Written on 29th June 2009
11 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Plans introduced by industry body GSM Association (GSMA) at Mobile World Congress in February brought hope to many a mobile phone user. The plans discussed the introduction of a universal charger as part of a drive to improve its environmental record and to make life easier for mobile phone users.
Today, a deal has been announced between GSMA and the European Commission in Brussels which should see the plans become a reality.
The deal isn’t legally binding and at this stage, is only voluntary. but with Apple, Nokia, SonyEricsson, NEC, LG, Samsung and Texas Instruments all (more…)
Flirtomatic is a ridiculously popular mobile social network from the UK. That makes sense, as it’s all about sex. Seduce your desired guy or gal via the mobile phone. Currently, 1.3 million folks are concerned with this act of love.
The growth of Flirtomatic is rather spectacular. It had 225,000 registered users in February 2007. What’s even more interesting, is Flirtomatic’s impressive revenue growth. According to a press release in September, it has “skyrocketed” by 475%.
Taking that in account, it’s actually interesting to hear that the service will launch a mobile beta in the U.S. of A. CEO Mark Curtis commented in a press release: “It’s a difficult time in the market, but we’re optimistic that we can enter the US successfully. It will not be easy but if we can replicate some of the success we’ve had in the UK and Germany, generating revenues within six months, we will have taken a major step towards achieving our goals.”
I think the success of Flirtomatic tells us a lot about the future of mobile: it’s gonna be exciting. Sex always leads the way, so Facebook and national networks will follow. I for one, do most of my social networking via iPhone apps.
Here’s a mobile start-up that has been underestimating its target audience for a while. Flirtomatic, the UK’s leading mobile and online flirting service, has sent out a press release filled with words of surprise. It basically says: “hey, these customers actually are pretty smart”.
Flirtomatic has conducted a survey to gain some insight on the mobile usage of its users. 5,800 responded, 87% of them completed the ten questions. Here are some of the results that get CEO Mark Curtis excited, copy/pasted from the press release:
56% of respondents said that they use bookmarking in order to return to Flirtomatic, a figure much higher than initially expected.
When asked ‘which best describes your internet connection at home?’ a whopping 84% of users stated they usually use their phone to connect to the Web.
38% of users have already invited their friends to join Flirtomatic and a further 57% are considering it
Flirtomatic passed the one million users mark in September. Now that we know a lot of those folks are pretty smart, the future for the London start-up looks brighter than ever.
Operator portals were doomed to disappear when the walled gardens opened up about two years ago, but after the rise of the smartphone and introduction of unlimited data packages they are doing better than ever. Still, most of the mobile internet use takes place within the borders of these portals. The predicted growth of off portal inventory goes much slower than predicted.
Smart mobile start-ups
However, it must be noted that a couple of smart mobile startups did a great job filling up this new space. Mobile-only communities like Itsmy.com, myGamma, and Flirtomatic are growing rapidly these days. Their big advantage is the painful absence of the bigger brands on mobile Internet, which results in most of the off portal advertising budget ending up in their pockets.
No mobile versions
On the other hand, this is exactly what’s withholding mobile media buyers to spend more budget off portal. Most established websites do simply not offer a mobile version of their successful online product. This is why media buyers who represent big consumer brands don’t want to spend budget off portal. Brands attract brands. Simple as that.
Be ahead of the pack
So why are these online brands still not available on the mobile Internet? I guess they’re simply waiting when the time is right, but they should be ahead of the pack because they are the main drivers behind the availability of premium off portal inventory. Their motivation might be that it’s still hard to drive traffic to a mobile site. While using their phone, people are often too lazy to enter a URL.
So all the traffic derives from really motivated people that are dedicated to find a certain mobile site and Google Mobile (which seldom directs you to a mobile site). Well, what about directing people to your mobile site from your online site? Offering an on-the-go version of your brand? Enhancing your site with an extra service because you like your users so much and want to offer them your content whenever they want to?
Best place to start? What about right here? That picture is how our mobile presence looks like at the moment, as the brand new mobile editor this is definitely the first challenge ahead of me. We’re going mobile! Keep you posted.
Last week I wrote an angry post about people who try to kill the business card. Although I’m friends with a couple of these wannabe killers, I felt I had to defend the ultimate tool for self-expression during first impressions. But now, with pain in my heart, I have to give a couple of these guys a stage. After all, I cannot appear too biased. So here it is, a business cards-killing service which just launched in private beta: Project E.
Next Web Editor David Petherick & Robert Scoble with ‘E’ Prototypes
Three Dutch designers Paul Geurts, Arjen Sondag, and
Renato Valdés Olmos want to get people connected with “a device operated by a single gesture. “Exchanging contact info and social networking info with E takes as long as a formal handshake”, Renato explained when I interviewed him at The Next Web Conference.
Eventually, the three guys want to have specially designed hardware that makes this contact exchange possible. While they’re looking for investors to make this production process possible, they’ve also worked on a service that does the same thing, but with (most) mobile phones. Just a few clicks and you’re connected with your new contact on the services you desire, like LinkedIN.
This social network isn’t actually yet integrated. The beta now works with Twitter, Soocial, and the network of the conference they’re launching at this week, Picnic. Integration with delicious, Netlog, and Last.fm is coming soon.
For now, Renato told me he’s excited to hear your feedback about the UI and the connectivity between different devices. So give it a shot, the first 25 lucky people who leave a comment will receive an invite from me.
This is a guest post by mobile marketeer Peter Evers based in London who frequently blogs about mobile on peterevers.net.
After working in mobile marketing for quite some time, recently a friend challenged me to think of a business plan for his mobile startup MaptheGap. His plan was either to sell his company or making money by selling pro accounts.
I think choosing the sell out strategy is one of the most common mistakes startups make. They hope to make their service so appealing that a big player has no choice but to acquire them. What if that’s not happening? Well, then you run out of money sooner or later, go bankrupt, and your startup has stayed a startup forever. In these times of economic slowdown it seems a pretty risky strategy.
Another failing strategy is to start with a pro account right away. So you’re launching a new service, but you prevent your very first users from using the full functionalities of your service? Since the first phase is mostly about convincing people to actually use your service, this will lead more to frustrated users than to money in the bank. Besides, a lot has been written and said about everything becoming free anyway.
So, what would be viable business plans to make your mobile service profitable? I have summed up three business strategies, which do not exclude each other, to earn money with a mobile service.
Advertising – Very obvious, but still a lot of startups think of it as the a-word. They are too afraid to upset their userbase. But aren’t we all still watching tv and reading newspapers? Advertising doesn’t bother people as long as it doesn’t interfere with the usability of your service. Besides, the techniques to target ads on specific characteristics of your users and their location are pretty advanced, so your users might even think of the ads as helpful.
White labeling – A white label product or service is a product or service produced by one company and rebranded by another company to make it appear as if it’s theirs. In terms of a mobile service, it means that you license the technique of your service to another company for a fixed fee, so they can rebrand your service as their own at an event (fair, release party etc.), offer it to their customers or on a bunch of other occasions.
Licensing – By far the best way to grow a big audience, which obviously boosts your advertising sales, is to get your service preloaded on people’s phones. So your service is on their phone before they have even thought about buying it. This is hard, you’ll need to speak to phone manufacturers and they’ll need approval of the operators who sell their phones, but will certainly mean a big breakthrough for your service. Since the rise of the mobile Internet most manufacturers also have a ‘Downloads’ application preloaded, but the downloadable content within this application isn’t preloaded but can be changed at any moment. If you manage to get your service in there, every user of a phone of that particular manufacturer, looks at your service as soon as they want to download something. One of the most successful examples of this is the App Store on all the iPhones. The other side is that the operator or manufacturer will demand a share of your advertising revenue, but it’ll be worth every penny.
Although according to Michael Arrington revenue models aren’t really web2.0, I’d advise you to be ahead of the pack and think of a way to monetize your service instead of waiting for demanding investors (like Mike himself, what a coincidence) to come along buying shares you could have sold ten times higher.
About a week ago, I reported about Rebtel, a Luxembourg and Sweden-based start-up that provides cheap international mobile calls, had been blocked in Germany by operator O2. It didn’t look like it was going to be an easy fight for O2, as Rebtel blogger Alexander Drewniak wrote a post in which he promised Rebtel would fight back as hard as they could. Of course Alexander asked for help from the crowd, in the form of complaining by the operator. The crowd did so, and.., victory is Rebtel’s:
Without your personal support, blogging, Tweets, Diggs, Facebook status messages, emails to O2’s CEO and phone calls to their support staff we could never have made our voice loud enough for O2 to hear us. With the Rebtel community being able to come to terms with O2 on this matter we have proved that together we are strong. We held our ground and the persistency surely paid off.
So guess what, in these times, it sure pays off to make a lot of noise via the web and email. You’ll even get a giant like O2 on its knees.
In case you haven’t read this elsewhere (I haven’t, but the press release is dated 11 July): BIC, the French company whose name will infinitely be linked to ballpoint pens – in fact, in Belgium, Greece and France, the name has even become downright generic – has set up a partnership with Orange and Alacatel to market a basic mobile phone aptly named the BIC Phone. Who needs further proof that cellphones are now nothing more than a commodity?
Presented as a basic handset that’s “100% ready-to-go,” the BIC phone comes packed just like one of its razors and includes a SIM card, 60 free minutes and a fully-charged battery. This makes the new handset ready to be used right after you buy it, hence it could be a perfect secondary or emergency phone. Built by Alcatel, the BIC phone measures 98 x 44 x 12.6 millimeters, weighs only 61 grams and has a battery capable of providing up to 4 hours of talk-time and up to 240 hours of stand-by time.
As from August 7, the BIC phone will become available across France in two colors (citrus orange and lime green) for a retail price of 49 Euros (about $77 USD), including tax. The handset will be sold over the counter in supermarkets, as well as in convenience stores, like tobacco shops or stores from train stations and airports.
Written on 29th June 2009
11 COMMENTS 
Plans introduced by industry body GSM Association (GSMA) at Mobile World Congress in February brought hope to many a mobile phone user. The plans discussed the introduction of a universal charger as part of a drive to improve its environmental record and to make life easier for mobile phone users.
Written on 29th January 2009
Written on 17th October 2008
I think choosing the sell out strategy is one of the most common mistakes startups make. They hope to make their service so appealing that a big player has no choice but to acquire them. What if that’s not happening? Well, then you run out of money sooner or later, go bankrupt, and your startup has stayed a startup forever. In these times of economic slowdown it seems a pretty risky strategy.
Written on 22nd July 2008
In case you haven’t read this elsewhere (I haven’t, but the 
ed just like one of its razors and includes a SIM card, 60 free minutes and a fully-charged battery. This makes the new handset ready to be used right after you buy it, hence it could be a perfect secondary or emergency phone. Built by Alcatel, the BIC phone measures 98 x 44 x 12.6 millimeters, weighs only 61 grams and has a battery capable of providing up to 4 hours of talk-time and up to 240 hours of stand-by time.
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
