The presentation dealt with this idea: That mobile communications does not have to be a tactical endeavor, it can be a deep strategic one enabling companies to run leaner, to reach audiences in new and novel ways, to redefine a company organizationally, and create new markets with new revenues. In ‘creating assets and access in the intention economy’ I challenged our thinking in how mobile communications plays the key role in this rapidly evolving story.

In Lewis Hyde’s book The Gift he writes, the hegemony of the market can undermine the possibility of gift-exchange, the esemplastic powers can be destroyed by an overvaluation of analytic cognition. Ushahidi is a gift to the world and asks nothing in return.

Juliana Rotich about Ushahidi’s Crisis Mapping in 280 seconds from 99FACES on Vimeo.

Brian writes,

For several years now, it has been ‘the year of mobile’. And yet despite everyone’s best efforts, it hasn’t really happened yet, has it? Why might that be? There were several opinions expressed at MediaTel’s recent ‘Come on Mobile..Stand Up and Deliver’ event.

Potentially mobile offers commercial users a truly unique integrated channel.

First, mobile is personal; much more personal than any other channel. This is a benefit and a problem. A benefit in that if consumers are prepared to accept messages, and if they’re prepared to participate in a dialogue with a brand then the result is a truly engaged consumer. On the other hand if consumers just tolerate irrelevant messages from advertisers they care little about, then the result is…well, at best an irritated customer, and at worst a customer for whom hell will freeze over before he or she ever buys anything from your client ever again.

An illustration – a while ago I received a text from an insurance company asking me if I would be interested in a quote for business insurance. I don’t remember giving this company permission to contact me; and I don’t know who to be most irritated with – the company or Vodafone. Yes I run a small business, and yes I have business insurance. Does that make me a likely member of the target market? I would say no – because at no point did I knowingly give permission for anyone to contact me. I suspect my operator would say yes – I’m in the target market, as I opted in (or failed to opt out), even if unknowingly.
It seems to me that simply assuming that consumers are prepared to be contacted if they’ve opted in, or not opted out is incorrect. Certainly they may have consciously agreed to receive messages, but we all know that the opt-in process generally works passively, rather than actively. This is not right – and furthermore raises a huge question: who controls what is done with data about me? I think that when it comes to the most personal channel – my mobile phone – then I should. I want to be in control; I want to decide who I hear from.

Our mobile marketing channel Qustodian (www.qustodian.com) launching in the UK later this year following a successful launch in Spain puts consumers in control. They decide who they hear from; they control their data; they benefit (in cash) from the use to which their data is put; and they decide whether to stay with us, or cancel their involvement with us – something they can do at any time.

But Qustodian is a very small player compared to the major operators. For this medium to really take off it needs the big guys to start applying certain principles around active opt-in and active consumer participation, as opposed to believing that passively collected eyeballs, maybe modified by a broad discriminator such as a location in any way equals engaged consumers.

I believe that mobile can deliver engaged consumers. It can be used for messages in virtually any format – including film, text, static images. It can be used to guide consumers through multiple materials on multiple screens within one campaign. It can offer promotions. It can transact. It can measure effect. Every click is collected and can be used to measure the effect of any activity.

So why aren’t advertisers queuing up to use this new medium? Why aren’t the agencies recommending it? Is it, as one speaker at the MediaTel event suggested because everyone is still obsessed with TV (an odd remark coming from an organisation that itself spends tens of millions on television, presumably because it works for them)? Of course not.

Is it (as was also suggested) because the measurement is imperfect? But as we’ve seen, it’s potentially superior to anything from a 5,000 homes panel, or from an online system that doesn’t identify individuals. Can’t be.

Or is it because agencies can’t make money from mobile? But what about agencies’ vaunted ability to offer media neutral thinking? Surely not.

I think the real reason is that mobile isn’t really an advertising medium at all; it’s a complete marketing channel with everything that that implies. I’m not sure that we are yet able to think of mobile as anything other than an advertising vehicle. And, until we are, until we learn to think in a different way about communicating with customers, until we turn all the talk about integrated thinking into integrated action, mobile won’t fulfill its huge potential.

SMLXL posts on mobile commerce

I don’t think you need to be a community purist – to see the flawed thinking. Reading through the article, of the usual players and companies lining up to bid for local TV franchises, with the same old, same old business models I found myself, making observations and asking all sorts of questions:

• When we are connected up to and across each other, when we can get what we need for each other, why do we need more of what we don’t need?
• A people will only be free when THEY control their own communications – Frantz Fanon
• Markets are conversations, and markets thrive through, commercial trading, knowledge and information exchange and entertainment, hence the role of the creation of a thriving market place is not about shoving stuff down tubes. Its not one way, and reality of the role of producer and consumer has collapsed.
• Those companies that use revenue sharing to open up, stimulate, motivate and create a rich diverse eco-system are those that are commercially thriving: GrowVC, Qustodian, Android, NTTDoCoMo, Threadless,  are but 5 examples. So why is local TV any different?
• Ask who uses a search engine = 99%? and what are we searching for? Knowledge and information. And we judge the quality of that knowledge and information by its ability for us to take and make decisions and transactions, right now, in 5mins time, this afternoon, tomorrow – we live in the intention economy.
• Where is mobile in all this – because when we have a mobile penetration of 120%+ in the UK but millions cant get in online, surely local commercial communications, must be supported by mobile services? Qustodian certainly believes so, hence their growing relationship with Atletico Madrid. Because local is community – community is local. But this truth does not serve the needs of national media players.

So how on earth do media companies believe they can fund their business models out of the institutional failure of paid for push advertising? The article quotes Pat Loughrey, former BBC director of nations and regions, says: “It’s arse about face. It would be a pity and perverse if what is created a just another metropolitan-dominated TV service, in which the UK is only viewed through national perspective and serving national advertisers.”

Related articles

• Channel 6 bidders explain why Local TV will work (newstatesman.com)
• Two more join bidders for national TV channel (guardian.co.uk)
• DMGT chief voices doubts over Jeremy Hunt’s local TV plans (guardian.co.uk)
• Dyke outlines plan for 80 local TV stations in UK (newstatesman.com)
• How impartial is Jeremy Hunt? (newstatesman.com)
• Ofcom delivers local TV report to Department for Culture, Media and Sport (blogs.journalism.co.uk)

It also has a very interesting revenue model.

Fernando Sánchez-Terán, Director General of Qustodian said: “We are very pleased with our launch results, especially with the number of users. Whilst these users were unsure at first, after trying the service the vast majority described Qustodian as verygood and very innovative. In fact, 95% of them would recommend our service to their friends presenting it primarily as a form of advertising for products and services that they would like.” He added:

Advertisers have equally welcomed the arrival of Qustodian to the extent that somehave used it as the reason to start to invest in mobile marketing. They particularly value this new medium for its rich formats (images, videos, links, coupons), user interaction (consumer feedback), detailed user segmentation and its focus in Return on Investment (RoI), with average message opening rate of around 70%.”

About Qustodian:
Qustodian is a new, independent digital media company focused on providing next generation mobile advertising and marketing solutions using the mobile internet to communicate with mobile phone users.

Its goal is to provide a mobile marketing and advertising service that puts the user in control of what they receive, when and how. Members are offered the opportunity to create and manage a digital profile of their preferences so that they receive the financial and commercial benefits of the use of this data. This is in contrast to many large corporations who are currently collecting this profile data from us for their own benefit. This approach not only benefits the user, but also the advertiser, as the advertiser knows that the user has agreed and wants to receive communications from them.

Qustodian was founded in 2009 by Spanish and British professionals from the telecoms and media industries, including experts in mobile marketing, social intelligence and technical innovation. In 2010, Inveready Seed Capital invested in Qustodian. Qustodian are currently located in London, Madrid and Barcelona.

More on mobile from SMLXL

Over a matter of days, the code was hacked and made open. As a consequence, (Inside the race to hack the Kinect)

The hackers’ success has unlocked what promises to be a revolution in robotics research. At robotics company Willow Garage in Palo Alto, California, researchers have bought around 20 Kinects. “We’re losing count,” says engineer Ken Conley. He and colleagues have shown that multiple Kinects can be combined without generating interference and are currently integrating the device into the company’s PR2 robot.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, engineer Philipp Robbel has already run a proof-of-concept experiment in which he used the Kinect to provide vision for a robot. He says the Kinect could one day help produce cheap robots that could scour disaster areas for victims.

All amazing stuff – of course the story questions orthodox issues around IP, the nature of value creation, innovation and entrepreneurship – what is shared or what be shared to kickstart innovation and what is not. Commonwealth in the networked society [3] Big Pharma

As this video shows Kinect controlling Windows 7

And body dysmorphic disorder

Body Dysmorphic Disorder from flight404 on Vimeo.

What has changed and what has not!

What has changed since 2007 when I wrote the first book (released in 2008) is that social technology has gone mainstream. As I was writing the first book, Twitter was in use by primarily among digital technology fans and those concerned with the intersection of society and technology: SXSW 2007 was one of the first really notable Twitter events that started to catch mainstream attention, still far in advance of the big uptick in member growth that happened in 2009. Similar story for Facebook: In mid-2007, with 50 million or so members globally, Facebook opened its API to developers, driving new social technology. In 2008 membership crossed 100 million and in 2010 it crossed 500 million.

I started writing the second book in early 2010 while working with 2020Media (Public Relations) in India. It became really clear that this next wave of social technology was truly global at a societal–and not just technology production–level. I saw people doing things with social technology in India, Asia and South America, where I work with video community startup Looppa, that were essentially identical to what was happening in Europe and North America. People were playing off of each other, sharing ideas and experiences to make more informed choices.

In this view, the big change is simply the “now mainstream” adoption of social technology, and as such the mainstream expectation that businesses are likewise participants on the social web, an expectation that is still only partly met in actual practice.

What inspires you and what leaves you feeling a bit glum?

What inspires me is the continued, frenzied growth in applications–across a very wide range is uses–that encourage the sharing of ideas, experiences, and information. In 1995, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, speaking at MIT for the 50th Anniversary of the publication of Dr. Vannevar Bush’s seminal Atlantic article “As We May Think,” remarked that the web should be “a sea of shared knowledge” wherein people could work together on the problems facing the world, and could do so in a context that encouraged “those who followed to accept, adopt or correct” these collaboratively developed solutions. Looking around today at the both the significant challenges and outright problems along with the incredible opportunities and boundless capabilities, the promise of social technology is truly inspiring.

That said, the majority of the social applications are still based on a fundamentally questionable assumption: If one amasses a sufficient audience whose attention can be systematically interrupted, those interruptions can be used to promote or sell goods and services. In other words, in the most cynical view of the social web it’s all about regaining control over the (global) “TV” audience for the purposes of advertising, a business model that is at the heart of the majority of social platforms and technology startups.

If you have a point of view why not leave a comment or question for Dave, or maybe tweet your question to Dave Evans @evansdave.

Here is the presentation that I gave.