Today’s guest post is from Doug Naegele, founder of TextandShout.com. An avid SmartBrief on Social Media reader and inveterate entrepreneur, Doug is attending Mobile Innovation Week. He wrote in late last night with this update from Day 1.
The intersection of wireless and social media is one of the hottest topics at Mobile Innovation Week. So far, panels have addressed how social media figures in:
- The innovation of new mobile technology.
- The future of traditional media.
- New application development.
- Gobbling up loads of network resources.
Consumers in the driver’s seat
Many at the conference have pointed to social media — and its consumer-centered leadership — as the primary driver of mobile innovation. “In the past, technology innovations were built for enterprises first, then reworked for consumers. Now it’s almost the opposite,” said Paul Brannan, general manager of Wireless Terminals for Samsung Canada.
Social media + traditional media = $?
During a discussion on the future of traditional media, one panelist suggested that the placement of user-generated content alongside traditional media, and the promotion of the two on social media outlets, could bring needed revenue to the traditional businesses. The jury’s still out on the specifics of such monetization, but conference attendees are buzzing about the possibilities.
Crowdsourcing, or not
A panel on design concluded that using crowdsourcing on the look and feel of Web apps and Web sites often ends up muddling the process and leads to compromised, and often poor, design.
Video killed the cellular star
One of the most pressing topics at Mobile Innovation Week is how mobile social media usage is hammering mobile networks and what can be done about it. Many agreed that social networking will usher in even more demand for video-on-mobile, and that may require carriers to rethink the current “all-you-can-eat” data plans. Some panelists predict carriers will have to abandon unlimited data plans, while others foresee a North American carrier price war in the not-too-distant future.
I’ll keep you posted if there’s any more juicy social media news out of the conference!
Do you have any questions you’d like Doug to ask or issues you’d like him to follow at Mobile Innovation Week? Just add them below and he’ll report back to us.
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I like that the consumer is in the driver seat. Safety in numbers. Thanks for keeping us all posted on this conference.
Is there any more buzz about when the iphone will be available on the Verizon network?
Anything social or online, the user is in complete control. I can only imagine this is more so since people view their mobile device as an extension of themselves. Thank you for this post and keep them coming.
Data guzzling mobile services is an issue that is being ignored by the networks at the moment. Well, I think they are highly aware of it but at the same time they have runaway success with wireless broadband sales. In Europe a USB modem for a 3G network is hanging out of most laptops you see around you.
Mobile internet use from mobile phones is growing fast thanks to the fixed price plans. If not already, networks are soon reaching a point where the production cost for that traffic is higher than the revenue. A price war on data plans will furhter agravate the situation.
Cross-subsidies is commonplace in the telco world. But with fixed revenues dissappearing and mobile voice and sms dropping, what revenue stream will subsidise a potential data traffic loss? The Ericssons of the world are hard at work trying to push the production cost down with all types of measures. because in the end the consumer is used to a flat fee for internet access from fixed bradband. We will not accept a different model for mobile broadband. Maybe a premium for the mobility, but still fixed.
The iPhone success is in this scenario probably more Apple's than the carrier's. The phone is heavily subsidised by the carrier (higher acquisition cost), traffic revenue is shared with Apple (lower margin on the traffic) and the typical iPhone user is a real capacity guzzler (higher cost for data traffic). Seems to be a dangerous path to be on long term.
Suggestions that can help the situation:
- Carriers and network providers to work together on all possible measures to increase capacity at lower cost per unit. Network sharing, compression technologies, outsourcing network ops etc.
- Carriers to sell data traffic wholesale to service providers so that delivery cost can be built in to price paid for the actual consumer service. This will also give transaprent pricing to users with the full cost from A to Z communicated in one price, not in two prices; the fee for the service plus the phone bill with the data plan.
What else is discussed at Mobile Innovation Week as solutions to the data guzzling and the costs they drive? Over at the mobiletribe blog we are discussing these and other issues the mobile entertainment and apps industry face daily.
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All:
Thanks so much for the comments.
To address some questions…..
1) iPhone and Verizon: No word on that, I'm afraid. However, Deloitte Canada's head analyst for media and entertainment predicted that one major cell carrier would "go away" in 2010 in the US. He thinks there's one too many.
2) Michael Myers: Yes, you are right. With social media, users are in control because they make/edit/post the content. It's a great thing.
3) Per-Fredrik: Very insightful thoughts. After I posted, more ideas came to light from some of the participants. Ignoring data plans for a second; WiFi might save the day. As WiFI becomes even more ubiquitous (more in the workplace, more public places, more in-home installs), a lot of that traffic, including the high demand stuff, could be pushed off the cell tower network. Related little data nugget: 80% of people watch TV and use their cell phone at the same time…probably at home, on their couch, in range of their WiFi router.
On the handset OS side, a number of solutions were discussed. 1) Caching. Perhaps the OS makers could find a way to cache more of the data you've already downloaded instead of reloading it every time? 2) Built-in stop signs. For video, perhaps files of a certain size just aren't allowed to be fully downloaded on 3G? I see this in audio already. Some podcasts >25MB must go over WiFi. 3) Compression. This seems pretty likely as this is what happened back in the young Internet days.
On the data-plan side, it's a really big problem. Content makers are worried that if the carriers move to a $/MB rate – even if it's a really low rate – consumers won't be able to calculate in their heads how much data is consumed in what context and will just stop downloading things all together. This is bad for everyone. Content producers get less traffic and carriers get less traffic — and both of those groups get paid from traffic.
What seems likely is a technology solution that solves some of the problem coupled with a capped data plan that gives you A LOT of data, but snares the upper 15% of data users with added fees. This keeps 85% of people happy with their service…which would be astounding in the mobile carrier world!
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