Archive of TheNextWeb.org
Written on December 15, 2008 – 5:04 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Every country/ state/ city has its group of Twitter geeks who frequently meet-up to discuss life and have a beer or two. I sometimes attend these meetings in Amsterdam and love to check tweets the morning after. I’m always surprised by the detailed coverage of what’s nothing more than a good night of binge drinking.
However, in some countries mobile Internet hasn’t experienced its big breakthrough yet. Brazil is one of them. So what happens in the case of an offline tweetup?
Twittering on napkins…
There! I’ve said it! Posting offline updates on napkins really happen. Here’s the proof:
Are you as surprised as I am about the almost perfect Finder avatar imitation? The other friends of Lúcia Malla seem to have some problems with drawing though. What about a calligraphy book for Christmas?
I hope you like that post!
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Written on November 5, 2008 – 2:49 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
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.
Written on October 30, 2008 – 3:14 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
The people from Perk Mobile are helping companies out which have no idea what to do with “this new mobile web thing”. Some of the world’s largest companies ask the New Yorkers to figure out problems concerning mobile devices and software.
But the consultant life alone isn’t enough for them. They need some excitement - something weird. I know one of the founders personally, even consider him a great friend, and seriously, I haven’t met anyone with such a bizarre sense of humor that even comes close to his. I could go into details here, but let’s skip that for now and see how these New York city boys fulfill their somewhat freaky needs.
What about… a zombie-themed location-based game? Grab your Blackberry, hit the streets of Manhattan, and slash some random strangers. You might even become friends afterwards. That’s basically the idea behind Mobile Dead. It uses GPS (or other location data) to find your position and the position of your enemies. You’ll recognize them by their color. Humans are blue, zombies green.
Of course it’s a bit more sophisticated than that, as you can also pick up items along the way. Such as health packages and weapons. Use the latter in fights, which consists of taking turns in slashing. You hit, wait for the nasty reply, and hit again.
It will be interesting times for the developers, as they need a lot of participants before the game becomes interesting. Supporting of the iPhone, Android, and other smart phones will definitely help. One thing is for sure, they’ve picked the right city. Everybody’s commuting all the time over there.
Written on October 17, 2008 – 11:38 am
Peter Evers, Next Web Mobile editor
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.
Written on September 26, 2008 – 4:44 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Flirtomatic, the UK’s leading mobile social networking service announced that they’ve welcomed the millionth user this week. Not surprisingly, since the service cuts to the chase: it’s just about flirting. Most of those flirting users are British and more than half of them seduce folks via the mobile phone. Flirtomatic has just started to lure Germans into their flirting heaven.
The growth of Flirtomatic is rather spectacular. It had 225,000 registered users in February 2007, which means an almost 350% growth within an 18 month period. What’s even more interesting, is Flirtomatic’s impressive revenue growth. According to a press release, it has “skyrocketed” by 475%.
Make money with mobile
That’s fascinating, as at all the mobile conferences I’ve been, people have been complaining about a lack of revenue through mobile advertising et al. Maybe Flirtomatic is exaggerating and their revenue increased from 1 euro to nearly 500 euros. But I figured it would be worth it anyhow to ask Flirtomatic CEO Mark Curtis to share his thoughts on generating revenue via mobile sites.
Curtis: “Generating revenue on the mobile web is basically about either advertising or user payments. You can forget data revenue share with operators, especially with the - slowly growing - move to flat rate.”
Mobile advertising
Advertising? At MoMo Amsterdam, I heard Yme Bosma from Holland’s largest social networking service Hyves say that they would only think of advertising when they have millions of users. So how about that?
Curtis: “Advertising is bumpy but growing. It’s rather difficult to separate out the effect of the credit crunch on advertiser confidence from the inevitably inconsistent demand of a nascent marketplace. In other words, the revenue stream is good and getting better but is damn hard to predict.”
User revenues
So user revenues might be a more secure option? Curtis: “Luckily user revenues are easier to predict once you have some runway behind you, and are continuing to lift. It’s easy to see why: a long time ago operators put in place micro billing through handsets and users became accustomed to it through the first mobile content boom. There remains however a lot of suspicion following the dodgy subscription packages that many consumers were caught out by.” (more…)
Written on September 6, 2008 – 9:04 am
Peter Evers, Next Web Mobile editor
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.
Written on August 30, 2008 – 3:21 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
The next web is mobile, that’s for sure. For some, it already is the recent web, especially those who walk around with the nifty little tool called the iPhone. Which basically is a mini computer with a phone function. Problem with the shiny object though, is that it’s one of the most locked-in devices we’ve seen in the last years. Open alternatives are on its way, of which the Android platform is probably the most famous one. Android is based on Linux, the OS that lays the foundation for open mobile platforms.
Intel probably acknowledges this, based on their acquisition of London-based Opened Hand, a company which specializes in mobile Linux development and services. Cnet reports that the chip company will ask these British Linux mobile experts to focus on the Mobil Software Platform community, “an open source community for sharing software technologies, ideas, projects, code, and applications to create an untethered computing experience across Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), Netbooks, and embedded devices”. The first devices have found their way to the market earlier this summer.
In short, they’re laying the foundation for the next, mobile, open and thus more exciting web. Developers will have all the freedom to build the mobile devices and software, not limited by a mighty company.
Written on April 20, 2008 – 11:00 am
Guest blogger, sharing views on The Next Web
This is a guest post by mobile marketeer Peter Evers
After Russell Beattie’s post about the end of Mowser, a mobile transcoder, last Monday, a lot of bloggers reacted fiercely on his controversial viewpoints about the end of the mobile web. As a mobile marketing professional I feel kind of obliged to write about my view on the future of the mobile web.
Let’s start with a short recap about what happened this week. On Monday Russell Beattie, founder of Mowser, an application that transcodes normal websites to mobile websites, announced that Mowser has stopped. In this very personal article Russell came up with different reasons for the end of Mowser, such as lack of funding and personal debts but mostly Russell’s lack of confidence in the future of the mobile web. Russell states:
…I don’t actually believe in the ‘Mobile Web’ anymore, and therefore am less inclined to spend time and effort in a market I think is limited at best, and dying at worst. I’m talking specifically about sites that are geared 100% towards mobile phones and have little to no PC web presence. Two years ago I was convinced that the mobile web would continue to evolve in the West to mimic what was happening in countries like Japan and Korea, but it hasn’t happened, and now I’m sure it isn’t going to. In other words, I think anyone currently developing sites using XHTML-MP markup, no Javascript, geared towards cellular connections and two inch screens are simply wasting their time, and I’m tired of wasting my time…
With this kind of powerful expressions, the commotion he caused in the blogosphere doesn’t come as a surprise. Almost every mobile blog I’m subscribed to wrote about it. Especially the articles at MobHappy, MobileMarketingWatch and mocoNews.net were worth reading, But what is Russell actually saying? If you read his text carefully you might have understood that the thing he isn’t confident about is browsing mobile-only websites on two-inch screens.
I can say that I don’t believe in mobile-only websites with no or little PC presence too. If a website is only visible on a phone and not or hardly available on a PC, people probably will not know about its presence.
(more…)
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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 of, the future of the Web. (
