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Fear the Googlepipe

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

The nice chaps at Mobile Entertainment magazine ran my ‘Fear The Googlepipe‘ opinion-piece yesterday morning. Did you catch it?

It’s based on a post I did a little while ago about the launch of the arrival of the Nexus One and what that could mean for your common-or-garden mobile operator. I say ‘based’, but the guys at Mobile Entertainment — proper media — have sprinkled some editorial dust and turned the original wail into a half decent looking piece. Thank you ME!

Here’s the first bit…

Well that was a day to remember. The day Google got stuck into mobile merchandising and nailed the mobile operator to the wall.

That’s it: thank you for coming, mobile operators! You did your best. But now you’ve been ‘owned’.

That’s it: thank you for coming, mobile operators! You did your best. But now you’ve been ‘owned’.

Well, maybe not yet. But do look out for the big G. With the Nexus One, Google has ushered in an entirely new way of buying a consumer handset: from its website in six clicks. Shit! Is it that simple?

Continue at Mobile Entertainment –>

Thank you to the delicious people who retweeted it — including the Infomob chaps, Mitcan, SLAMobile, Peggy Anne, Martin Wilson, Radek and MEF.

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Posted in Newsletter Editorial, Operators, Opinion | View Comments

Beyond The iPhone: A World of Opportunity

Monday, March 15th, 2010

It’s getting a little bit silly now, dear reader.

Ridiculously silly. We’ve had a good year now of mobile applications taking off, going ballistic. Now, though, it’s time for the industry to get real about the iPhone: It isn’t the only handset on the marketplace.

The World Is Not Flat

I understand that the iPhone is gorgeous, glorious, elegant, beautiful. Indeed, I have been first in the line to pan the painfully obvious failures of other manufacturers who had the temerity to vomit out handsets that couldn’t hope to match the ‘elegance’ of the jPhone (“Jesus Phone”).

I won’t go into specifics, suffice to say that for the last 3 years, any manufacturer stupid enough to show off their ‘iPhone killer’ looked, well, stupid. Very stupid.

And now that the plebians have got hold of them — i.e. you can get the jPhone free on contract in the United Kingdom — it seems there’s no stopping the iPhone juggernaut.

i-Limitations

As I discussed in my DevNest presentation last Wednesday, the iPhone has limitations. Here’s a good example: Anyone calling themselves a geek and actually using an iPhone as their primary handset is universally acknowledged to be wet. Highly wet. Aged-45-and-still-lives-with-his-parents wet. That’s because the iPhone is a glorified Fisher Price toy phone. It doesn’t do background applications. Like the proverbial thick-kid at the back of the class, the iPhone can only do one thing at a time. iPhone users are reduced to thinking and working in monotone.

[Sidenote: I do feel for the people showing off magnificently crafted applications that turn your iPhone into something awesome. I'm thinking of super-cool mobile messaging aggregators, VOIP clients or remote access clients, anything that's particularly nifty. How galling is it to know that when your users get a phone call, the whole sodding house of cards -- the simply fantastic system you've built -- falls to pieces because the device only does one thing at a time? And then the user has to fire up the application again... Simply rubbish, isn't it?]

Anyway, for the rest of the planet, the iPhone is a pretty nice experience. My mother loves hers. My wife — having dumped her Android G1 for the latest iPhone 3GS — is delighted. She is particularly enamoured with the nifty applications.

iPhone: 14% — still in the teens!

Gartner reckons that in terms of 2009 sales, worldwide, 14% of them were iPhones. 20% were BlackBerries and a whopping 47% were Symbian devices. 4% were Android (which, in case you were wondering, is why nobody is downloading your Android app). Just so we’ve got numbers in perspective, there were roughly 80 million smartphones sold in 2009. Looking at total handset sales — including rubbish devices — Nokia shipped 440 million phones last year. Samsung shipped 235 million, LG knocked back 122 million and both Sony and Motorola did about 50 million each.

Today, Nokia will ship about a million phones. Just to be clear: Over a million phones will leave their factories today.

And you’re busy developing on… iPhone.

Yes.

Great.

iPhone has served its purpose. It has demonstrated that mobile applications have relevance, that the market is worthy of attention. We have got past the stage of experimentation though. We know it works.

It is no longer good enough to only release an iPhone application. It’s fine to experiment with it. But if you’re a big brand and you only release on the iPhone, you’re stupid. Stupid, stupid and thrice stupid.

That’s because there’s a massive market sitting staring in the window wondering why they can’t do business with you.

The other platforms out there have been working really hard to make sure that the app experience on their handsets is beginning to resemble the elegance of iPhone. BlackBerry’s AppWorld is working nicely. Nokia’s Ovi Store is chugging back 1.5m downloads a day now. Samsung are working hard on their offerings, likewise Sony. Even the Android Marketplace is becoming useful.

Time To Think About Other Platforms

For a long time I’ve been complaining to Nokia. I’ve been going nuts over the fact that, a few months ago, I went out and bought a Nokia N86 on contract from UK operator, 3. The N86 is a piece of engineering genius and the camera is simply fantastic. I really do like it.

Here’s the example I’ve used — that really winds me up. A little while ago, Ocado (the grocery delivery service allied to the Waitrose chain of shops) launched an iPhone application. The app enables you to literally order your toilet rooms whilst you’re sat on the train. Genius. It’s basically an app interface to their existing online ordering portal.

My problem is this: How come the chump sitting opposite me on the train with his iPhone can order his toilet rolls with a few taps — and, with my Nokia N86, I can’t?

It’s because the people at Ocado decided not to create a Nokia/Symbian app. Instead, they decided just to focus on iPhone.

Initially I railed at Nokia for allowing this situation. And whilst the manufacturer did carry a substantial amount of responsibility for not creating the conditions to easily allow application creation and dissemination, the key issues are more or less fixed.

I don’t believe it’s Nokia’s problem any more. It’s companies like Ocado that are holding the marketplace back.

I’ll be more specific: It’s the digital agencies that are propping up the iFascist viewpoint.

I should point out that I haven’t phoned Ocado to find out if they did their development in-house or via an agency. I don’t want to because the Waitrose brand is held particularly high in my mind. I don’t want to destroy that by phoning them and finding out that they’re a bunch of numbskulls who haven’t even considered developing on other platforms. I actually did phone and got through to the voicemail of a chap called Ben.

But it doesn’t look good for Ocado. Oh no.

Silicon carries an fantastically illuminating interview with Jon Rudoe, head of retail at Ocado. Here is Jon discussing why they launched their iPhone app:

Silicon: What was your business case for launching an app?
Ocado: “The [problem] that people are trying to solve is: ‘How do I get my cupboard stocked and my fridge full with the products I want? How do I find, select and retrieve my weekly grocery needs?’ When you look at the world like that then you almost become platform agnostic. So, rather than sitting there thinking ‘well, I must have a website’, or ‘I must have a supermarket’, or ‘I must have whatever’, you actually find yourself thinking ‘I must have a mechanism for people to fulfil that want/need/job’… And then all you have to ask yourself is: ‘Do people want to do that on this platform?’.”

So we must assume that the Ocado chaps sat around the conference table and decided that anyone using a Nokia, a Samsung or a BlackBerry was unclean. Dirty. And of course, dirty people wouldn’t want to use Ocado on their device, right? ;-)

Here’s one more quote from the Silicon piece:

Silicon: How much research did you do before you launched the app?
John: “It was quite easy, at the stage we started developing, to look at the market and to look at where most of the phone usage was. We did some research and we can obviously spot which customers were visiting our regular website from which mobile devices and obviously we could understand general statistics about iPhones and other smartphone penetration. [An iPhone app was] a pretty obvious first place to start, basically.”

Goodness me.  This is why the mobile industry is screwed at the moment.

Numbskulls.

Ocado selected iPhone and for everybody else using a Nokia, a Samsung or a Sony Ericsson — or anything else — their message is (by default): If you want to order your toilet rolls on the train, sod off and buy an iPhone.

Unfortunately that isn’t a sustainable or sensible suggestion. It’s like suggesting customers trying to use Ocado Online from their Mac laptop should go and buy a PC first. Or vice versa.

Jon-from-Ocado goes on to point out that the iPhone now accounts for 2% of their online sales.

Let’s just stop there for a moment.

TWO PERCENT?

Their heads must button up the back.

TWO PERCENT of your sales go via mobile and you’ve limited that to ONLY iPhones?

What about Nokia?

What about Samsung?

What about BlackBerry?

It beggars belief, it really does.

The Cost Issue

Of course it’s expensive to develop on multiple platforms. Yes indeed. The kind of expense that small developers simply can’t cope with. And that’s entirely understandable. But if you’re an online retail giant — and TWO PERCENT of your sales are coming from iPhone already — what’s stopping you reaching out to other platforms?

Well it’s probably because it’s difficult.

That’s right. The one thing most digital agencies don’t tell their clients is that they don’t have a flucking clue how to develop for the other platforms.

Do ask your mobile agency about developing on Nokia. Or BlackBerry. Or Vodafone 360.  Watch their horrified look. Watch their faces screw up with mock disdain. It’s no longer possible to dismiss anything other than iPhone as ‘irrelevant’ or ‘not ready for prime time’.

This poses a real challenge for the Nike-wearing digital agency fraternity, who’ve had a really nice time knocking back the iPhone apps at pretty good rates.  Most of them have no experience with any other platforms. Most of them will — when your call comes in — be reaching for the phone number of that Eastern European mobile developer company, because the agency themselves — seriously — can’t tell a BlackBerry from a Samsung.

That’s going to become quite a business challenge for a lot of companies, soon.

It’s Not Just Ocado

Of course it’s not just Ocado guilty of this iFascism (“only focusing on the iPhone”) — the industry is rife with it. While everyone is busy competing with each other on the iPhone, there’s a land-grab beginning on the other platforms. It’s been ok to ignore these platforms whilst they’ve been busy struggling to establish themselves.

They’re established now.

And if you’re not developing for these other platforms, if you think they’re irrelevant — be very careful. They’re now coming of age and looking for their own superstars to rise up and dominate their charts. Heroes are being made on a daily basis across the other platforms. Even BlackBerry’s AppWorld has now started creating millionaires out of developers who were smart enough to get stuck in way before the hordes descend.

It’s time for me to calm down now.

Update: For the Americans, here’s the definition of ‘wet‘.

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The US Startup Visa: A boon for dismayed, frustrated British entrepreneurs

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

I’ve been reading a lot about the proposed US Startup Visa.

Right now, one of the biggest things that prevents smart entrepreneurs (British or otherwise) from going to live and work in Silicon Valley, is the Visa issue. Sure, most nationalities can get 3 months worth of time in the States, but after that, they need to leave and come back again… and thus begins the dance with the immigration chaps at San Francisco International Airport.

This is the comfort blanket that most British entrepreneurs cling to.

It stops them actually doing anything.

Instead they arse about in the UK dealing with total numbskull venture capitalists — most of whom are playing the role admirably up until it comes to coughing up cash. It is all about risk, as John Malloy from Blue Run Ventures pointed out in a recent interview we did.

In Silicon Valley, they get risk.

Your brilliant, amazing, its-gotta-work idea is risky. Anything new is inherently risky. But in America, you try it. You mitigate as much risk as you can then you try it. You get stuck in and you see what happens.

In the UK, entrepreneurs try too. The first thing that happens is they become social outcasts. They’re labeled, with a bit of a laugh, ‘delboys’. But those doing the labelling do actually mean it. And this is the horrifying thing in the UK — normal people do quite like to thwart the efforts of anyone thinking outside the box. There are two fundamental points about the British culture contributing to this:

1. British people are inherently jealous of any success whatsoever. I often joke, ‘that shouldn’t be allowed‘, when I hear someone has made a pile of cash. I am being ironic, but it’s fascinating to watch the number of people who actually nod along with the statement.

2. Know your place. British people need to ‘place’ you in society. They need to understand where precisely you are in the hierarchy. And if you’re seeking to change that hierarchy — by doing something entrepreneurial, well, that’s your fault. See point 1.

Executives in big UK companies are super examples of this. Whilst they’re earning — for example — £200k a year, they will do their utmost to be suspicious of startups. What’s particularly annoying for these executives is discovering that the startup founders were middle managers — subservient to him — prior to starting their company. And, with just a signature, this executive could ‘make’ the startup company by granting them a stupendous contract.

What typically happens in most deals is that British businessmen (and women) will evaluate whether or not they’d like to see the other person be successful. The answer is resolutely ‘no’. Therefore all sorts of difficult questions ensue — how are you backed, what happens if, I’m concerned about the risk… all the sorts of questions that are never asked of bigger, more established companies. Because of course, you’re never actually dealing with the founders of big companies. So you never have to deal with the jealousy issue.

This is a critical reason why most tech startups in the UK go absolutely nowhere. You can’t legislate against it. It’s built straight into the culture.

Which is why the cleverest escape.

The biggest misjudgement I ever made was staying in the UK throughout my twenties and not moving to Silicon Valley. Instead I fought tooth and nail against the establishment. By hook or by crook, I managed to get my ideas out the door. I paid for it. I mean, I literally had to fund it all, with the exception of the initial capital. Which came from… you guessed… America! Or, An American venture capitalist. Once, I managed to secure a small amount of investment from a thoroughly understanding angel investor. Once. Those people are unfortunately few and far between in the United Kingdom. Although I worked with smart Americans all the time, I failed to recognise reality: If you’re starting a new tech business, the only place — the ONLY place — you should be is Silicon Valley.

The amount of times I have been nailed to the wall by insanely jealous British executives is simply ridiculous. Any business concept I’ve had — it’s typically gone nowhere because when I try and pitch it to the Brits, in order that someone actually pay for it, the answer is invariably no, no and thrice no. Until some bright spark starts the business in the States, gets a good bit of venture capital and… ‘momentum’. Then I have had to watch with familiar dismay as that same executive gets on a plane and flies out to do business with them.

Which is why you find me in San Francisco every two weeks. Well, I was there more or less every two weeks last year. There’s a baby on the way here so I’ve had to change my priorities slightly. It’s a surreal experience, going from the British boardroom to the American boardroom.

Can’t-do becomes Can-do. The word ‘yes’ is used a lot more. There is no immediate feeling of jealousy. Instead, there’s excitement.

Sit down with a Bank Manager in Silicon Valley and they will — genuinely — treat you as though you’re serious. As though you could well become the next Bill Gates. Talk to your accountant and they’ll do the same. They’ll make sure you’re setup in a tax efficient manner so that when you get ‘your first round’, it’ll be easy to grow the company. You’ll fall off your chair when the chap picks up the phone and calls his friend (“he’s usually good for $20-30k and he loves mobile stuff”). You’ll start having heart palpitations when your accountant puts the phone to his chest and asks, “Can you do a drink with him tonight?”

They move fast, they move seriously, they move with passion and excitement. It’s everything you’ve experienced in the UK, but inverted.

By the way, for the Americans reading — and for the British reading who don’t quite get the ‘jealousy’ thing that I’m talking about, here’s a good example: This is a Bugatti Veyron in Manchester (via Autoblog).

That is a traffic warden putting a parking ticket on the Bugatti. That is also a crowd cheering on the traffic warden. Why? Well it’s because each of the people watching will never, ever, ever have the capacity to even think about buying an £800,000 Bugatti. They know it. They know their place. Why should someone else be allowed to be successful enough to blow almost a million quid on a car? Yeah. Fluck’em! Rich B’stards!

Alas, this is generally the attitude found in the UK. It doesn’t really matter out on the streets. But when you’re trying to get a contract or trying to get a company to buy your new service — 9 times out of 10 — you’ll have to deal with a middle manager who would have been stood right at the front of that crowd above, jeering. They can’t be arsed to think outside the box. They can’t be arsed to startup their own business. And they’ll sure as hell lord it over you and, if at all possible, not give you the deal. Or they will give you the deal, but on punitive, ridiculous terms.

1 out of 10 business people get it. These are the chaps who contact you, get you in for a meeting and then award you the deal there and then. These are the people who understand entrepreuenrs — they’re the ones who will actually add a zero on to your cheap-as-chips pricing, commenting, “I actually need you to stay in business, ok? And we can afford this. We need good service.”

It doesn’t happen very often at all, unfortunately. It’s why you’ll have seen one or two British tech startups succeed. At some point, they got a 1-in-10 person at one of their clients and managed to establish themselves and hire some staff. In the UK you need a lot of middle managers so that they can do business with the other middle managers at your prospective clients. Middle managers cannot stand the smell of a successful entrepreneur, especially if, last year, that entrepreneur was doing their job.

Of course, after reading this, most British entrepreneurs still won’t get it. I speak to British mobile and tech entrepreneurs all the time. They simply don’t believe what I say about Silicon Valley. Some do believe, but — well, it’s all too easy to sit in the UK and spunk the little money they do have up the wall.

Most of them invest in hope.

But there’s a looming problem for these entrepreneurs. This rumoured ‘StartUp Visa Act’ that the Americans are discussing would completely and utterly destroy any barriers for the poor British entrepreneur. So explains BusinessWeek:

The StartUp Visa Act would create a new type of two-year visa, called an EB-6, available to any immigrant entrepreneur who has secured at least $250,000 in capital from accredited venture capitalists or angel investors. After two years, the person would become a permanent U.S. resident if his or her business has met one of three criteria: created five full-time jobs in the U.S., raised an additional $1 million from investors, or achieved $1 million in revenue.

If this is made law, I can foresee bucketloads of talent heading West.

And good for them, all things being equal, I’ll be there too.

Meanwhile to all British entrepreneurs reading, your head can go back in the sand now.

Update: Thanks to @micrypt for adding this post into the Hacker News feed here. I noticed an excellent comment on that discussion by Pete Warden who links to both Paul Carr’s Guardian column (“I’m calling time of death on London’s startup industry“) on a similar subject and his own analysis (“You can’t fail if you don’t try. Or why I left the UK“).

Definitely worth reading both.

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First AT&T phone with Google Android will feature Yahoo search to annoy the hell out of every user

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

You have to smile when grown up executives who should know better sit back and make stupid decisions. The AppleInsider is reporting that….

Although Google makes the Android mobile operating system, the search giant’s chief competitor, Yahoo, will be the default provider on AT&T’s first Android-powered handset, due to be released March 7.

Great.

Talk about fragmentation on the Android platform.

Yes, you bought a ‘Google Phone’. But, no, the reason your search isn’t that good is because Yahoo is powering it. Sorry, I mean Bing. Yahoo doesn’t actually do search any more. While Bing does have some very good qualities — it’s search results aren’t quite there yet.

But what the hell are AT&T’s executives thinking?

Apparently there is a ‘long-standing relationship’ between AT&T and Yahoo for search partnerships. And this means that they’ve decided to screw about with the inner-workings of the device and really piss off consumers at the same time.

This is precisely why mobile operators need to be shot. In a nice way, you understand.

Some executive from AT&T and some executive from Yahoo have got together. They’ve both gone for very expensive martinis (on expenses) and discussed each others’ aims and objectives. They’ve nodded along with each other, they’ve got to know each other, they’ve — dare I say it — bonded with each other. After a few more martinis, the Yahoo guy confesses that they’re completely irrelevant ‘in mobil’ (it’s important to do the accent).

Nodding along, the AT&T guy, chest swelling, explains, “Well, you know Pierce, I can help…Yes, another round of martinis please…”

Pierce — the Yahoo Guy — sits back, with a slight frown, “How, Giles?”

“Well Pierce, we have eighty-five million subscribers…”

Giles takes a moment. He just loves flopping his subscriber number out on the table for the lads to look at.

Giles continues, “We have eighty-FIVE million subscribers, I’m sure we could put a bit of traffic your way…”

You just know it. Something like that happened, at some point, between Yahoo and AT&T.

They hatched a plan.

They thought it would be ’super-fantastic’ to change the default search.

It’ll get folk chattering. It’ll show we’re with-it. It’ll let AT&T pretend to have a bit of relevance for 20 seconds during the initial announcement. It’ll breathe useless life into the decomposing carcass that is Yahoo’s ‘mobil’ strategy.

Not once has anyone thought about delivering the best possible user experience. No — that was traded away as soon as possible. That’s the thing with mobile operators. If there’s an opportunity to screw things up, to do the wrong thing (or the slightly wrong, annoying thing), they will. Especially if there’s a shite small amount of potential revenue in it.

Witness, for example, the carrier-deck b0llocks strategies that permeated the globe for much of the last half-decade.

Ridiculous.

Absolutely 100% ridiculous.

Would AT&T please get back into’s it box and fix their shitter-than-shit data network?

Would Yahoo please just get bought by somebody and put out of it’s misery?

I thank you.

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An Inconvenient PR Truth

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

I came across this on SteDavies’ site. It’s a video by release delivery specialists, RealWire.

The key points?

- 1.7 billion irrelevant press release emails estimated to be received in total each year by UK and US Journalists alone

- 78% of press release emails are received by Recipients to whom they are irrelevant

- 55% of Recipients have taken action to block a sender of news

An Inconvenient PR Truth from RealWire on Vimeo.

There’s only one absolutely ridiculous agency that I’ve actually sent straight to my trash bin automatically. Everything else, I glance over.

Then I star it — because, to be honest, as long as it’s half interesting, I may well use it.

Then I usually go and get really busy earning money elsewhere.

Then I panic because I thought I had some things lined up I was going to write about (those starred items).

Then I write my own stuff because it was quicker and because those starred items are now on my third page of Google Mail (the equivalent of the graveyard) because I’ve had even more half interesting press releases come in. That I star.

And I think about…

Then I go and make proper money advising investment banks, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and building my own businesses.

The one hugely misplaced assumption that most PR make about me is that I’m here to provide a service level to them — like the chap at the mainstream media publication is. Obviously he’s paid to bang out five pieces a day. About whatever.

I reckon about 15% of the stuff I publish originates from a press release sent to me by someone I don’t ‘know’ or have some kind of relationship with. I’d then go so far as to suggest perhaps 25% comes from PR that I know and trust.

The balance — around 60%, I make up myself.

I’d love a lot more assistance from PR. For example, I thought of sending out an announcement to the various PR lists asking them to send me some feedback on the iPad. The concept is sound — they would go back to their clients and ask them to pen 250 words on the iPad. They’d then send that to me. I’d integrate into a wickedly interesting piece. Everybody wins. I haven’t had to do a ton of chasing to 20 odd executives directly, they look good in front of their clients, their clients are happy because they’re published — and I’m delighted because I can deliver good stuff to the audience.

I didn’t bother doing this because the sad reality is that, despite spelling out what it is you’d like to read (at my best guess), I’ll either be sent nonsense, or nothing at all. Or I’ll get it next week. Not because of the PR being slow, but because the client doesn’t bother responding. Worst is when I’m sent something almost irrelevant. For example, a comment on the iPad by someone who manufacturers paper towels. Not quite in the zone for Mobile Industry Review.

It’s such a frustration watching more public relations professionals do their jobs.

Do you remember we used to do a newsletter years ago? In that newsletter, I liked to put in little bits of news. Every week I’d email perhaps 300 PRs asking ‘have you got any news’.

I used to expect being sent wholly irrelevant stuff as a result but goodness me. The amount of PRs who simply wrote back ‘no, nothing, sorry’ used to shock me. It was generally because they’d hit their press release quota for their client contracts and were sitting pretty. Or they’d finished doing the ‘hours’ for that particular client I was emailing about so they didn’t need to do any thinking.

They’re very good at being proactive. Try asking a PR if they’ve got any news. 95% usually respond ‘no’. The smart 5% will generate something. They’ll rustle up something within 10 minutes: A new hire, a bit of product feedback, an anecdote for one of their clients.

I used to keep a list of PRs who wrote back ‘no’. Most of them worked for agencies who routinely bill 7,500+ month to their clients. So whenever anyone needed a PR company recommendation, I’d know precisely who suggest avoiding. If you need a recommendation, let me know.

Now, though, the newsletter is just me. Speaking of which, I had a break last week. This week the topic is — predictably — about the iPad.

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What’s the best backpack a geek can buy?

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

Who makes the world’s best backpacks (or rucksack as we call them in the UK) for (mobile) geeks? I’m looking for a recommendation.

You know, something that’ll carry a laptop, maybe even charge it via a solar panel, lots of pockets for phones and iPhones… integrated headphone loop or something like that?

What’s the absolute pinnacle?

Any ideas?

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PRs: Please don’t send me anything using Newscom

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

If you’re a public relations professional, you probably use a company to do the broad distribution of your press releases and materials.

One company, Newscom, really, really frustrates me — and I thought I’d lend a bit of insight.

I’m working on a post about a wristband tag that patiences would wear in hospitals. It enables their location to be tracked precisely by WiFi.

I found out about this from a press release emailed to me that features photographic links. So far so good. There’s a picture I’d like to use.

The PR has helpfully included the link for the photo in their release text.

They’re using this absolutely rubbish service, Newscom, to host the imagery though.

I clicked on the supplied URL for the photo:
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20091014/363009

That takes you to this page:

The photo, as you can see, has got bollocks newscom branding all over it. I suspect this was relevant about 10 years ago when people wanted to control access to ‘official photography’. Hence the watermark. I can’t get the un-watermarked version unless I login.

I have a login. Somewhere. I can’t remember the details. To GET a reminder of my details, I have to email a support address. You know, like being back in 1995 again.

I just don’t have time to arse about.

Newscom, alas, appear to be in the dark ages. Almost every other press release service — RealWire for example — just provide you the images right there and then. You can pick’em up free of watermarks or any other time sapping rubbish and get on with the writing of your post.

I want to point out to every marketing/PR executive reading that if you’re including Newscom as a method of photo delivery for your releases, recipients like me will be getting mightily annoyed every time they want to actually pick something up and write about it.

Meanwhile, dear reader, I’ll be using this image in the post I’m writing:

Yup. That’s the only one I have the rights to use.

Total unmitigated bollocks, isn’t it.

It really is like being back in 1995.

Please either use a proper distribution service — maybe even a ’social media release’ function, or publish the images on your blog or something like that.

My post on the Ekahau wireless wristband is coming soon… complete with stupidly small photo.

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Facebook: The big cheese of the mobile industry?

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

Hiten Shah’s retweet of this comment from @sbergel really made me think. Here’s the tweet:

RT @sbergel: Two billion pieces of content shared on Facebook each week – http://bit.ly/15tCdQ

The link leads to this InsideFacebook blog post on recently revealed statistics from Facebook.

So there are two billion pieces of content shared on Facebook each week?

So that’s 8 billion items a month. Or 104 billion items a year. Or, with the aid of a calculator, just under 200,000 items shared per minute.

Sheeeeeeeeeeeet! (to quote Senator Clay Davis’s catch phrase from The Wire)

Facebook announced at Nokia World a few weeks ago that more than 65 million people are actively using their service via mobile device. And when they say ‘active’, they mean it. I can’t quite remember the specifics, but it wasn’t some namby pamby ‘logged in this year means active‘ rubbish. It was within the last 30 days or something like that.

Looking at Facebook’s published stats, I find it fascinating to consider what’s coming soon.

Here’s the mobile section:

# There are more than 65 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
# People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are almost 50% more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
# There are more than 180 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products

What’s going to happen when those 180 mobile operators have actually delivered something?

Where would we be if, for example, Orange’s Motorola DEXT (or ‘Cliq’ in the States) along with their MotoBlur offering (which integrates Facebook directly into the main phone apps), becomes a category best seller?

That kind of future is rather exciting to behold. Where will we be when a full 30 million Britons login to Facebook via their mobile device every day?

Is that possible?

Could we, conceivably, get to that stage, any time soon? I wonder just how many Britons, just as an example, have got a mobile data plan? It’s still a *real* problem for your average consumer who’s still accustomed to the sad reality of 4-5 pounds per meg data pricing.

Facebook came along at the right time. It’s Facebook — way more than any other brand today — that’s galvanising the masses.

“What, you mean I can Facebook on this?” is oft commented when I’ve seen people evaluating handsets in shops. Indeed it’s a popular tactic, to include that as a ‘feature’ when you’re selling some of the more capable handsets.

The company’s efforts to either directly develop (or heavily assist) in the design of a dedicated application for as many device platforms as possible has certainly been useful.

If you thought the rather bollocks looking Facebook widget on the N97 and N97 Mini were a little limited, fear not. I briefly met the chap from Nokia who’s part of a team working with Facebook to integrate it properly (and one would hope, wholly) into the manufacturer’s handsets. The huge consumer draw for status updates and photo sharing is lifting millions out of ‘mobile poverty’. When new handset time comes round, I’m anecdotally seeing tons of normobs (“normal mobile users”) prioritising the feature of Facebook as a key buying decision.

What’s more exciting for me is that these consumers aren’t buying the ‘here’s a bollocks widget’. A lot — again anecdotally — that I’m meeting and interacting with, are specifically choosing their handsets based on how *good* the ‘Facebook stuff’ is on them. Witness, for example, that rather brilliantly integrated Facebook for Blackberry app. There’s many a twenty-something female normob walking about the city of London now, sporting a new Bold or a Curve with Facebook continually on in the background.

This is exciting, very exciting. Because Facebook is showing the way for the consumer. What’ll be really, really interesting is if they make good on the rumours, the conjecture, the potential that many have been talking about for some time — a Facebook mobile platform and framework for applications (and services). You only have to look at what they’ve done with their latest iPhone App — have you seen the second screen ready for an array of Facebook-deployed mobile applications?

We shall see.

In the meantime I’m delighted by the fact that new mobile users, having got hold of their new Blackberry or their new [whatever handset] principally for the purposes of Facebook are, naturally, looking at other applications and services that might be interesting. Since they’ve dealt with the billing/data/worry nightmare that may well have kept them from experimenting in the past, I’d hope that the trickle-down effect will continue to grow and grow. So that once you’ve done your 15 minutes of Facebooking, you might want to go and download a mobile audiobook via GoSpoken or even book a flight, hotel or hire a car with ShopQwik (who, by the way, is doing a roaring trade on flights at the moment).

It’s all good. Nice work Facebook. More of the same, please!

Posted in Mobile Presence, Opinion | View Comments

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