Mobile phones have the potential to become the new hub of social computing

Many innovative start-ups have pioneered mobile social networking in the last few years: BuzzCity, Peperoni, Fring, Nimbuzz, eBuddy, Zyb, Plazes, Loopt, Foursquare and many others demonstrated the potential of the market.

In the last few months, a bunch of announcements clearly showed that the convergence between mobile and social computing is gaining traction and attracting the largest stakeholders:

In September 2009, Facebook announced it had passed the 65,000,000 mobile users’ monthly mobile audience mark (which represents around 20% of a global online audience of 3x0M+ users). Bebo, Friendster, MySpace, Orkut also are among the top mobile Web destinations in countries where they have significant online audiences. Twitter partnered with Vodafone and O2 in the UK while offering a mobile VoIP offering with Jajah.

Operators such as Vodafone with its “360” initiative and to a lesser extent Orange with “Social Life” are going one step further than just offering access to social networking sites.

Handset manufacturers are trying to integrate online social experiences in their devices: INQ gained lot of attention with its INQ 1 (see below a pic from a recent trip in Italy) by winning the “handset of the year” award at MWC, while Nokia recently announced a deeper integration of Facebook in the N97, not to mention the Motoblur product.

According to Forrester data, in the UK, 40% of 16/25 years old are either accessing (17%) or interested in accessing social networking (23%) via their mobile phones. Of course, mobile social computing is primarily a youth activity today. However, it has a strong potential to unlock.

Most of the digital revolution has taken place on the PC so far, with the emergence of email, instant messaging, blogs, photo- and video-sharing sites, and social networks. The ubiquitous nature of mobile phones has changed the way we live and communicate. Letters, diaries, address books, and memories have gone digital, while communication with friends, relatives, and colleagues has never involved such a mix of our personal and professional lives. However, mobile phones are not only communication tools. Mobile phones have unique characteristics that will enhance and modify existing PC-based Social Web experiences.

Indeed, mobile social activity is more than just accessing social networking sites while on the go. Mobile phones have the potential to become the hub of Social Computing activities and to be more than just a complement to the PC experience. Mobile phones will increasingly become the glue that holds the social graph together, offering creative tools and immediacy, presence, location, and context when interacting with the real world. The “always on” mobile connected handset frees the Social Web from the chains of the PC and thrusts it into the real world.

As Social Computing is still primarily about social communication, traditional telecom and online players will start fighting to tap into consumers’ social address books. It is too early to say who will win the race: stakeholders have different assets, and uncertainties around business models still exist. In fact, stakeholders have no other choice but to collaborate, as no single player can really own a person’s social graph. They need to balance business opportunities with the need to respect consumers’ privacy concerns by providing them with the tools to manage their digital identities.

Despite massive communication audiences, traditional online giants have failed so far to turn their communication audiences into social audiences — a lesson that traditional telecom stakeholders should bear in mind! Moving away from personal information management (PIM) to fun, exciting social experiences is not an easy game.

I’d be curious to know your thoughts on this nascent and exciting topic. If you want to share your ideas, feel free to comment below.

2008 Predictions Reviewed

I reviewed my 2007 predictions here. So let’s do it again for my 2008 predictions.

Since I can’t buy the idea of 2008 as THE year of “…”, I highlighted what I thought would be the key trends rather than going for very specific claims:

1) “New entrants in the mobile space won’t impact the market significantly but highlight the evolution of the mobile ecosystem”

“Apple might even exceed its 10M 2008 target but even if it does, it won’t change the game in a volume industry. However, it might be another story in the high-end segment.” Thanks to lots of international and non-exclusive agreements and to the introduction of operator subsidies, the iPhone performed very well and is now a very serious competitor to RIM, HTC or Nokia N-Series…but at the end of the day there will be more than 1bn+ handsets sold worldwide. Will Apple replicate its approach on the PC market and remain a niche worldwide player and will they gain significant market share in the mobile space? I think it remains an open question. Also, it does not prevent Apple at all (on the contrary) to be highly profitable and successful with an integrated and focused strategy. I think it is a good summary of what’s happening in the value chain: a new entrant threatened to impose a new business model and is revamping the way content and applications are being merchandized / distributed on mobile phones.

Same story for Android and the G1. From a European perspective, I think there was too much noise around the so-called Google phone. At the end of the day, there will be x00.000 HTC devices sold but in the UK only. Many other devices with strong handset brands also coming into the game (Samsung, LG) but this is a long-term volume game vs the new Symbian Foundation: the final aim is to reduce costs for a bunch of developers, operators and handset players to offer the largest reach for Google services and its advertiser community.
Android is a mobile operating system for devices launched by the largest online advertising player. Isn’t that a good preview on the tectonic shifts happening in the mobile ecosytem?

2) “…Wimax, LTE, mobile broadcasting will continue to be overhyped but won’t impact the market anytime soon”

I am not denying the fact that Austrian and Swiss players tried to make the most of the UEFA Football Cup to launch DVB-H. See my post “Where will you watch the Euro?” but what about France (another postponment), Germany (switch to DVB-T), and real usage figure?

For Wimax/4G, I’ll refer to my previous comment: “Stop the hype with Mobile Wimax“.

3) “…Internet Trends will continue to be translated in the mobile space, usage will be unleashed among early adopters…”.

Regarding mobile social networking, I think there was lots of traction, as shown by Facebook annnouncement to have reached 15m mobile users worldwide. Same for widgets and VoIP with lots of innovative companies. Lots of trials for ad-funded mobile offerings as well. That being said, the results of a September Jupiter consumer survey were quite clear: on average 2% of mobile phone users visited a social networking site on their mobile phone in the last month while only 5 percent reported to access the mobile Internet on a weekly basis. Reason is quite simple, flat-rate all you can eat data plans are not ubiquitous and are only starting to be launched on prepay plans. So I think it is fair to say such “mobile 2.0″ services are still niche. Don’t get me wrong: I am neither saying there are not key for the youth audience nor that they do not have a strong potential. On the contrary, but hey Roma was not built in one day. I am looking forward participating to the mobile 2.0 conference in Paris to hear about the latest trends on this topic.

4) “…Mobile Advertising will enter a disillusionment phase before the end of 2008…”. Yes and no! I think an increasing number of advertisers are embracing the mobile channel. But most of them are still testing the waters and do not spend very significant budgets really integrating mobile in the media-mix. More detailed analysis on this post here. In the UK, the availability of the O2 active inventory had a direct consequence on CPM prices. Mobile ad rates begin to fall as reported recently in AdAge. On a nascent media, advertisers do not care about higher CTRs (the usual pitch of mobile ad vendors : mobile >>> online click-through-rates), they care about better ROIs, still difficult to measure. I think this prediction may have been a bit early but I have no doubt the market will enter a more realistic phase in 2009, particularly in the times of the economic downturn.

5) “…Mobile “Utilities” will start emerging…. That was an easy one. I think that’s particulary true for location-based services, that are now being promoted as a way to acquire customers. But I was too optimistic on mobile transactions (banking, ticketing, payment).

That’s my personal take anyway. From a Jupiter forecasting perspective (a collective and professional approach), we reviewed downwards a couple of revenues streams (particularly Ring-Back Tones and video/TV) and upwards SMS volumes (that keep increasing) but hadn’t obviously integrated the impact of the crisis. This exercise will be done when revising the forecast with Forrester (my new employer) analysts and dedicated forecasting team.

From now onwards, you’ll be able to follow my posts on the brand new Forrester Blog for Consumer Product Strategy Professionals. The posts here will have a different angle and be more personal and more diversified (not necessarily always mobile-related).

Sorry, that was too long a post. Anyway, that’s wrap for 2008. If you disagree or I you have a different perspective, feel free to add a comment. I’ll post my 2009 predictions early January to get the ball rolling.

It’s now time for me to hibernate until January 5th.

I wish you all a nice festive season.

French SocioGeeks

Interesting survey conducted by Orange, FaberNovel and the FING (Fédération Internet Nouvelle Génération: sort of web 2.0 association also behind the organization of Mobile Monday Paris) on how French Internet users express themselves on the Web 2.0. It relates to the use of social networks, digital identity…

If you speak French, worth having a quick look at the results here.

Pour faire court et comme le résume l’article de 20 minutes de ce matin, les geeks ne sont “pas à poil sur la toile”.
Ci-dessous un extrait de l’article de David Carzon, qui résume simplement les choses:

«On se rend compte que les gens ne sont pas si exhibitionnistes que ça, analyse Daniel Kaplan, délégué général de la Fondation pour l’Internet Nouvelle Génération (Fing).

Ils ne laissent pas tomber toutes les barrières au motif qu’ils sont sur des réseaux sociaux. Au contraire, ils ont des vrais stratégies autour de leur image selon qu’ils veulent par exemple, se créer un capital social.»

Les réflexes sont souvent les mêmes que dans la vie «réelle». «Quand on accepte d’entrer en relation avec quelqu’un par l’intermédiaire du web, on se base sur des critères comme la beauté, l’éducation ou la position sociale, poursuit Daniel Kaplan. De manière assez classique, on va chercher des gens qui nous ressemblent ou qui représentent un idéal type. Il n’y a pas de transformation radicale de notre mode d’entrée en relation.»

Nokia: Connecting People

Nokia’s brand tagline is perfectly summarized in the announcements made this morning at Nokia World in Barcelona.

- launch of Nokia Messaging. The offering will launch in Q1 2009 mainly in developing countries and on S60 solutions. However, support for S40 is expected in second half of 2009. The challenge here will be to offer a really seamless integration/synchronization with existing brands and solutions (Yahoo! Mail® and Messenger®, Windows Live, Hotmail, Gmail, Google Talk, AOL Mail and thousands of ISPs).

- Mail on OVI. The interesting point is that the beta version will roll out in 12 languages (with many more to comes) including Hindi, Bengali, Tagalog, Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Malaysia. It is often forgotten how fragmented and diverse the Indian, Indonesian (235 million people on more than 17,000 islands) or Malaysian markets are. To adress emerging countries, the offering has to be driven by local content and offerings, in local language and on the mobile device (due to limited PC penetration). The simple fact that the service is available on all currently shipping Nokia Series 40 devices is another clear sign that Nokia is targeting masses. Nokia does neither restrict the solution to its high-end S60 solutions not does it want to address the niches that currently use mobile consumer e-mail. The web access version will launch in February 2009 and will be a key component for driving traffic into the OVI Web site. Consumers need to have strong benefits to regularly visit OVI. If the service is really simple to use, open, and as reliable as the Nokia brand, expect the company to really start promoting OVI.

- sharing your “social location” or “sensing your ‘So-Lo’” as stated by Nokia in its PR. Beyond the announcement of a new flagship device (the N97, first QWERTY NSerie phone with an amazing 48GB storage!), Nokia insists on the concept of ‘social location’: “the Nokia N97 makes it easy to update social networks automatically with real-time information, giving approved friends the ability to update their ‘status’ and share their ‘social location’ as well as related pictures or videos”. Loopt, Whrrl, Where, GyPSii and many other services offer these services today. Business models vary quite a lot but many start-ups should be aware there is no way for them to have a return on investment anytime soon if they rely exclusively on mobile advertising. In addition, such features should logically be increasingly offered on existing social networks. Combined with the growth of social networking and its expansion in the mobile space, LBS are set to finally (8 years after initial launches!) become a key serivce. The new version of Nokia Maps (integration with OVI, 3D enhancements, and availability to pre-plan a journey on the home PC and then to synchronize with mobile) will definitely help. Check out the beta version here.

All those announcements are really at the heart of Nokia’s brand and a clear signal that Nokia is now competing with the likes of Google and other Internet players. I can see 2 main challenges for Nokia:

- How well and how quickly will this strategy be executed? Internet giants tend to be react very quicly and to offer compelling user-experiences. Shifting from a hardware to a software company is Nokia’s toughest cultural and organizational hurdle but the company is used to re-inventing itself.

- How will operator clients react and how will they be associated to Nokia messaging efforts? How will other handset manufacturers evolve? For the moment, they claim to support their clients and position themselves as enablers and partners but I wonder what’s really in the pipeline if Nokia proved to be more successful than expected in their services’ strategy?

Please give your opinions on Nokia announcements. I would be curious to know your thoughts. Simply add a comment below

Nokia World

For the first time in the last few years, I won’t be able to attend the Nokia World event.

My colleague Julie Ask will be speaking on mobile social networking and communities. See the full agenda here.

I’ll comment the announcements next week but if you want to follow the event almost live, you can follow twitter, journalists and Nokia Conversations.