short of happening.

So, you ask, what's different this time round -- why 2010? ... And Social Networks is your answer. They've certainly been one of the major developments of the past 4-5 years, and their success is unquestionable, not to mention how much they've already changed our lives. Now, another big change is on the cards: Social Networks are becoming (some have already become) location-enabled, by integrating the (missing up to now) element of geolocation.

Twitter, for example, already allows you to geotag your tweets. Then, you can look for 'Nearby' tweets, so that you can find out what's going on around you (literally), regardless of the people you follow... Unfortunately, only major countries/cities are supported so far, and I'm not in one of them, so I haven't been able to test it out and see for myself how much crap you end up having to go through -- I imagine that will be the main issue with this; you're not picking who to read tweets from anymore.

Facebook has plans to add location, but there's nothing solid yet. Obviously, given the sheer number of subscribers, this is going to be a huge boost for social location-awareness, and it will be really interesting to see then whether it will make or break, because if social networks can't make LBS a reality, I don't know what will! I believe location, once fully integrated, will give a whole new meaning to social networks, and Facebook in particular, and as long as it remains optional and you can still use Facebook without it, people will slowly come to adopt it when they realize the new features and services it can offer them. Granted, not everyone wants their location published with every post, but I think there is a balance to be found in between privacy settings (i.e. who can see my location) and the options to turn geolocation on and off completely.

Foursquare is the main social network site that already provides location awareness. In fact, it's pretty much built around it. The good thing about Foursquare is that it works.. everywhere! It's not just limited to specific places, or large cities. They let you add your own 'places' wherever you are, so that the whole world is open for exploration, and it is up to the users to 'build' the Foursquare virtual world. Obviously, the places with the greatest number of active users are the most interesting (because they have the most places / things to do). The real let-down with Foursquare, however, is that practically no-one I know is on there, and also that there are very few active users around my parts of the world right now, so there's not a whole lot to discover from others. Still, even if you don't know anyone, it's interesting to be finding out activities, new places you might not knwo about (especially in a town or city you're visiting) and general 'things to do'.

However, I came across a very interesting announcement for Foursquare, which I believe is one of the 'killer apps' of location integration in Social Networks.
Foursquare has inked a partnership with the Canadian version of Metro, the free newspaper that gets distributed on subway trains and other locations in various cities, that will give its users the ability to see local news and reviews related to a specific location they are “checking in” at using the service’s iPhone or BlackBerry app. Metro International, a Swedish company that publishes free papers in more than 100 cities around the world, says this is the first time the location-based startup has partnered with a news organization in any country.

In Canada, the paper is in Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver and claims circulation of some 800,000. So if a Foursquare user is near a restaurant in one of those cities for which Metro has a review, that will be displayed as a choice for the user. Although the Metro release doesn’t say whether other forms of news will be available as well, the potential is there for Metro reports on fires, break-ins, celebrity sightings or other news to be provided to users of Foursquare based on their location as well.

I also agree with Mathew Ingram (and Mark Briggs) about the point that they make about closed, proprietary relationships between news services and social networks:
Mark Briggs at Lost Remote makes a good point that in the long term, location-based news would be better accomplished by way of an open API and open data-sharing rather than proprietary relationships between news services and app vendors. But at least in the short term a deal like that of Foursquare/Metro could provide some interesting evidence as to what’s possible when you blend location and news (or marketing) content.
This is just not how social networks work! It is all about User-Generated Content, and yes, granted, there's other information sources in these networks, but my feeling is social network users will prefer news as live reports (tweets, posts, shouts, whatever) from other users, than enterprise-controlled, directed media.

Still, I believe that news, as a service, will be one of the major driving forces at this point, when users will still be processing the phenomenon of location-awareness in social networks.

New Proximity Sensor: Meet ...Your Phone

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Written on Tuesday, February 02, 2010

In a mobile marketing context, we use 'proximity' most often to refer to the consumer's mobile device being within range of a beacon/hotspot/antenna of a proximity marketing system. The mobile device is simply present, with the appropriate connectivity options turned on, and the discovery is left to the system.

However, a different take on the term refers to using the mobile device itself as the proximity marketing sensor. The mobile device takes the discovery role, meaning we can use it to find things near us, see if something is close to us, etc.

I came across this YouTube video just the other day that shows how this concept would work:
DecaWave ScenSor in Action

Interesting ideas and concepts in the video and though I'm not too sure how much of what is shown are off-the-shelf products, this is definitely something I can see us using a couple of years down the line, especially given the great push location-enabled and location-based services have recently got, after a number of years of always being on the verge of happening.

NBC Mobile Marketing Campaign: 2010 Winter Olympics

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Written on Monday, February 01, 2010

The Winter Olympics are slowly coming up, and as with all major sports events, you can bet mobile marketing campaigns will be running. Looking around, I came across this article, about the NBC mobile coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics.

What I really like about NBC's approach on the subject is that they are running a very complete campaign, with a number of different interaction or notification methods, including (as you can see in the screenshot below -- taken from here):

  • SMS Marketing (1)
  • Mobile Applications (2)
  • Mobile Videos (3)
  • Network Provider Integration (4)
  • iPhone & Blackberry support (not there yet, but it is on the map) (5)
  • Mobile TV (6)
This is definitely one of the most complete mobile marketing campaigns I have posted about, because there's just so many different approaches and methods to interact and participate.

The list is so complete that it almost ensures that every device or network user will be able to participate one way, or another.

I would love to find out the statistics from this campaign once it's finished. It would be really interesting to find out which methods people in the US chose more to participate, what different users - with similar device capabilities - chose, which devices were used more, etc. etc.

There's some really interesting stuff to be found from this, and I hope the marketers behind this campaign make the most of it -- it'd be a shame to waste the opportunity..

US Teens Text A Lot! Or Do They?

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Written on Thursday, January 28, 2010

Pretty impressive stats from the Nielsen report that digiday reports on.. According to the article, teenagers in the US send approximately 3000 SMS messages a month!

On second thought, and thinking back on the time I spent this Xmas "with" a few of my younger cousins (a big hello if any of you ever read this in the future!), I have to say that sounds about right... In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see even greater numbers our side of the Atlantic, given the general greater adoption of mobile phones.

It's not hard to notice this -- all you have to do is try to talk to a kid these day, only to receive vague replies while they are attached to their phone, texting away, or playing some game. Mobile phones are integral parts of our kids (and this is something we have instilled in them, make no mistake!) so I guess the most interesting part of this is seeing how kids are spending their pocket money these days, and how much this is changing generation to generation.

Here's the article itself:
Nielsen analyzes more than 40,000 mobile bills every month to determine what consumers actually are spending their money on. The results are staggering: American teenagers are using 3,146 messages a month, which translates into more than 10 messages every hour of the month that they are not sleeping or in school. Even the under 12 segment are sending 1,146 messages per month, which is almost four text messages per waking hour that they are not at school.

While the 13-17 year old age bracket is already highly saturated, the last holiday season was good to the under 12 segment when it came to text messaging. A full 8 percent increase in SMS usage was measured combined with a near doubling in text message volume for that segment in the following quarter (Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa are late in December, so usage increases will be recorded in Q1).


Location-Based Google Search: Google Local (in Greece)

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Written on Monday, January 25, 2010

One of the most interesting pieces of information to have appeared in my inbox during my time away was the news about Google Local: the new service Google offers you that adds the element of location to all your searches.


This is, of course, a major development as it now gives all your Google searches a very specific context: that of your location. By using Google Local, your search is conducted based on your current, and yet ever-changing, location.

Naturally, this is best suited to mobile GPS-equipped devices (iPhone, Android, smartphones with GPS, etc.) and especially if you are on the move.

It is only now that searches for terms such as "gas station", "ATM", "super market", "hospital" make sense, because, traditionally, when searching using such keywords, we would always also specify our location, trying to find the correct balance between the exact current location name, and the one that would appear in the website. But now, our search results come sorted according to which is nearest us.

As a sidenote, it is interesting to see how this will transform the keyword value for google adwords, because in the past few years sites had been designed and written in a way that would perform well for searches such as e.g. "thessaloniki gas station", but not necessarily for the simpler "gas station" search.

The search results also contain direct links for navigation on my iPhone (Google Maps opens up with the destination already pre-inserted for you).

From playing with it a bit (to see if I can rely on it, in case of need) I found that, in general, it's not quite as good (taking note of the overall experience) as my navigation app, but then again that costs good money and this is completely free.

It is certainly enough to get by if you're out and about, and probably better than what I expected, especially when testing it in the small island of Rhodes I'm currently on. I expected this to be the sort of thing that still only works in big cities, and mostly abroad.

In particular, I really liked that it worked straight away! This is a big big plus, for me at least, because there's so many new things I try out every day and very few of them succeed in this. I just went to google.com (had to switch to mobile view -- this was the only catch), turned on location (there was a slider just below the search input box) and confirmed the standard iPhone native prompt for the app requiring permition. That was it!

To illustrate how well, or not, this worked in this small island in Greece, I'll enumerate below what I tried, what worked and what not -- I hope that will help you get a good picture. Bear with the greek in the screenshots, but I needed to perform it in greek for closer-to-real-world conditions.
  • Hospital search
This worked in that the correct results came up first and second but from the third result onwards every ATM that came up was in Turkey, even though the search keyword was in greek!! As you can see in the screenshot on the left, the third result, though 'only' 32 miles away, is abroad, and across sea, which requires a different means of transport altogether... Driving, getting a bus, or walking is not the same as getting a boat!

Enough to get by, and the navigation directions were correct, so it gets a pass, but can't give it high marks.
  • ATM search
Terrible! The only search results that came up were in Turkey... Bit of a pain to get across just to get some cash out... Especially if you don't have any cash on you!!

Unfortunately -- because money makes the world go round -- Google Local fails to get a pass here. You can't get by without cash, and it would have gotten you to an ATM that is not just far away, but in a different country!
  • Gas station search
This is probably the most useful type of search if you're driving around places you don't know, or at least the one I find myself most often looking for.

GPS / Navigation systems definitely have the edge on this one, because you can even select the petrol brand in the upcoming stations on your route, and the experience in general feels much more natural in my navigation app.

Still, if you were without one, it would get you by, so again, though I can't give it high marks it gets a pass.
  • Hotel search
This wasn't exactly sorted by distance, (check out the screenshot to see what I mean), and because of this I didn't know how much to trust it.

Still, I really liked the rating feature nicely embedded in the hotel search (I guess I just hadn't noticed it before, because I don't think this is only in Google Local). Reviews really help me in picking hotels, so this would have made my decision much easier.

This is a plus over other GPS / Navigation systems I've used, that don't provide such information.

The Bed & Breakfast section of 'Near Me Now' worked better, however, and overall I can certainly give it a pass.
  • Taverna search
This was fine, and also shared the really useful star-rating feature. The place is full with tavernas here, so what you need as a visitor is the recommendations from other people who have already tasted the food / seen the environment.

Very useful and even though I wouldn't rely on every restaurant or taverna having a web site / or web presence, it is much better than a blind choice, so I'm giving it a pass with good marks.

Note: Rhodes is a big tourist destination, one of the biggest in Greece, with most of the tourists coming from abroad. It is also an expensive tourist destination, so in that sense, even though it is a small island, it has good web presence, so I'm not sure the results for other similar size islands will be the same.

Also, I should note that not everything works. I thought I'd found the most useful type of visualisation, with the option to 'Map All Results' in your area, however, as you can see in the screenshot, something went wrong there, because the same results that show gas stations in Rhodes, are shown all over the globe, across continents. Definitely something for Google to attend to because I think this would really stand out as something extremely useful.

As a final note, I found that if all search results were far away, I was always using an inappropriate search term, and changing the search keyword worked and gave me better results. This worked as a good indicator of whether I was running the 'correct' search.

I hope this is the start; many more services can benefit from adding location as context, and I'm sure there's plenty to come soon. Wait till you see what happens when Facebook or Twitter does it...

Bluetooth Marketing Drink Awareness Campaign in Wrexham, UK

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Written on Thursday, January 21, 2010

I came across this article about a bluetooth proximity marketing campaign that took place a few weeks ago in Wrexham, UK.

The British Police has run a number of such drink awareness campaigns in the past so this is not something entirely new, but it is good to be seeing more and more of these campaigns out there. It is just confirming how widely mobile marketing can be used not just in promotional marketing campaigns but also to raise social awareness in such issues.

From the article:
Gencia’s “Bloowire” Bluetooth marketing tool is being used in Wrexham this weekend in a Home Office and council partnership to cut violent crime.

TV monitors will encourage drinkers to download a number of applications to their mobiles, including a Beer Goggles game which demonstrates what effects alcohol can have on their judgement.

More seriously there will be personal safety messages aimed at young women to encourage them to travel home safely.

“Bluetooth offers us a modern and measurable way to engage young people with key messages around alcohol and Gencia were chosen because of their experience of delivering full campaign strategies rather than just the technology itself,” explained North Wales Police Sergeant Dave Marsden.

In January this year, the Manchester agency was brought in to use Bluetooth proximity marketing in Liverpool city centre on another drink awareness campaign, this time for Liverpool Trading Standards and Merseyside Police.
If you are interested, feel free to browse through some past related articles: