Killer application for 3G discovered. Media firms queue here.

"Anyone in the media industries, or running an internet service - needs to know... if you are not on mobile, you won't be relevant soon... Any service, product, company, brand or entity needs a mobile phone based digital community presence."
Tomi T Ahonen

SMS has been the killer application of 2G mobile. It was only ever added as an after-thought so that you could be sent an alert when you got a voice mail. Now it's the biggest single data transfer process in the world. There are almost twice as many active users as there are of the internet. And it makes huge amounts of dosh.
So the challenge for experts in the 3G field has been finding the same surprise killer application lurking in what 3G can do/make available.
Tomi T Ahonen has been seeking it with the best brains in the field for years.
And now he thinks he's found it.

READ THE WHOLE THING HERE on Communities Dominate Brands (see recommended blogs).

It's a response to questions raised by CDB regulars (myself included) following on from Tomi's report on the staggering scale of revenues now being earned in Social Networking on mobiles.

Here's just some of the highlights:

"3G is looking for a killer application. It is hoping to discover the surprise hit, the kind of totally unpredictable upside surprise, that SMS text messaging was in the 2G world.

"Now I finally have it.

"Mobile Community Services will be the killer app for 3G. Call it Mobile Social Networks... Call it Digital Communities on 3G. Call it mobile blogging, moblogging. User generated content on mobile. But trust me, Communities Dominate.

"We now have found our first true killer application for the 3G space. And it is the digital community services.

"For the mainstream IT, telecoms and media world, interactive social networking - like blogging - is still a "black box" science, a voodoo mythical enigma, perhaps best left for the younger generations...

..."nearly 2.6 billion users with mobile phones, and close to 10% of them already using the high speed 3G phones. Anyone in the media industries, or running an internet service - needs to know this is the biggest pond, if you are not on mobile, you won't be relevant soon.

"This is the industry to be in. Any service, product, company, brand or entity needs a mobile phone based digital community presence.

"If you are not there, your competitors will be, and you will be crushed. If you are there, this is the place where finally, of internet services, you can earn money. You do not need to wait for some magical level of "eyeballs" to sell advertising.

"The mobile internet is inherently better than the traditional web, because of that very fact - every service is billable, every time your service is used, you get paid. Not to mention it's much bigger than the internet and more addictive and the clear choice of younger users.

"Understand that you can be part of the growth, when the 3.45 Billion turns to over 5 billion next year, and over 8 billion in 2008. Make your millions in it NOW!

"Do not for one moment think, that mobile will be "enough". NO. You HAVE to be multiplatform."


The need to move to social communities on mobile has been clear to me for some time (and focused for me by reading Communities Dominate Brands).

My worry is that media companies are shunting this into a bit of a ghetto, just like they did the internet in its infancy. This should be at the heart of our plans for real and rapid growth.

I believe there are HUGE growth opportunities even in what we think may be mature of declining markets - IF we understand how Generation-C intersects with them.

It's not enough to make old-style offerings on what you might regard as a Gen-C platform - and to a non Gen-C audience!

That is our most pressing challenge. Where is it placed in your strategy?