Mike Butcher - mbites

I would have to concur with Marshall Kirkpatrick. I also now use Twitter as a working tool, not just for 'status upates' (which I don't really do any more unless I can say something vaguely informative or funny). I use it to interrogate and interact with my work and social contacts. It's now one big ongoing conversation which can help me in my work, and especially in writing stories. I also was one of those who broke the story about Google buying Jaiku, and I got that because of seeing a Twitter post from a contact. As Marshall says:

People laugh at Twitter, and they can go ahead and laugh for all I care, but I'm here to tell you that it can be invaluable. Aside from the personal connectedness and relationship maintenance it's good for, let's be honest - it's paying my rent. (Thanks Twitter!) I don't mean they've hired me as a consultant, though I would love that, I mean Twitter is great for news discovery.

When Twitter started out it seemed like a cool new web application to update your 'status' (what you are up to) for friends and, well, the world in general. Like Facebook status updates, but out on the Wild Web. But when people started having conversations via their Twitter status updates using the "@" symbol (e.g. "@mike Yeah, I thought that")I was initially quite annoyed. I even direct-messaged some people to tell them to stop it! Go get a chat room! This was not the proper use of Twitter, I told them.

How wrong I was.

It quickly became apparent that this was turning into the best use of Twitter of all. Not for long, winding conversations you might have on instant messaging, but short, to the point wise-cracks between people interspersed with a little status update here, a small observation on life there. Twitter was no longer about 'status' or 'what are you doing'. It was about conversation, 'what are you thinking', 'what are we talking about'.

The key difference is that people who say "take this conversation over into IM" don't get it. IM can't do what Twitter does. You can't instant message into "the cloud". With Twitter you can. You can shout or whisper whatever you want to say out into the ether and anyone online can hear you. And anyone following you, even if you don;t follow them, can reply - then you may well become connected.

Of course, the problem comes when people abuse this. They Twitter constantly. The worst are those who Twitter their status all the time (making tea, reading paper etc). According to one statistics site I saw, I Twitter roughly every 2 hours. Too much for a status update but about right for an ongoing conversation.

Status updates - unless they are funny - now seem irrelevant and boring. Status updates are dead for me. It's all about conversation now. I'm on Twitter here.

Now for all networks it seems...

Julian Bond at Voidstar has a great post on routing all your and your friend's Status updates from Facebook to Twitter using Mario Menti's excellent TwitterFeed service. Now, here's my question. Is this not completely insane? Keeping up with Twitter feeds is hard enough. Adding Facebook status updates would hasten my "Twitter Bankruptcy". At least with Twitter most people tend to keep in the back of their head that at least some of their key followers get Tweets sent direct to their mobiles via SMS. That means Twitter posts - which are also limited to 140 characters - tend to be much more concise than Facebook status updates, which can be even more throwaway that Tweets, if that doesn't sound like an impossibility...

To illustrate, here's is an example of my friends' facebook status updates this morning:

XXXX XXXX is swapping one kind of chaos for another.

one minute ago

XXXX XXXX is pleased that there is finally some sunshine!

7 minutes ago

XXXX XXXX is back once more like the renegade master.

11 minutes ago

XXXX XXXX is in the other only caff on the A4.

30 minutes ago

XXXX XXXX is hoping the weather at 5am this morning holdup for the rest of the week for the folks back home.

44 minutes ago

XXXX XXXX is prodding Drupal with a sensitive implement.

49 minutes ago

XXXX XXXX is in the office.

50 minutes ago

XXXX XXXX is pleased to see that Mike Reid's death is getting billed above Ingmar Bergman's on BBC Online. That will probably change. Right? Runaround!

56 minutes ago

XXXX XXXX is back in the office.

57 minutes ago

XXXX XXXX is in the office.

about an hour ago

What I call 'conversational status' is a great way of just shooting the breeze, but the added element of mobile changes the character of the conversation to be pithier and often far more relevant to location.

Which reminds me of how one Twitter friend of mine recently said he was 'pruning his Twitter friends' down to just those in London. His Twitter conversation wouldn't make any sense otherwise...

I never thought I'd see the day, but the Police are getting into spamming videos from their mobiles.

West Yorkshire Police has launched 999tv.org showcasing video features and advice from a number of the region's police officers, as well as the West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service.

The first video shows how Police are using mobile phones to literally spam any Bluetooth device in the vicinity with a "Crime Prevention Advice" video. It's like something out of Minority Report.

Stop me if I'm wrong but the average person is going to think "Hell, I'm being spammed with a virus onto my mobile!" and immediately delete the thing, thus negating any positive effect of this initiative.

Piece this together from my Twitter feed. The storm clouds of weather and terrorism combined.... :

15:31
technokitten getting very bored of the rain. Maybe a cup of tea will help!

16:02
Suw @drewb: I'm in N7, but there was just the one rumble. Wondering if we'll have more.

16:02
drewb Heathrow closed, all flights cancelled! All over the TV. A package has been found apparently. Got to be a big package to cancel all flights

16:21
Thayer Watching the very large fluffy and yet ominous clouds coming towards London. Woooo storm tastic!

16:33
Suw Dammit. Roofers now not coming til 8am tomorrow morning. They better bloody turn up!

16:51
Thayer Check out the storm clouds gathering over West to East London, taken from the Chinwag Roof Terrace http://www.flickr.com/photos/thayer18/

17:08
Thayer Lol, thanks for all the cloud suggestions Tweets I think the alien spacecraft wins Dog with long nose a close second! *giggle*

17:18
Suw Thunder and lightening on TV at Wimbledon; thunder outside. Funny how exciting it is. I mean, it's just weather!

17:40
drewb Watching from 22nd floor as 'planes fly through the lightning in central london. It's like night has fallen

18:13
Cybersoc Heading north from kings cross thameslink on fcc to st. albans, luton, beds? no u aren't. closed...

18:15
drewb @cybersoc: Kings Cross station going north west is closed? grt. bet Paddington's crazy again

18:41
bowbrick Rainbow in the spray right next to my car on the M25!

18:47
bowbrick A triple rainbow!

19:33
Suw ooh, a rainbow! pretty!!

19:48
Cybersoc On a bus. Not supposed to be on a bus. In Hatfield. Not meant to be there either.

You know you are reading someone (Daring Fireball) who really knows their stuff about Macs when they review the iPhone thus:

User Interface: The high resolution screen is gorgeous. Helvetica has never, ever looked so good on screen. Everything is very fast, very responsive. When you drag something – whether it’s the slider button to unlock the phone, a zoomed-in photograph, or a web page – the drag keeps up with your finger. I haven’t found a single element of the iPhone UI that doesn’t feel super-snappy. The whole thing feels very realistic.
Update: Real-time dragging is such a priority that if the iPhone can’t keep up and render what you’re dragging in real-time, it won’t even try, and you get a checkerboard pattern reminiscent of a transparent Photoshop later until it catches up (typically, an instant later). I.e. iPhone prioritizes drag animation over the rendering of the contents; feel over appearance.

Just an hour or so before US stores opened their doors to the iPhone horde, readying themselves to buy a slow, 2G mobile phone, here in the UK we were slowly learning that the speedy 3G version is about to be announced and will arrive in Europe first. Smug? Me?

(First published: New Media Age, 17.05.07)

I got three points on my driving license because of Twitter. What can I say? I was driving. There was a speed camera. My phone started buzzing with the latest frenzied Twitters from the launch of the Apple iPhone. What could be my defence? "My Twitter feed made me speed, M'Lud"

Blogging never landed me in trouble with the law. So why has this new Web 2.0 service suddenly got everyone talking (and twittering) about Twitter?

First the basics. Twitter asks you to post "what you are doing" in 140 characters or less from either the site, instant message or mobile SMS and then it re-routes the "tweet" to whoever has subscribed to you. While you can limit this to just friends you know, most Twitterers make their tweets public. These range from the inane ("having a sandwich") to the significant ("having a baby"). But the resulting deluge of often personal conversations held in public has even lead to the coining of a new term: "microblogging". Now celebrities and even 2008 US presidential election candidate John Edwards has a Twitter page.

Twitter is apparently addictive. Drew Benvie, an early Twitter adopter and account director with Lewis PR, says: "In my first week using Twitter I was not able to walk in a straight line or make 20 yards without hitting a lamp post. I was hooked to my mobile." His blogging social network had become cumbersome, "but Twitter had sparked it to life."

He believes Twitter has "the potential to change the way consumers interact with one another through social networks," with big implications for digital marketers. He thinks Twitter will take off in the UK because we're SMS addicts and its much easier and faster than blogging.

Tom Hume, head of mobile applications developer Future Platforms, also likes Twitter's minimalism: "It just seems to do one thing well". Hume thinks Twitter is demonstrating the value of "expressive presence", a concept which is likely to last longer than Twitter itself and is rapidly being added to the business plans of social media sites the world over.

Of course, there are Titter sceptics. Alfie Dennan, co-founder of MoblogUK says: "I've found it annoying and intrusive to instant messenger and also it's annoying on email. The constant updates on it are complete rubbish."

But despite those put off by the inanity of most Twitter posts, the concept has spread like wildfire. Social network Facebook recently upgraded its 'status' updates to do a similar thing to Twitter and now Bebo has launched a similar feature. SMS functionality for both sites can not be far off. The Europe-wide Jaiku.com, based in Helsinki, has a similar service to Twitter which is heavily mobile oriented. Germany, for one, has gone literally mad for Twitter, with at last count five startups copying Twitter's business model. Some even now say Skype could incorporate such a service.

But Twitter is also experiencing growing pains. Julian Bond, a veteran UK social web application developer with Ecademy.com, says Twitter is having trouble deal with its growth, and: "Twitter is really pretty nasty for replies, dialogues and group conversations. It's been quite laughable watching people try to use the "@name" convention to kludge round this."

Twitter will also need to make money out of all this messaging at some point. According to eBiquity Research Group at the University of Maryland, there are on average over 40,000 public tweets each hour, many of them not just Instant messages SMS which needs to be paid for. Currently it is funded by its Obvious.com, owned by the wealthy founder of Blogger.com, Evan Williams. So will Twitter join the line of startups knocking on Google's door waiting to be bought?

Biz Stone, an engineer at Obvious, and a co-founder of Twitter is nonchalant. "We're very happy with this growth" he says. "SMS is one way that messages are sent and received via Twitter - other ways include over the web and using IM. Paying SMS fees is part of what we consider the cost of running this business."

Stone says they are "considering options" on how to create revenues. For now the focus is is on growth and new features. When revenue model arrives it'll be implemented with "a strong regard for what our users want," he says.

Observers in the mobile advertising space are also wondering where Twitter will head. Richard Marshall, CEO of Rapid Mobile, which develops a mobile advertising platform, suggests that a random Twitter post about coffee "Sponsored by Starbucks" might be possible, but could well have a negative impact for the brand. He suggests that some brands will - unwisely - start to to pretend to be users and post in product related Twitters anonymously, known as 'Astroturfing' on the web.

Amelia Torode, head of digital strategy at VCCP, says "serving specific ads like gmail" might be a possible route, but sponsorship might be another route, where "brands *give* you free twitters for a day. Friday twitters could be brought to you in association with Coca Cola for example."

Robin Grant, emerging media specialist at agency CMW Interactive wonders if "at this early stage, how marketers can sensibly exploit this highly personal new medium, aside from cheekily using Twitter's API as a free SMS gateway."

And perhaps this is a hint of what the future holds. Stone says it is essentially a "device agnostic message routing system. Mobile phones, API clients, IM, and the Web are all devices in the eyes of Twitter." Steve Bowbrick, new media veteran and Twitter afficionado says that's a major factor: "People are going to build businesses on top of it, just as they're doing now on top of Google and other web 2.0 businesses."

Certainly after Twitter released a simple open API, a plethora of applications have appeared. Twittervision.com superimposes public Twitters onto a Google map. Twitterholic.com is a site which tracks the popularity of Twitterers. TwitterVerse displays shows what Twitterers are doing today. TwitterBuzz shows what they are linking to. The list of applications is booming.

This innovation is already extending to marketing offers. "Woot.com on Twitter in the US sends people relevant deals they've opted in to receive, and there's no reason eBay couldn't do the same," says Andy Wasef, strategist with Mediaedge:cia's mec:interaction division. "There's also the location-based elements... By sharing their location to people based on GPS, targeted opt-in messages could be supplied to them."

He thinks that if Twitter turns out to be more than "another digital fad... [then] there'll be quite a few marketers looking at how they can utilise it. A lot of the heavy Twitter users are influencers and opt-in to receive messages relevant to them."

In the meantime, most observers are simply sitting back and wondering at both the inane and the sometimes beguiling public Twittering going on. And the points on my license? Put it this way, I've served my time. Now, where was that Twitter feed...

• A Brief history of Twitter

Twitter, Inc. was born out of the offices of Obvious in March of 2006, a 10-person start-up in San Francisco called Obvious lead by Evan Williams, the well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur who in the 1990s co-founder helped build Blogger.

How it works:

Twitter is a little like a MySpace-style community. You register your profile, but as well as posting your updates on the site, you add your instant messaging and mobile phone details. Twitter essentially asks that you post "what you are doing" in 140 characters or less. Your Twitter page includes everything posted by you and your conversations with your Twitter friends. Twitter is mainly a one-to-many medium. Although you can message people directly, most rarely do.

Key features:

You can update you Twitter page from the site itself, IM or SMS, or via a number of third party applications and widgets. Once registered you can follow anyone's public tweets an have these sent to your prefered device. Plenty of news services now offer Twitter feeds, including the BBC and Al Jazeera News, though some more officially than others. It's also possible to "subscribe" to service updates about the tube lines in London.

Other leading services offering similar functions

Bebo and Facebook were among the first social networks to allow people to 'microblog' their 'current status'. Although Twitter is available almost globally, Germany seems to have taken it to heart as there are several clones including Frazr.com, Wamadu, Faybl, 1you, Sloggen, and Partnr.de. There are no Twitter clones in the UK, so far.

I'm currently writing an article about Twitter for New Media Age magazine. Given how much coverage they have had so far it feels a little daunting and I'm not sure I'll uncover much that's new (although I'll try, of course!). If you feel you are in a position to contribute to this, perhaps by commenting or passing me any inside information, then email me. For the record, I protect my sources (and have been for about 19 years now).

Today's FT article estimates Twitter is sending - conservatively - 70,000 text messages a day across its service. If, as Ed French commented on this blog, each text costs a minimum of 1p to send, Twitter is burning through 700 quid a day or $1,379.57, or $38,627.96 a month. It could in fact be three times as much if they are using a more robust SMS gateway service which costs more like 3p a text, or $115,883.88. All this for (apparently) no return since there is no advertising on the messages, none on the web pages (as far as I remember, since today the service is down because of all the media attention it's getting) and no subscription business model either. As I said before, Twitter is really onto something here, especially the API aspect, but now I'm wondering if this isn't just starting to smell like a dotcom era story. The one thing in their favour right now is great mojo and press, and an ability to capture the community. They just need to work out what to do next - the hard bit. Or maybe they just sell it for squillions and someone else has to...

Twitter is a great service. Simple to set up. Easy to use. It's based on SMS messaging, which is dead simple. But it's a printing press for bores who tell you they are eating lunch. That's the bad news. The good news is that it's one of the first SMS systems with an API which creative programmers can put to good use. Thus, we have BBC Tech updates, Tube line Twitters, you name it. Now we even have Twitter Maps and Twitter vision. Great stuff. And hey, if you don't like all the Twittering you can always turn it off, right? Personally I just re-route the 'lunch eaters' to a dedicated RSS reader like Twitterific and keep the more interesting Twitterers on my mobile. But Twitter is now having to pay to send out millions of SMS text messages a day on an almost global basis. They are getting no revenue from this, indeed it is a massive cost (unless I'm missing something?). So Twitter is going to have to find a way of making this work, or they are Twitter Toast.

Can't wait the two years (that's the latest estimate for Europe) for your Apple iPhone? Make one yourself out of cardboard and just slot your existing phone into it. Here is a PDF link to the template. Simple really.

It looks like Koopa - a punk trio which a mate of mine has been involved with - have now proved that real punk (the kind that really does screw the establishment) is not dead. From Reuters:

Koopa is the first unsigned band to land a top 40 single -- "Blag, Steal & Borrow" -- that is available only by downloading it on the Internet. The breakthrough followed changes to the chart this month that mean no physical version of a record is required for the track to qualify.

After reading a great deal about the iPhone in the last couple of days, I'd say among the best analysis has to be from Michael Mace. His analysis shows that Apple could face death outside of the US. Ironic when Europe and Asia are the real mobile markets they should have aimed at, not the 'less dropped calls than other networks' market of the US:

This design may not go over as well in Europe and Asia as it will in the US. In the US it's easy for Steve to give a speech saying how stupid it is to type using a phone keypad. In Europe and parts of Asia, a lot of phone users are very used to doing it for SMS, and no matter how stupid Steve tells them they are, they kind of like doing it. I think they may not be happy trading in their physical keypad for a screen where they can't feel the keys. That forces them to look at the screen when they type. For these people, Apple's product is like trying to get touch typists to use a keyboard that's just a flat glass surface without moving keys. With the single exception of the sets on Star Trek, this has never been accepted by anyone because the ergonomics are bad. I think Apple is at risk when it tries to change the established habits of users.

Amid all the hoopla about the Apple iPhone there are few things that occur to me:

- How will women with long fingernails - or anyone for that matter - deal with the touchscreen-only interface?

- I think it's ability to carry third party widgets puts the whole widget space into a new light. Nokia has been developing it's own "Widsets", but Apple now has the opportunity to mainstream widgets.

- Handelaar calls it "like a Nokia 770 but ponced up and twice the price"

- EDGE (qualcomm US-only 3g) chips and Cell-based location (not available in Europe). Not good.

The long-rumoured Apple iPhone launches with Cingular in the US available February. Here are the features in no particular order: (Gleaned from live blogs by TUAW, Paidcontent, Crunchgear, Engadget)

The good: Where do I start? It's an amazing device.
The bad: Only one: Not 3G yet.

See some pix!

- Actually called iPhone afterall!
- Touch screen, 2 megapixel camera, will sync with iTunes
- It swaps between normal and landscape modes
- Displays voicemails in a list
- SMS texting has multiple sessions, on-screen qwerty keyboard, and the message UI looks like iChat
- Call merging
- Quad-band GSM+EDGE phone.
- Caller ID
- Ringtones
- Plays downloaded TV shows
- "Use your finger to unlock the phone via 'gestures'
- 3.5" screen
- 160 ppi screen
- One button on the front. "Home".
- Really thin, thinner than any smart phone. 11.6mm.
- Ring/silent and volume controls on the side.
- 2MP camera on the back.
- 3.5mm headseat jack
- SIM card for GSM
- extra speakers on bottom
- built in Mic
- Proximity sensor which turns off the display and touch sensor to save power when making calles
- Senses when you switch from portrait to landscape
- Syncs with iTunes just like the iPod
- Syncs with notes, bookmarks, email accounts, movies, photos, audio books and calendars
- Runs OS X
- No Stylus - you use your finger/hand
- Software ignores unintended touches
- WiFi and Bluetooth 2.0
- Scroll into and out of pics
- Rich HTML eMail. Any IMAP or POP e-mail service.
- Safari web browser on the phone
- WiFi + EDGE networking will autodetect Wifi
- Free Yahoo!push IMAP email to iPhone customers
- Read The New York Times site like a real newspaper buy 'zooming in' on what you want to read
- Tabbed browsing

And the official version:

Screen size 3.5 inches
Screen resolution 320 by 480 at 160 ppi
Input method Multi-touch
Operating system OS X
Storage 4GB or 8GB
GSM Quad-band (MHz: 850, 900, 1800, 1900)
Wireless data Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) + EDGE + Bluetooth 2.0
Camera 2.0 megapixels
Battery
* Up to 5 hours Talk / Video / Browsing
* Up to 16 hours Audio playback
Dimensions 4.5 x 2.4 x 0.46 inches / 115 x 61 x 11.6mm
Weight 4.8 ounces / 135 grams

Next week I'm off to Tokyo, where I'll be dunking my head into all things mobile, electronic and (I daresay) visiting the famed Akihabara area, famed for it's geeky fascination with technology.

One thing that struck me while I was in Los Angles last week was that the people I met kept saying the same thing: media, entertainment and technology are converging (yes, THAT word) on Los Angeles. The simple fact that the biggest music and Hollywood players are there, and the act that it is an hour's plane ride from Silicon Valley, and an hour's drive from San Diego (where the many of the big mobile firms are) means LA is ideally placed to become the physical manifestation of “convergence”.

Published in New Media Age 15.06.06: Gustav Söderström is sitting in a hotel bar in Stockholm looking at the profile of a 23-year-old woman. This isn't some seedy chatroom on his laptop, though. He's taking part in a social experience entirely on his mobile phone, updating live as he talks and allowing him to instant message his friends and contacts, writes Mike Butcher

Söderström is a founder of Kenet Works, a mobile application developer in Sweden that has come up with an impressive Java-based application which works alongside a MySpace-style community in Sweden called Playahead.

Playahead is one of a number of online social networking sites in Scandinavia, many of which pre-date MySpace, the noted US community that has become a byword for online networking. Playahead has been a hit among the 18-24-year-old demographic, reaching over 1m members.

Part of the success of these online communities has been down to their use of mobile social software, dubbed 'MoSoSo'. The mobile application for Playahead's community lets you to do almost everything you can on a PC. It's even 'presence aware', letting your friends see if you're online.

The capability of the service is now allowing for content creation by members. "A more general trend right now is user-created content sites, where users upload photos and videos of themselves," says Söderström. He thinks user-generated content on mobile has a lot of potential.

Closed community

It's this desire among the young to network, chat and create content that has seen sites like MySpace grab headlines in the last year. The most popular of the social networking sites in the US, MySpace has over 67m members, with about 250,000 joining every day. According to ComScore Media Metrix, it accounts for 12% of US online advertising.

In February, MySpace announced a deal with US MVNO start-up Helio to offer rich mobile access to the MySpace community from Helio phones, including mobile blogging. Now MySpace, Bebo and Faceparty are all planning mobile services in the UK (NMA 01.06.06).

Alfie Denan, co-founder of Moblog UK, says, "There's real authenticity and intimacy in this." Moblog works with bands like The Automatic to allow them to moblog photos of their touring exploits as well as fans to join in, creating buzz.

But creating a branding effect on the mobile screen is a new world. Even Denan admits it's hard to create community feeling on mobile.

One of the few case studies in marketing to mobile communities has been Absolut Vodka's partnership with Dodgeball.com, which uses SMS and MMS messaging to allow users to connect with friends at nightspots in US cities. In the summer of 2004, Absolut sent opted-in subscribers a message asking them to send in their location to get information about the closest place where they could enjoy outdoor drinks.

Dodgeball was bought by Google in May 2005, but the marketing model it pioneered is still very much in its infancy. Location-based services have been largely unsuccessful for mobile operators, but it's location-relevant advertising that's making the mobile industry and marketers sit up and take notice. At this year's CTIA conference, the buzz was about the $20 to $50 (£11 to £27) CPM being touted for mobile advertising.

This is also the view of Justin Davies, founder of Ninety Ten, a London-based mobile consultancy that has launched BuddyPing. Text your location to BuddyPing and it will text you back with the location of your friends (if they're BuddyPing members), what they're doing and events in the vicinity. It also has a Java client that runs on most phones and allows members to instant message each other. So far it has 3,000 users.

"The business model for BuddyPing is to provide brand affinity," says Davies. "We can use location information to pick up an ad or sponsor message that's relevant to a person there and then." This could include offering discounts to declared gadget fans close to an electronics shop.

But to be successful, mobile location-based advertising requires a critical mass of users, something which, Davies says, can't be achieved without the draw of keeping in touch with relevant local events and people.

Andrew Scott, founder and CEO of Playtxt, agrees. "Mobile marketing is about to enter its maturing period. We're on the cusp of major brands embracing mobile," he says. At three years old, Playtxt is one of the UK's oldest mobile communities. It plans to relaunch in July with targeted opt-in location-based advertising.

"Brands are only interested it you can get a critical mass of users. So our model is like Google AdWords but linked to location," says Scott.

While social networking based on location is the idea behind BuddyPing and Playtxt, gaming perhaps holds the most potential for marketing.

Last year Future Platforms built a mobile Java-based Sudoku game for Puzzler Media that allowed users to register their scores in a league. "We thought we'd get maybe 5% of people reporting their score," says founder Tom Hume. In fact, a massive 40% of players entered their scores. "There's a latent demand for community among people doing mobile gaming already," he adds.

Congesting charges

One thing remains in the way of real mobile social communities developing, however: data charges. Fear of being hit by unknown bills for using WAP sites or Java portals is clearly holding back the development of communities.

One way around this would be for brands to pick up the costs on behalf of customers. Indeed, Masterfoods sweets brand Skittles is already sponsoring a BuddyPing sub-site (buddyping.com/ skittles), offering users a free BuddyPing account under the 'Skittles Big Summer' promotion.

Brand sponsorship of mobile communities isn't going to be a golden bullet, however, says Helen Keegan, a mobile marketer who runs BeepMarketing. "It's not about the channel, it's about the community and user experience," she says. "It will probably be a blend of mobile, Web and offline events designed to build these communities that will be key to their success."

For now, mobile communities look likely to remain stymied by data charges and even the simple step of getting users to use a service. But it remains an area where brands could benefit by meeting consumers literally where they stand.

Published in New Media Age 15.06.06

I'd like to take a moment to say something about the slow destruction of closed portals and the future of identity.

We've come a long way. In the very early days of the Internet media owners felt they had to be a one-stop shop to everything online. Time Inc. was one of those and it launched Pathfinder.com in the mid-90s to do just that.

Kenetworks is a fantastic little mobile development agency in Stockholm who excited me about the potential for mobile to drive communities, and therefore communities to drive brands. Meeting Gustav Söderström in the bar of the Lydmar Hotel was great fun and he took me through, step by step, the service they have come up, which currently runs on Playahead, a huge youth community site in Sweden. There is a great Flash presentation which keeps it simple too.

I'm developing an event for New Media Knowledge on the new area of IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) on 25th May. I'll be looking for speakers, participants, delegates and sponsors, so get in touch if you fall into any of those categories.

This week Mbites.com hosted its latest "Bitecast", featuring two guests: Alfie Dennen (left), co-founder of Moblog UK and Chris Skinner (right), co-founder of Podcast User Magazine.

Download the MP3 file here (approx 19MB, 20 minutes long) or subscribe to the podcast feed and download it automatically into your favourite podcasting software and/or mobile media player device.

Microsoft's Origami is a joke. Does Gates really think we are going to walk around with this VAST device, as if it were a mobile? Check out the advert. Check out the guy gaming on the device on a tube station. How long would it take him to get mugged? I'd say about 10 mins in some stations in London. It's bad enough with mobiles. As the BIMA event (note: PDF) I spoke at this evening pointed out, at least the iPod is a discrete device - even more discrete if you dump the tell-tale white ear buds. The PSP certainly isn't. Microsoft's Origami device will be like going back to the 80s - huge bricks to carry around. It might as well be a laptop - and that's hardly revolutionary.

Mooky is a not quicktime downloadable magazine which you can subscribe to on iTunes. It's made-for-the-iPod video content which, I think, has a lot of potential. Professionally done, it and probably most appeals to a youthful, iPod owning audience - although I think the idea would work for others markets as well. Why not get a video podcast from CNBC, for instance? (They do audio ones right now). This is an area I see the iPod competing more and more with mobiles - because mobiles just don't sync with broadband content via the PC because most handset makers (make that all) haven't caught onto RSS yet.

Cary Marsh, Mydeo.com

Paul Munford, Monty's Mobile Gaming Outlook

This week Mbites.com brought together Cary Marsh, co-founder of consumer streaming video start-up Mydeo.com and Paul Munford, editor of must-read weekly mobile industry newsletter Monty's Mobile Gaming Outlook, for the first in a weekly series of podcasts.

Hosted at the cool London private members club, Adam Street, the podcast covered recent events at 3GSM, the global mobile conference and whether we really think the current hype about mobile video "has legs". Download the MP3 file here (approx 16MB, 15 minutes long).

Returning from the 3GSM Congress in Barcelona, I couldn't help wondering if all the hype was really missing something important - why we love SMS.

So let's review that hype.

Basically the "Mobile World" thinks it's going to move towards a totally Internet-based future, where every phone is IP-enabled and we all roam around, using voice and data on the move. A vast new world of video and music downloads will open up to us. Oh yes.

Check out MocoNews for my blog coverage of 3GSM.

The Inquirer is reporting on some Strand Consulting research which says:

While many players are focusing on the growth markets like India, Brazil, China, Pakistan and Bangladesh - countries where cheap handsets and SIM cards will attract millions of new customers - that's not the interesting bit, Strand says.

The real challenges are markets like Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Austria, Switzerland and Germany, where mobile prices are plummeting at the same time as the operators are investing in the launch of 3G.