Comments on: Visiongain’s Mobile Social Networking & UGC report released

By: Roger Turner

Roger Turner — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 17:10:17 +0000

Hi Michael – as it turns out i did buy the report and it was very good. It took some lessons from fixed space, but most was focused on the mobile arena. It did tackle how the big (now heavily backed) players, YouTube etc, will push towards mobile and though I agree with your premis of specifically mobile designed networking, i can see these big guys doing that. They now have the resources to have a focused plan for mobile.

Seperately however the report was very good and I recommend it. Actually while i was on their website i noticed they are holding a meeting/ conference on the issue, so booked to go along and hear some case-studies. So i may even see you there, save talking to you in cyberspace

http://www.visiongainconferences.com/conferenceInfo.aspx?confID=1082

By: Michael J. Schultz

Michael J. Schultz — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 05:59:16 +0000

I agree with Roger that loopy was a bit difficult to understand but it appears his was a generalist rant against any report or research for money.
While we have not used this particluar report we did use several different reports as well as conduct our own in depth research before we started GenMobi and its social network Buzz.
One key factor that appears missing in VisionGain’s report is that while YouTube, Bebo and Facebook may be successful in the internet space – mobile is where the rest of the world thrives so only those social netowkrs geared and optimized for mobile will be the long term winners.
Our service Buzz was developed for mobile in mind and is launching Q1/07 on mobile worldwide.

By: Roger Turner

Roger Turner — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 16:34:34 +0000

I am sure you speak with great qualifications, so just wondered if you had read the report….. and whether it was any good? I was interested in buying this report because i thought it looked great. I havent bought this report though we have bought reports from them before and they have all been excellent. Telcos are not afraid of hard work but thanks for you ‘insight’ anyway.

By: loopy

loopy — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 08:24:51 +0000

I speak with some qualification in the area of mobile social communities and I must admit I am aghast at what some consultancies are issuing into the market concerning the hottest and latest trends and what operators and mobile companies should be looking to get into.

If anybody feels that they will get value from a report telling you what you should do to get into mobile social communities and pay �1499 for the pleasure they are thick as s…………….

I wonder if any of the contributors to this report have ANY direct experience with the market in this subject.

I have had the pleasure of working with some very creative people in this space, the service I helped build [is] and will be more successful. It was not based on building a service because somebody reported that this was the next biggest thing, it was extreme hard work, intuition and very direct hands on contact with the community that built the service to what it is. The type of relationship that has to exist between a mobile social community and user of the service is an area EVERY Telco cannot deal with. They have millions of customers but cannot organise themselves strategically to deal with them in a community aspect – they probably do not understand how Bebo/Myspace etc al also care for millions of customers but with a different strategy and more success. Communites are hard work, hard work = not a good Telco strategy.

From my own personal consultancy experience directly with MNO’s and MVNO’s they have the millions of customers that use mobile phones, but they cannot maintain a direct relationship with them, HTF are they going to build community relationships? I can imagine an IVR set up on Voda….. whoever, “Hello, please press 1 to search for a new contact in our mobile community, press 2 if you wish to indicate your presence to be set to available, press 3…………..

Having ranted a little, I must say that I am sure that the work done by the company in producing this report is valid, is good quality and will be interesting reading but if anybody in this industry wants to get into this particular sphere and they are good at what they do, they will not need a report, they will know who the competition is, they will understand the current trends from their own reseacrh, they will have identified the targets of interest [companies, partners, technology etc] and if they have not acted in the last 6 months on this, they are too late………………………

“I’ll be back”……………………………………..