There's a new forecast for Mobile Social Networking to beat all the previous ones.
iSuppli Corporation, a market research firm, has done a study of Mobile Social Networking and forecasts the impact of this trend in 2020. There's almost no information available on the study except a short article which appears here.
The problem, of course, is in how one defines the market and where one draws the line of impact. In this case, iSuppli seems (in the last paragraph of the article) to include the sales of semiconductors for mobile devices supporting social networking in their forecast.
In the Informa forecast of the Mobile Social Networking market, I did not even include revenues from "bulk" data traffic services generated by Mobile Social Networking. This was because I feel that one cannot directly attribute data plan choices to only one service. It's more likely that people choose their data plans for a bundle of services they think they will need, even though social media and networks may feature very highly in the bundle.
In the forecast, I do include the impact of communications services (such as voice and video calls) initiated from social networking applications and all types of messaging revenues which are linked to those services.
I will be working on the model in the next few weeks and plan to have the 2020 scenario as an exercise during the IIR Mobile Social Networking pre-conference workshop.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Friday, April 11, 2008
Virtual Communities need a "home"
Since last fall when I was deep into the research for the Informa report, I detected a need for a safe place, a forum, where the virtual communities' challenges could (at least) be flagged and examined more closely.
In February, at the MWC, I stopped by the W3C booth and met Dominique Hazael-Massieux, the Mobile Web Initiative Activity Lead. In March, and for the past week, Dominique and I have be hatching a proposal. The W3C has the appropriate structure for this work to begin and continue, but it lacks the appropriate staff to drive the initiative.
A proposal is now being reviewed by over 20 mobile community operators and Network Equipment Providers, some of whom have a lot invested in the virtual community space, to solicit their sponsorship for this W3C fellow post. The post would need to be created, but there is no point in creating something for which there is no financial support.
I look forward to seeing how this is received at the W3C Advisory Committee meeting next week.
In February, at the MWC, I stopped by the W3C booth and met Dominique Hazael-Massieux, the Mobile Web Initiative Activity Lead. In March, and for the past week, Dominique and I have be hatching a proposal. The W3C has the appropriate structure for this work to begin and continue, but it lacks the appropriate staff to drive the initiative.
A proposal is now being reviewed by over 20 mobile community operators and Network Equipment Providers, some of whom have a lot invested in the virtual community space, to solicit their sponsorship for this W3C fellow post. The post would need to be created, but there is no point in creating something for which there is no financial support.
I look forward to seeing how this is received at the W3C Advisory Committee meeting next week.
Mobile Social Networking and UGC Summit in July
The process of educating the market about mobile communities is only beginning. Even those of us who spend every day and night working on this topic need to hear how others see and experience the market. There remain many companies who are interested in learning more but have not really invested in a good report!
An alternative to a market research report is a delegate seat at a summit such as that which will be held July 2-4 2008 in Amsterdam. I love the city of Amsterdam and welcome the opportunity to be going back there. In addition to excellent location, the opportunity to collaborate with the conference organizer in the development of the agenda was valuable to me.
Mobile Social Networking and UGC: From Foundations to Advanced Strategic Planning is the title of the pre-conference workshop which I am conducting. As the title suggests, I will layout out the foundations as I see them and will take this through to the future and how to plan for it. I'm particularly excited about the afternoon which I'm planning to focus on the model of the industry. I am going to invite some financial and industry analysts to that session and really get serious with some What If scenarios.
Summit speakers include some of the most outspoken independent community operators (Gofresh, Flirtomatic) and several mobile operators. I anticipate that IIR will be able to bring in a good group of operators.
Today I'm going to issue an invitation to some of my lists to register early for the Summit and Workshop.
An alternative to a market research report is a delegate seat at a summit such as that which will be held July 2-4 2008 in Amsterdam. I love the city of Amsterdam and welcome the opportunity to be going back there. In addition to excellent location, the opportunity to collaborate with the conference organizer in the development of the agenda was valuable to me.
Mobile Social Networking and UGC: From Foundations to Advanced Strategic Planning is the title of the pre-conference workshop which I am conducting. As the title suggests, I will layout out the foundations as I see them and will take this through to the future and how to plan for it. I'm particularly excited about the afternoon which I'm planning to focus on the model of the industry. I am going to invite some financial and industry analysts to that session and really get serious with some What If scenarios.
Summit speakers include some of the most outspoken independent community operators (Gofresh, Flirtomatic) and several mobile operators. I anticipate that IIR will be able to bring in a good group of operators.
Today I'm going to issue an invitation to some of my lists to register early for the Summit and Workshop.
How quickly?
Yes, once again, it's about how quickly time passes...
The question I've been asking the companies with whom I've had telephone briefings this week is how fast their services are evolving: much their services have changed, in terms of features, since December 2007 when the tables were presumably correct.
I'm selectively sending out the individual profiles Informa published in the Companion Volume to see if there is a need to prepare an update. An update of the Companion Volume would also include approximately 30 more (new) profiles of services which were either (a) available in 2007 but I did not have sufficient contact with to prepare a profile, or (b) new services that have been introduced/released since January 1, 2008. A new Companion Volume will definitely be necessary in 2008 but I am not sure when. I hope to have feedback on this by later this month. I don't have a good handle from other people who publish material of this type on the frequency of releases. In the future, of course, the entire resource would be available on a web site which could be updated any time.
Time has also permitted me to invest more cycles into the Mobile Social Networking model which I prepared with Gareth Sims for the report. The model is getting a few minor repairs. I'm also increasing the annotations and instructions. Finally, I'm beginning to work out how to develop the bottom up estimates for the AIGPU (Average Income Generated Per User) in different community segments. These will be in pretty good shape by the time of the IIR Workshop.
The question I've been asking the companies with whom I've had telephone briefings this week is how fast their services are evolving: much their services have changed, in terms of features, since December 2007 when the tables were presumably correct.
I'm selectively sending out the individual profiles Informa published in the Companion Volume to see if there is a need to prepare an update. An update of the Companion Volume would also include approximately 30 more (new) profiles of services which were either (a) available in 2007 but I did not have sufficient contact with to prepare a profile, or (b) new services that have been introduced/released since January 1, 2008. A new Companion Volume will definitely be necessary in 2008 but I am not sure when. I hope to have feedback on this by later this month. I don't have a good handle from other people who publish material of this type on the frequency of releases. In the future, of course, the entire resource would be available on a web site which could be updated any time.
Time has also permitted me to invest more cycles into the Mobile Social Networking model which I prepared with Gareth Sims for the report. The model is getting a few minor repairs. I'm also increasing the annotations and instructions. Finally, I'm beginning to work out how to develop the bottom up estimates for the AIGPU (Average Income Generated Per User) in different community segments. These will be in pretty good shape by the time of the IIR Workshop.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Signs of progress-mobile communities in the spotlight
It's been far too long (again) since my last post but I'm prepared to resume. It has been a very hectic three weeks. The most important event during the interval was the final hard copy and electronic publication of the report (January 30).
The second milestone was meeting with over 45 companies in Barcelona Feb 11-14 and generally taking the pulse of the industry over those four days. The topic of mobile applications in general (and mobile communities in particular) was more important in 2008 than in past years. There were several important announcements made (by Microsoft, Nokia, Yahoo! and dozens of small companies) and a new category of "global award" was born (the Best Mobile Social Networking Service was awarded to myGamma).
The second milestone was meeting with over 45 companies in Barcelona Feb 11-14 and generally taking the pulse of the industry over those four days. The topic of mobile applications in general (and mobile communities in particular) was more important in 2008 than in past years. There were several important announcements made (by Microsoft, Nokia, Yahoo! and dozens of small companies) and a new category of "global award" was born (the Best Mobile Social Networking Service was awarded to myGamma).
Press coverage of mobile social networking has been good. The report, in particular, will be mentioned in an article in the Washington Post about mobile communities later this week and there was one a few weeks ago published by Reuters and syndicated to dozens of newspapers around the world : http://www.reuters.com/article/COMSRV/idUSL0658046220080206. there are dozens of smaller articles in local/regional publications every day!
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Full Steam Ahead
I've been so busy working on my first objective for January (below), on the other responsibilities (AMI COI Workshop) and Mobile Augmented Reality opportunities that I haven't had a minute to capture what's happening.
Travel also interrupts ones rhythm. I was gone to Holland on business January 17-21. While in Amsterdam I had some great meetings with people about all three lines of business. Was interesting to watch Sam jotting down notes of my segmentations and suggested metrics. It convinced me that I need to get busy building the presentation about the report's findings.
During the past two weeks I've also had the opportunity to really study and argue the model used in the report at a deeper level. This was thanks to an Informa analyst who may need to defend the revenue forecast. While the struggle on what, precisely, the revenue forecasts would be pulled a dark gray cloud over my mood, and delayed the completion of the edits by about a week, it was an important exercise.
We attempted to "rationalize" the size by estimating what portion of the total revenues would be available to mobile network operators. I venture that more than 80% of it is available in the near term because the services are largely paid for by users and the mobile operators have a stranglehold on the community operators, but as we move out into the forecast period, the portion paid by corporates will grow. I developed a User Pays Portion analysis and added it to the model.
The frustrating aspect of this exercise is that it highlights how much the corporates might (or might not) pay to support mobile social networking. The mobile advertising forecasts do not specify how much of future mobile ad spend might be towards mobile communities, but the general assumption is that brands will not be all that eager to support communities. To be seen.
There are other ways for corporates to provide financial support for mobile communities and content in those communities. For example, sponsorships and contributions to causes.
After many e-mail exchanges, the compromise position was to lower the 2012 total revenue forecasts nearly 20%. I am sure that the published forecasts will still raise a lot of eyebrows and skeptics will doubt but the real objective I have is to work through the model with as many people as possible/as time permits.
The forecasts were finalized Jan 22 (night) and the edits to the chapter took several days (57 figures!). In the process an error was caught (whew!) and corrected.
Once the forecasts were put to bed the remainder of this week was spent completing the edits to other chapters, developing the marketing materials (brochure and press release) and seeking quotes. I've also sent a special discount code to the 75 people who were interviewed for the report.
Now it's full steam ahead!
Travel also interrupts ones rhythm. I was gone to Holland on business January 17-21. While in Amsterdam I had some great meetings with people about all three lines of business. Was interesting to watch Sam jotting down notes of my segmentations and suggested metrics. It convinced me that I need to get busy building the presentation about the report's findings.
During the past two weeks I've also had the opportunity to really study and argue the model used in the report at a deeper level. This was thanks to an Informa analyst who may need to defend the revenue forecast. While the struggle on what, precisely, the revenue forecasts would be pulled a dark gray cloud over my mood, and delayed the completion of the edits by about a week, it was an important exercise.
We attempted to "rationalize" the size by estimating what portion of the total revenues would be available to mobile network operators. I venture that more than 80% of it is available in the near term because the services are largely paid for by users and the mobile operators have a stranglehold on the community operators, but as we move out into the forecast period, the portion paid by corporates will grow. I developed a User Pays Portion analysis and added it to the model.
The frustrating aspect of this exercise is that it highlights how much the corporates might (or might not) pay to support mobile social networking. The mobile advertising forecasts do not specify how much of future mobile ad spend might be towards mobile communities, but the general assumption is that brands will not be all that eager to support communities. To be seen.
There are other ways for corporates to provide financial support for mobile communities and content in those communities. For example, sponsorships and contributions to causes.
After many e-mail exchanges, the compromise position was to lower the 2012 total revenue forecasts nearly 20%. I am sure that the published forecasts will still raise a lot of eyebrows and skeptics will doubt but the real objective I have is to work through the model with as many people as possible/as time permits.
The forecasts were finalized Jan 22 (night) and the edits to the chapter took several days (57 figures!). In the process an error was caught (whew!) and corrected.
Once the forecasts were put to bed the remainder of this week was spent completing the edits to other chapters, developing the marketing materials (brochure and press release) and seeking quotes. I've also sent a special discount code to the 75 people who were interviewed for the report.
Now it's full steam ahead!
Monday, January 14, 2008
DataPortability
I'm hearing that several companies like Facebook, Google, Plaxo and LinkedIn have joined the DataPortability Association. The group's mission statement: To put all existing technologies and initiatives in context to create a reference design for end-to-end Data Portability. To promote that design to the developer, vendor and end-user community.
I think that this is one of the excellent industry initiatives but it isn't clear (to me, even after reading a few posts on the group's forum on Google) how mobile community platforms providers are involved.
Can the mobile communities tap the same architecture?
Has anyone in the mobile community joined or seriously examined the DataPortability group's proposal?
I think that this is one of the excellent industry initiatives but it isn't clear (to me, even after reading a few posts on the group's forum on Google) how mobile community platforms providers are involved.
Can the mobile communities tap the same architecture?
Has anyone in the mobile community joined or seriously examined the DataPortability group's proposal?
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