I’ve procrastinated enough. Now I need to actually do something about it. It’s time I owned an iPhone 4S instead of playing with test devices.

I have accounts on all the UK networks: Everything Everywhere, Three, Vodafone and o2. All of them are either eligible for upgrade or I can add a second line. I’ve got the budget to blow on a new device. I am ready to contract.

So I thought I’d use this opportunity to do a test of the UK mobile operator social selling apparatus.

I tweeted the following message and prepared for the deluge of responses:

Operators, I’m about to buy an iPhone 4S today. The custom could be yours. Just tweet me!

I was expecting to get a qualifying tweet within 5 minutes from one of the operators — you know, something to check that I’m not joking and to determine that I do wish to be engaged with a view to fulfilling a transaction.

I was then expecting for the conversation to a direct message and for the operator to explain that “Sarah” (i.e. some named individual) would like to give me a call to discuss.

Do remember that if I had initiated a phone call with any of the above operator sales lines, I’d have been able to do the deal within about 5 minutes or less. Remember I’m also an existing customer of each network so there’s no crazy extensive credit check — indeed, most of the operators (Vodafone for example) would be able to put any upfront costs on to next month’s bill, making the transaction very simple. I also knew precisely what I wanted to buy.

I’m also aware that as a mobile choppy, known to most operator PR teams, the chances are I’d get a skewed result. I wondered if some eagle-eyed observers would have spotted by tweet and have called their social teams to make sure my tweet got actioned.

I followed up my first Tweet with this one:

Meanwhile I’m writing a post about my intent to buy an iPhone today with o2 — at their store, as I’m assuming no operators will reach out

(You can find that post here)

So here are the results in no particular order:

T-Mobile: I heard absolutely nothing from them
Orange: Absolutely nothing
Vodafone: Nothing! [Come on Vodafone! What happened?? I have *FOUR* lines eligible for upgrade with you!]
Three: There was some interaction with their social team
o2: They did reach out!

Deary me.

I really did expect an overwhelming deluge.

I thought operators were really hot on social CRM! I really did. Of course, I expect if I’d actually engaged an account like @vodafoneukdeals (their Twitter profile for their online shop) I might have got somewhere.

I assumed that all the operators would have some kind of special monitoring in place, ready to pluck out messages like mine and stick them through the sales funnel.

Theoretically all I needed was for one of the social media teams to get someone from the sales team to phone me. The @ThreeUK social media team did volunteer to arrange a call. That’s probably the best response I had. They used the phrase “can we arrange a call?” which I interpreted as, “Can we have a chap from India call you.”

I replied back saying it was ok — and that I’d call 333 myself. I probably will. I just am not in the mood for the highly functional Indian call centres at the moment. I didn’t really want to give my life story to them either. If, however, ThreeUK had said “Sarah” or “Paul” or “Jeff” was going to call me, then I’d have probably reacted differently. Just, you see, I’ll probably be doing an upgrade with my Three account — and it’ll be an early upgrade, so there’s usually a bit of cash involved. I don’t mind that. However the last time I tried to do this, the Indian chap I spoke with was horrified at the £200 I’d need to pay. “Yeah, that’s fine,” I said. He tried to convince me to wait 6 months so he wouldn’t have to charge me that. He was well meaning. Very well meaning. But all I wanted was the handset and I was happy to pay. So I didn’t want another re-run of this.

But at least there was some interaction from Three.

o2 were pretty good too. I had a good dialogue with them across the afternoon. They didn’t offer to sell me a device (i.e. just get it done by phone/tweet/email or whatever). Instead they supported the process with me — because I had already indicated I intended buying a lease iPhone. I think that’s totally acceptable.

You’d think though, wouldn’t you, that operators would by now have some kind of system in place that tracks what *I* say in the context of spending money on telecommunications stuff. It’s all very well being able to interact with consumers by social media, but how about actually selling them stuff?

On the basis of around £250/month spend, I’m worth £3,000 a year to Vodafone. If you assume Vodafone UK company does about £5 billion-ish a year, I contribute 0.00006% of their revenues.

Not that much, I suppose. But a few of those start to add up.

Is there no “quick, Ewan wants to buy something” register that pops up and alerts the sales people sitting on their hands at the call centre? Or is the market on the social media channels that small that it’s really not worth bothering about? That could certainly be the case.

I’m sure I saw a rather nifty system from Amdocs at this year’s InTouch event that helped track and manage this kind of social customer interaction. I must ask them about it.

Meanwhile, what’s your reaction?

Was I expecting just a little bit too much? I’m sure the operator sales teams reading this would have rather they’d made the sale than ignored it. Did I do it the wrong way? Or perhaps I should have been more blatant? Maybe I should have addressed each operator directly with my sales intent, rather than have them come back to me?

Anyway, do let me know what you think. My next post will discuss my o2 in shop experience.

I still don’t have an iPhone 4S.

Here is the video:

Here is the video:

More from Claire:

Here is the video:

Amy from IAB asked if I’d like to participate in one of their upcoming Social Media marketing events. I readily agreed.

The inimitable James Whatley of 1000heads is supervising the panel I’m on — and we’ve got this topic to discuss:

Inviting the cool kids: getting the right people to talk about your brand in the right way — Real, practical advice on how you can identify online influencers and why they’re so important to interact with in the first place. How to engage with bloggers and hit the right tone, putting personality in your communications to enlist brand advocates for the long-term.

Joining me on the panel is Mr Holy Moly (that’s going to be interesting, I get the Holy Moly newsletter each week) and Rowena Fan the beauty blogger behind Cosmetic Candy.

If you’re going along, let’s meet up.

I’m looking forward to it. I’ve got a lot to say on the subject.

And if you’re wondering who that girl is at the top of the page, hanging in mid-air, she’s the Coco in ‘I Blame Coco‘, the band who’ll be performing at the end of the event.

Very hip.

Almost on the cusp of being a little too hip for Mobile Industry Review, I fear. Not for Mr Whatley though, it’s right up his alley, especially if he arrives wearing those sun glasses.

If you’re a mobile developer — or an internet developer with designs on mobile — today’s news deserves a sit-down analysis and big think by you and your colleagues.

How would you like an entirely managed method of reaching up to 289 million users worldwide via Vodafone’s own ‘app store’ with the billing taken care of?

I’ve put ‘app store’ in inverted commas because, although there isn’t a mention of the term in their official announcement, that’s more or less what it’s promising to be. Or, at least, that’s a quick summary from me.

Vodafone have done a rather good job of the announcement, so instead of re-writing it, here it is:

Vodafone is to stimulate a new generation of mobile internet applications by providing internet service developers with a single point of access to Vodafone’s global customer base.

Developers will only need to create internet applications once in order to reach millions of Vodafone customers on any device and will be able to charge for it directly through Vodafone’s billing system. This will provide internet content partners, such as the media or game developers, with a cost-efficient and effective micro-payments system to reach all customers on mobile devices.

Vodafone will also provide partners and developers with customer controlled access to other network capabilities, such as location awareness, enabling them to create even more innovative mobile internet services and applications.

The move will be accompanied by a framework to provide customers with transparency and control over how their information is accessed and used.

The scale of the initiative will provide partners and developers with an unparalleled opportunity to increase their revenues from the mobile internet, while delivering services to Vodafone’s 289 million customers. Vodafone will also benefit from any uplift in sales under a revenue-share model.

The benefits to third-party developers and internet companies include:

- A single point of access to millions of Vodafone customers across the globe
- Faster time to market for new products and services across several operating systems and handsets
- Enhanced revenue stream opportunities
- Simplified micro-payments for services through the use of Vodafone’s existing billing systems

The benefits to customers include:

- A greater selection of more compelling internet applications and services
- More convenience and greater flexibility in paying for new services
- A simpler and more intuitive mobile internet experience
- Consistent quality of service across the entire Vodafone footprint

Vodafone will enable developers to use its direct billing capabilities to permit customers to pay for services wirelessly through their existing Vodafone pre- and post-paid accounts rather than having to input sensitive credit card data into multiple application stores.

This is expected to give customers a convenient and highly secure payment option for the different services on offer, as well as encourage greater take up.

By giving developers access to location awareness capabilities, Vodafone will enable a new generation of highly personalised user-activated and controlled services and applications that are tailored to meet the customer’s immediate requirements.

Vodafone is making the enhancements through the creation of a set of network Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) which will enable developers to build capabilities such as direct billing and location awareness into their services.

The APIs, which provide a link between the applications and the Vodafone network capabilities, will work across the entire Vodafone footprint thanks to a new layer of management technology based on Service Oriented Architecture.

Vodafone will start to offer access to selected network enablers through the Joint Innovation Lab (JIL) initiative, which is designed to help developers create useful widgets for a combined audience of up to one billion customers (across the four JIL partner networks). JIL is due to release a website and a Software Developer Kit in the summer. Vodafone is also exploring a range of other ways to expose its network enablers to the broadest possible audience.

“Vodafone is making these changes to make it easier for third parties to develop attractive new services as well as bill and support our customers through our network capabilities in all markets,” said Vittorio Colao CEO of Vodafone. “By giving them simple access to our global customer base and network assets, such as direct billing and location awareness, we will help them to make more money while providing our customers with the innovative services that they want.”

I’ve got a lot of questions. This sounds rather good. Especially the join innovation lab concept.

Can they pull it off? And whilst we’re talking about 289 million customers (or, potentially a billion), how realistic is that considering X million of them are currently sporting rubbish Motorola RAZR handsets? What does this mean for Vodafone support of Nokia’s Ovi? What exactly are Vodafone going to have to put on every handset to support this?

Or are we actually talking about a sooped-up set of mobile web pages that, whilst sounding good (especially to nervous shareholders looking for a response to Apple), isn’t actually going to blow any doors off this year, next year, or this decade?

I hope those questions — and more — will be answered initially in today’s 3pm call. I’m also going to see if I can get some interviews on camera soon.

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If I’m a Vodafone customer (and I am), I want to know what the Vodafone branded version of my handset comes with and I’d like to see how the device works on film. One step better than reading a list of specifications and clicking on a few pictures.

Vodafone have gone to town with the HTC Magic and produced this video, distributed by Unruly Media.

Have a look:

Manchester has it’s own version of London’s Social Media Cafe aka Tuttle Club and on the Tuesday 3rd February 2009, meeting between 6pm to 9pm. I will be down there representing Mobile Industry Review, sadly James, Ewan, Ben and Dan will not be able to attend, however I am sure I will be able to keep the MIR flag flying.
 

What is the Social Media Cafe Manchester?

The Social Media Cafe, or Tuttle Club, is a place for people interested in social media to gather, get acquainted, and to plot, scheme, and share.. emphasis on open and interesting conversation!

Who should come?
If you’re interested in the future of media, how we organise, share, produce and enjoy it, then come along. If you’re an artist, film maker, geek, musician, designer, writer, photographer, web designer or developer or anything close or related, then come along. If you want to meet like minds, come along.
 

I of course will be be on the look out for anything mobile related to report back for Mobile Industry Review, however I am willing to chat and network with anyone (Contact Details at the end).

The format will be;

18:00 Doors open
18:30 Introductions
18:40 Sessions
19:20 Break
19:40 Informal sessions and networking
20:20 Break and networking

The sessions will be a choice of three sessions for more details head over to their site.

You will of course need to let the organisers you are going; all you need to do is sign up and put your name down here!

This promising to be a fantastic event, so I hope to see all you down there on February 3rd! 

If you want to connect with me;

Twitter: @rickyc88
Email: ricky@mobileindustryreview.com.

However, I was watching the news the other day, I think it was CNN or Sky or something, and I was half-heartedly listening; and suddenly something occurred to me about what I was seeing. The old usual reports of a foreign reporter standing with bullet-proof jacket, and some Army guys standing around them are slowly withering away…

And why is that?

Technology!

It was fascinating what it was that I saw, a man had been able to get in touch with a child over in Gaza over the internet, and was having a webcam conversation with them; and through this conversation came a live-feed, and first hand account of what is happening, without the need of invasive, and sometimes misleading (or dare I say biased) news reporters merely saying what they see.

Now this has all come about because of mobile telecommunications, and it’s only ever going to improve with better telecommunications.

What made me smile, and what made me happy is to think with the power of what this industry does, and what some other industries provide, we as a global population may some day have enough power to really create our own media – say a full scale “YouTube Revolution”.

Imagine that! And it all being down to a bit of technology.

Even more amazing than a Media Revolution, would be providing people like those in Gaza with no way to voice what it is that is happening in Gaza, with no means of communicating with the rest of the world what is happening; would be to be able to have an even better communication where civilians caught up in Political affairs such as this, can really communicate to the outside world what it is that needs to be done; and for us to be able to offer hope back to them.

And it’s things like the $100 laptop, working to improve efficiency and output of global communications, and developing new and exciting technology which can achieve this.

What’s more, is that it doesn’t have to end there. On Skype already you’ll see quite a few people trying to find ways to learn new languages via the internet, and others happily teaching in order to learn themselves. Well, why couldn’t that happen more?

“International Online Classrooms” -  I can see it now; the students would be embracing whatever technology they can get their hands on, be it the latest high-speed connectivity handheld phone, or an ultra-powerful Notebook with high-speed wireless internet, and maybe the odd person or two on their desktop… But it could happen, and there is no reason why it shouldn’t!

Maybe I am being am being tad optimistic, but I don’t like starting a new year with pessimism. But I’m also a realist by heart and by nature; I seldom overindulge in beliefs of the impossible, and I don’t believe anything that I have mentioned is impossible; and I’m pretty sure that there are more people out there could find even more better and plausible ideas than mine.

Well, a lot can change in a year, so let’s see what happens!

Samantha.
Samantha@mobileindustryreview.com

He’s kindly sent over a free chapter for my perusal and I’ve copied the first few paragraphs from it to give you an idea as to the quality of his writing. The book is £20 + postage and you can order now.

I just took a screenshot of the book from the Futuretext site — I’ve linked it to the ordering page:

Here’s the first few paragraphs:

- – - – -

Because the need to communicate is more powerful than the need to compute, to be entertained, or to be informed.

At the end of 2007 there were almost three times as many cellphone subscriptions as there were total users on the internet. There were four times as many cellphones as there are personal computers of all kinds laptops, desktops and servers combined. There were more than five times as many cellphone subscriptions in the world as there were cars. Twice as many people had cellphones as had credit cards. The population of cellphones was twice as big as the population of TV sets in use.

There were 2.5 times as many cellphones as there were fixed landline phones.

In fact, by late November 2007 there was a cellphone subscription for a staggering 50% of the world’s total population. Since Taiwan first did it in 2001, today over 60 countries have achieved cellphone penetration rates of over 100% per capita. For comparison, the USA cellphone penetration rate was about 85% at the end of 2007, placing it second-to-last among industrialized countries. Canada was in last place with about 65% penetration. In the most advanced mobile markets such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Italy and Finland, the typical first-time cellphone customer is well under the age of eight.

How can you reach over 100% per capita penetration rates? Hong Kong, Taiwan, Italy, Israel, the UK are all at 130% or above – means that an increasing part of the employed population has two or more subscriptions. Informa measured that by 2007 already 28% of all cellphone owners in the world already have two or more subscriptions. Moreover, in most cases this means also carrying two phones. Half of Western Europeans with a cellphone actually have two or more subscriptions – and most of them carry two phones.

There is no other gadget that is even remotely as widely adopted and spread across the planet as the cellphone. Anyone with a job and disposable income has a cellphone, so if you want to sell anything, anyone who is “economically viable” on the planet, carries a cellphone. Even in China (40% penetration rate per capita), India (20%) and Africa (15%) cellphones are everywhere. I will discuss the overall economics, the big picture numbers and contrasts to other major technologies in the next chapter about the numbers involved in this industry soon to hit a Trillion dollars in value.

Then I will examine the owners of cellphones and how they use the devices. I will explore the society and how our behavior is changing with this technology. Earlier, the only gadget the “whole population” used to carry was the wristwatch. However, even here the cellphone is trumping the watch: young people have stopped using wristwatches and rely only upon the cellphone to tell time. A global Nokia survey of cellphone users in 2006 found that 73% of cellphone owners use the clock on the phone. Not all of these have abandoned wearing a wristwatch, but an increasing portion of the world uses the phone as the only time-keeping device.

The cellphone is the only universal device.

- – - – -

Fascinating reading. Every success, Tomi!

They’re looking to expand their mobile portfolio with joint ventures and acquisitions.

“What sort of mobile services?” I asked the chap.

“Anything. We’ll take a look at anything mobile and see if we can do business,” came the reply.

So.

If you’ve got a company you’d like to sell, or if you’d be interested in discussing joint ventures, we should talk.  I’ll plug you in.

If your business or concept is the sort of thing that an international media conglomerate might like like, definitely email.   So I’m thinking mobile consumer related services and applications.

Whack me a few lines as an overview and I’ll forward it to the chap.  If there’s interest, I’ll connect you.

As ever, I’m on ewan@mobileindustryreview.com.

Quite a few of the listeners texted in asking if he could play some highlights from Rage Against The Machine’s (“RATM”) act.

“No!” replied Zane, going to explain that due to licensing rules, the BBC couldn’t reproduce any RATM footage. He wasn’t explicit on the reason but hinted that RATM didn’t want that to happen.

He then said that, although RATM had banned any professional footage of their act being taken by the likes of the BBC, that you could probably find something on Youtube.

Oh yes.

I went on to Youtube and typed in ‘Rage Against The Machine’ and ordered the results by date added. Woosh. There’s tons.

We’re in the connected mobile media age.

Everyone who can afford to go to the Reading or Leeds festival has a mobile handset. Most of them are video capable. Many of them are near-DVD quality.

Insisting that the BBC can’t broadcast your footage is just silly. It’s right there on Youtube, albeit in rather shitty quality. So now you’re just pissing me off. I’m a potential fan. I’m potentially interested in the band. I was mildly interested to see them all prancing about the stage in Guantanmo Bay style boilersuits and hoods. I got my ‘fix’ — ie. I listened to some of their stuff. But the audio quality wasn’t brilliant. So I don’t know if they’re any good. Or worth my attention.

That, then, was five minutes of my attention — possibly worth, what, a grand? Directly? If I became a fan? Over 10 years? And RATM management just blew it.

If you’d like to see the boilersuits, you can do so here.

Jonathan’s hunting for assistance. If you’ve got a perspective on media and consumption of info, pop over to his site and read the following post — and see if you’d like to help him out.

Would you like to be an Editor? | Jonathan MacDonald.com

I am writing a book about communication and the way in which new media has changed delivery and consumption of information.

It seems that there may be some value in the stuff I am writing about and (probably because I am going to ramble on anyway), I have been recommended by numerous people to write ‘a book’.

In an attempt to avoid a common mistake as we see when new businesses start up just because their friends tell them their idea rocks, I have listened and asked many people throughout this year about the potential demand for such a publication. Indeed, why have a publication at all? Surely this blog is sufficient.

The service sounds technologically pretty nifty. It works like this, according to the company: “Moblyng technology automatically converts Flash-based content to images or video for mobile distribution, bridging the gap between online Flash objects and mobile devices, which do not widely support Flash-based content.”

With social networking now one of the most popular activities on the mobile web, it’s no wonder so many companies and VCs are gunning for it.

Geniem, which sells on device portals, Bluetooth technologies and social media to carriers as well as consumer goods companies, has the likes of Nokia, Volvo, ABC, Pepsi, and SonyBMG already among its customers.

Tuomas Kumpula, Geniem’s CEO, said the company will be rolling out its services to ROK’s customer base and will be introducing a white label mobile social networking product aimed at network carriers in the future. The deal sounds like it could be a hot combination – bringing together two of the most talked about mobile applications, mobile TV and social networking.