1. The first personal mass media
2. The first always carried media
3. The first always on media
4. The first media with a built-in payment mechanism (Tomi’s posts)
5. The first media always present at the point of creative impulse
6. The first media where the audience can be accurately identified

I liked, This year, eBay expects U.S. consumers to buy roughly $1.5 billion worth of goods using its smartphone apps. and, NTT DoCoMo took control of the mobile-wallet market by buying a bank, and,

The excitement surrounding the mobile wallet’s potential is so fevered that in addition to carriers and credit-card networks, now banks, tech giants, and startups are all eager to lay claim to some part of this potentially huge new ecosystem. PayPal already lets users send money via text message, and Osama Bedier, its VP of mobile platforms and new ventures, envisions a service that stores gift cards and alerts customers when they’re near a merchant. This past summer, mobile startup Loopt launched its Loopt Star program, an über digital-rewards card for such brands as Starbucks and Gap. U.S. Bank is working with Infosys to move beyond a basic banking app: It’s developing a location-based “concierge” so smart (and potentially creepy) that it can offer a shampoo discount to shoppers browsing the hair-care aisle. As NFC tech proliferates, says Dominic Venturo, U.S. Bank’s chief innovation officer, “we’ll be able to make a business case for services that are even better.”

The Glittering Allure of the Mobile Society (download here)

Its well worth the read, bits that caught my eye,

Ginko Kobayashi, a London-based Japanese journalist who is author of the popular Japanese-language UK Media Watch blog says: “There’s been a battle going on in recent years between the traditional Japanese media, whose policies are decided by middle-aged men, and the Net media, dominated by people in their 20s and 30s. Net media—Ustream, Twitter and famous blogs—are changing the direction of debates in Japan, though not in a major way yet.”

Obviously members of the British Press and and Rupert Murdoch are also Japanese by the sounds of things, Rupes would love this sort of control…

Commenting on how new media technologies have impacted traditional mainstream Japanese media, Uesugi singled out Twitter, whose adoption by freelancers means that “(government) press conferences are effectively held online. As a result, at least the public has learned about the existence of the dreadful system known as the kisha club. The Internet has had a positive effect. I think the kisha club system will collapse within the next 10 years.”

(Here a link) to my thoughts on where I think newsbrands are heading and why.

Three moral hazards bedevil Japan’s mainstream media, Jimbo says: cross-ownership, under which the “Big Five” media groups—Yomiuri, Asahi, Mainichi, Nihon Keizai and Sankei—own or have stakes in dozens of TV stations, radio stations, newspapers and magazines; the kisha club system; and the resale price maintenance system, which allows newspaper companies to sell their products at prices higher than the market would normally dictate.

Such cozy arrangements ill serve the Japanese public, Jimbo believes. “In the past 50 years, there’s been no newcomer in the Japanese mass media industry. Back in the ’70s cable TV came along, satellite TV arrived in the ’90s, and now there’s the Internet, which is finally changing the shape of the media, slowly,” he says. “But in the past 50 years, the five conglomerates have dominated the market, and there’s been no newcomer. That shows how closed the market is, and how well protected they are.”

It all comes down to that millennial struggle of “power”, who has it and who wields it. It major organisations control the sphere of public debate about important topics they control society politically. As Franz Fanon said, “a people will only be free when they control their own communications”. As Karel van Wolferen, emeritus professor of comparative political and economic institutions at the University of Amsterdam describes the Japanese media, a “well-tuned single-voice choir”. Van Wolferen also observed,

“Since the large newspapers in Japan are really major authors of political reality—much more so than newspapers in any European country or the United States—because of the arrangements that they have with each other: the agreements about what to highlight, what to write about and what to cover up, that means that Japanese newspapers are going to be less important in determining political reality in Japan.”

These are the challenges of living in a networked society, that affect every society on this planet.

(Here is) the presentation I gave @ SXSW this year for some context.

And what is surprising is how few companies still today are not learning about how they could be more commercially successful by using mobile communications. A lot of this as to do with education, and also how companies frame the world, and who ‘owns’ mobile communications in the organisation.

VRM and identity protection on mobile: a case history

So this is the basis of my presentation:

Designing business success through mobile marketing engagement

Welcome to Big We – that is 4.6 billion people that have a mobile device, a number that surpasses TV sets and the fixed internet, by a country mile. And 5 billion people will be connected with a mobile device by 2012. We are inevitably moving towards the Mobile Society, where our mobile devices become the remote control for our daily lives. Because any communications technology that allows us to better connect, communicate, share knowledge and information, and get stuff done will be widely adopted – which it is.

However, each medium of communication is different – So we need to understand the language of the mobile society, we need to understand, what works and what does not, we need to understand the role of how dynamic data enables much of what will drive the success of the mobile society. We need to comprehend that the “old furniture” of advertising – “Push” and “display” are completely inappropriate in a communication medium where – in a “Pull economy”, it is the quality of the conversation that counts, where; applications, search, and services, that are timely, relevant and contextual are the order of the day. This is what Mobile Marketing Engagement is all about.

So whether it is a simple SMS services that is used by a retailer to shift inventory, of how multiple data flows and social interaction drives commerce there is something I think you will find of relevance to your business.  I have tailored my presentation for all enterprise – so this is not just how big companies use mobile communications this is also geared towards how any enterprise can become more successful by integrating mobile communications into their business strategy.

SMLXL on mobile and enterprise

Around the world from the most basic SMS services, to the most sophisticated concepts requiring smart phones and converged media platforms/technologies, companies and people are transforming our society.

Last week Peggy Anne-Salz of MSearch Groove – interviewed me on what I thought were some of the key issues that companies need to address to get, as Baloo would say, “with the beat”.

So thank you Peggy, I very much enjoyed our conversation that I hope your listeners will also benefit from.

In what could be a defining milestone in Indian entrepreneurial development domain – GrowVC, the ‘Virtual Silicon Valley’ software platform and world’s first-ever ‘Crowd-Funding’ and interaction platform for startups announced the launch of a local funding network in India, in association with Springboard Ventures – an ensemble of experts dedicated to promoting start-ups. Based around the same model as the existing global funding network Grow VC offers, the Indian local funding network will be the first of many “local” networks the company looks to launch within its wider global network in the coming months. Grow VC’s community platform for entrepreneurs who are looking to grow their early stage startups through the “crowd-funding” has already gathered considerable interest with hundreds of new sign-ups each month and active participation of  investors, startup service providers, advisors and entrepreneurs within the online community. Satish Kataria – Managing Director at Springboard Ventures, is quoted as saying,

It would be the first ever single platform to bring together the various entities which revolve around the creation and growth of start-ups while allowing them all to interact and work together with each-other. Besides uniting angel investors and entrepreneurs, this platform offers a first-time opportunity to various experts and consultancies to now come forward and offer their services to start-up community through innovations such as ‘Service Investments’.

More on GrowVC (here)

Like nature, we are diverse

It was Noam Chomsky in the 60′s that developed a view that we (humanity) was programmed with a universal language DNA. But what if the very diversity of languages is the key to understanding human communications? This is a question asked by Christine Kenneally. Linguists Nicholas Evans and Stephen Levinson, who argue that languages do not share a common set of rules. And that, this extraordinary range of diversity is a defining feature of human communication.

There are no universal traits, only tendencies says Evans and Levinson. Kenneally writes,

Focusing on language diversity also highlights the tragedy of language extinction. In the old model, all languages are merely variations on the same underlying theme. In the new model, however, each of the worlds 7000 languages contains its own unique clues to some of the mysteries of human existence… in the diversity of the worlds languages we find facts about ancient human history, the path of languages through time, and deep knowledge of the planet.

And what does that mean, from a media and or culture perspective? Well – if we insist on creating a monoculture, don’t we destroy the thing that makes us what we are? Henry Jenkins writing in Joshua Green and Jean Burgess book YouTube makes the observation that, one of the reasons YouTube is so universally successful is that, “we” were ready for YouTube, a means by which we can return to our participatory roots, and, explore and express our unique diversity, which is also part of our identity, perhaps its no accident we live in an age defined by social story telling, culture making, and individual entrepreneurship?

Jane Jacobs argued in The Nature of Economies, that to accept the truth that human nature exists wholly in nature, is difficult for example for economists, industrialists, or politicians – they preferring to believe that human capability, our ability to reason and create things; culture, industry, complex government etc., in ways that the rest of the natural world cannot, seduces us to see ourselves as different to nature, falsely superior.

Today our mutual interests are more aligned, as I have come to recognised, or did quite a while ago, that it seems that as we evolve into a world more joined and connected up, people and companies seemed like they are increasingly doubled parked in parallel universes. For me, I recognised this 6+ years ago, doing work for a whole list of bluechip clients who invited SMLXL in to innovate for them, yet they struggled or failed completely in the end to execute – because organisationally they could not cope with what we had designed for them – compelling and creative communications strategies, that were built around the principles of Engagement, and the brand as a transmedia story.

As I like to say, it is only when companies start to hemorrhage cash, that they start to pay attention. Although there is still a great deal of parallel parking going on, companies are also in what is described as transition trauma. Which means, they know there world is changing, but are now traumatised as to what to do about it.

Well you could start by reading Dr. Deisers new book Designing the Smart Organisation. Roland explores how large-scale corporations are using the power of dynamic corporate learning approaches to drive innovation, enhance cultural values, master post-merger integration, transform business models, enhance leadership culture, build technological expertise, foster strategic change processes, and ultimately increase bottom line results.

The blurb says, for any company that wants to compete in the 21^st century, Designing the Smart Organization offers inspiring perspectives for integrating corporate learning as a core business practice that will create sustainable strategic and organizational capabilities. I have read the book, and I am not doing this as a favour to Roland, I am suggesting that the case studies are so good, and the book so well written, anyone scratching their head about the organisational challenges they face right now would do far worse than spend some time ingesting what Roland has to say.

He writes,

The imperative to innovate and reinvent oneself in these changing contexts has become ubiquitous, and permanent. The capability to learn is not just nice to have; it has become a key factor for survival – not only for people, but for organisations, industries, and our global society.

and he makes this telling point,

Organisations need to learn to let go of operational control of non-strategic activities and learn to act successfully in networks. Giving up control is a major challenge, one that has little to do with teaching knowledge or skills but with developing the social and political skills to orchestrate a companies stakeholder universe.

The traditional leadership model of command and control works fine within the boundary of each organisation of the network, but hierarchical power does not work between the memners of a network that co-creates. The interplay between the players needs horizontal coordination and adjustment processes, and these follow the logic of leading without formal power.