Some time ago I asked for the moon on a stick.
Today I saw something which might not offer the entire lunar body, but I think it gets us into orbit. Mippin is in beta right now. Next week it'll be shown in public and go into public beta.
I was lucky enough to get a pre-preview preview, if you like - and VP, product management, Prashant Agarwal is happy for me to share. So go check it out for yourself.
It's the latest thing from Refresh Mobile - the former T-mobile management buy-out team which previously gave us Mobizines.
And it ticks a lot of the boxes from my moon-on-a-stick list.
As I said once before ...the fixed line net was initially grown by content providers of the mass industrial age, the mobile web will explode as a direct result of User Generated Content.
And because of the social nature of 2.0 I expect the growth to be exponential - and to dominate the way the mobile web develops in a faster and more pervasive way than we saw with the original fixed-line internet.
The long tail will wag the mobile internet dog more vigorously than it has the fixed line internet."
And I identified these drivers for the long tail to go truly exponential.
1. Really easy creation of mobile pages (on fixed line and on mobile)
2. Really easy ability to change the design to our tastes (and I'm thinking icons/desktop style as well as background colours and layout)
3. Ability to add and create rss feeds
4. Ability to add code snippets (ie YouTube video, google adsense)
5. Really easy share/ creator propogation (ie socially networked)
6. Enabled for social trade.
7. It has to be free to the site owner.
8. Option to offer as an application-based widget.
Mippin gets a long way along the route. It's really easy to create mobile pages (from rss feeds from your current content - your blog for example, or your website, if you are a publisher). So it also ticks number 3 on the list. FasterFuture is, of course, already available on it!
There are both sharing and rating functions (5) and community scoring edits the 'hits' you find on your portal home page.
Critically it integrates with ad services such as admob (or at least it will very soon) which allows the UGC creator to benefit from their efforts. The ability to monetise long-tail content was a huge driver for the explosion of the fixed web (eg google adsense, the most powerful widget yet!)
Mippin is free (that's no7) and there are plenty of widget plans (they've even got a bit of an in with facebook... watch that space).
This is Widsets on steroids. Where Widsets doesn't allow you to make cash from your rss feed in, the admob integration (Screen Tonic for bigger publishers if you prefer) means you benefit from your labouts.
And powerfully, while you have to download a client to your phone to make Widsets work, there's no need for this with Mippin.
How do they make their cash? Ads on the aggregated elements (users create their own portal of content they want to have fed to them, they get to rate it and share it too (though the share via sms function is too clunky at the moment - but it is early days).
There are no ads on the publisher's content - other than the ones the publisher selects AND which that publisher is earning cash from. This trumps the peperonity model, for example.
They take no revenue share from your arrangement with Admob, google adsense or whoever, either. They expect to make money from their introduction of your content to the likes of Admob. Which seems fine and reasonable to me.
In a nutshell, what Mippin does is allow individuals to create their own mobile portals of content they care about and rate and share that content.
Their marketing plan involves mobile ad campaigns of their own. It remains to be seen how effectively they can position themselves as your first-choice mobile portal.
The publisher (be it users creating their own mobile sites from their blog feeds etc, or publishers of bigger websites seeking to move into the mobile space) are simply extending their reach.
We shouldn't confuse Mippin with something which allows the creation of mobile-focused services fitting the 6Ms of mobile to perfection - as described by Tomi Ahonen (and those who attended Mobinar will be clear on these).
It also doesn't carry links from the original content, nor videos (though it does manage images from the rss feeds.)
What it does do is radically simplify the process of extending reach into mobile - and monetising it.
To publishers, I do not recommend Mippin as your long term mobile strategy - but it does seem an ideal quick fix to get you on the road and to use as part of your strategy. Create new mobile services alongside this - but perhaps use this to extend your reach and make a little revenue - free.
To those who are about to create the long tail - this is going to help a whole lot of shaking happen faster.
The further ahead you look - the faster you go | davidpcushman AT gmail.com | These are my views and my views only.
Showing posts with label peperonity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label peperonity. Show all posts
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Mobile internet: A new media - no wonder Google gets it wrong
I was lucky enough to stumble on Informa's mobile web2.0 conference at Lord's in London yesterday. I'm indebted to Ajit Jaoker (for the invite) and the good people at Informa for letting me gate-crash.
I caught the last few presentations and final panel of the day (the event continues today). As a result I'll recommend you check out mystrands.com which was presented by Atakan Cetinsoy as an exceptionally well thought-out mobile community play. And I was delighted to catch up with Ajit and Tomi Ahonen, talk with Ken Blakeslee and at least say hi to Jouko Ahvenainen.
But the bit that stayed with me was Russell Buckley's (admob and Mobhappy) scathing analysis of the launch of Google Adsense for mobile.
He pointed out adsense will start appearing on mobilised sites whether the site the ad links to has been designed for mobile or not.
In other words click the adsense link and you could get a very poor experience. That's bad enough for the user. Imagine being the poor sap who is paying per click?
It's astounding really that even Google can't get this right. But as is often pointed out, there's hardly a brand from the old media forms that has successfully transferred to the internet.
So why should we expect the 'experts' on the internet to be able to move smoothly to being the experts on mobile?
How many are really making the effort to understand the vital differences between Tomi Ahonen and Alan Moore's 6th and 7th mass medias (internet being the sixth, mobile the seventh)?
As Russell points out people might get excited by 450,000 people accessing MySpace from their mobiles but the leaders in the mobile social space are NEW and MADE FOR MOBILE - such as peperonity. They have way more page impressions than the old guard (amusing to think of MySpace as the old guard...).
Russell should know - Admob is currently serving mobile ads at the rate of 1.7bn a month and gathering more data about what the mobile internet accessing public are doing than almost anyone else along the way.
In the evening I was Admob's guest (and many thanks to Ivanka for that) at the Mobile Entertainment Awards - where Admob deservedly picked up the award for Best Marketing and Advertising Provider. Interesting - at this Nokia-sponsored event - to see Admob getting the nod over Enpocket (Nokia's latest squeeze).
A Google rep (picking up some search-related award, obviously) said there was much more from them to come in the mobile space. On the evidence of the adsense effort so far, there had better be.
I caught the last few presentations and final panel of the day (the event continues today). As a result I'll recommend you check out mystrands.com which was presented by Atakan Cetinsoy as an exceptionally well thought-out mobile community play. And I was delighted to catch up with Ajit and Tomi Ahonen, talk with Ken Blakeslee and at least say hi to Jouko Ahvenainen.
But the bit that stayed with me was Russell Buckley's (admob and Mobhappy) scathing analysis of the launch of Google Adsense for mobile.
He pointed out adsense will start appearing on mobilised sites whether the site the ad links to has been designed for mobile or not.
In other words click the adsense link and you could get a very poor experience. That's bad enough for the user. Imagine being the poor sap who is paying per click?
It's astounding really that even Google can't get this right. But as is often pointed out, there's hardly a brand from the old media forms that has successfully transferred to the internet.
So why should we expect the 'experts' on the internet to be able to move smoothly to being the experts on mobile?
How many are really making the effort to understand the vital differences between Tomi Ahonen and Alan Moore's 6th and 7th mass medias (internet being the sixth, mobile the seventh)?
As Russell points out people might get excited by 450,000 people accessing MySpace from their mobiles but the leaders in the mobile social space are NEW and MADE FOR MOBILE - such as peperonity. They have way more page impressions than the old guard (amusing to think of MySpace as the old guard...).
Russell should know - Admob is currently serving mobile ads at the rate of 1.7bn a month and gathering more data about what the mobile internet accessing public are doing than almost anyone else along the way.
In the evening I was Admob's guest (and many thanks to Ivanka for that) at the Mobile Entertainment Awards - where Admob deservedly picked up the award for Best Marketing and Advertising Provider. Interesting - at this Nokia-sponsored event - to see Admob getting the nod over Enpocket (Nokia's latest squeeze).
A Google rep (picking up some search-related award, obviously) said there was much more from them to come in the mobile space. On the evidence of the adsense effort so far, there had better be.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Here it comes: Google Adsense for mobile!
Regular participants in this conversation will know I've long been an advocate of the idea that the long tail will shake the mobile internet dog (much earlier, and therefore acquiring significantly more influence, than it did on the fixed line web).
Google Adsense was the critical driver in the explosion of content on the fixed line web (it's one thing to create content left right and centre - quite another to get paid for it).
So the wait for google adsense or its equivalent to deploy on mobile has been pregnant with anticipation.
Well, now it's here.
A very reputable source told me on Friday (July 13, 2007) that in fact it had been available for a couple of weeks. And a quick scan around the blogosphere this morning reveals it is just starting testing with invited mobile content publishers (try here).
In my view, this is a very significant moment (please share what you think by adding a comment).
In combination with the arrival of the I-Phone and Youtube going properly mobile (in June) I think we'll end up looking back at the middle of 2007 as the tipping point of the mobile web.
Admob has already shown how taking the marketplace approach and making their code easy for publishers to deploy - gives long tail content creators a way of earning revenue for their efforts. As a result they are busily co-creating the new value emerging from the mobile internet (4billion ads served so far and currently adding around 1billion more a month).
And their biggest revenue earners are the likes of peperonity, itsmy... in other words User Generated Content in the classic long tail model.
But Admob can't serve in-context related ads. Yet (I'm told a version 2.0 is on its way...)
It's very hard to do for all sorts of very interesting technical reasons. So that makes their ads, despite their text-link design, more interruption than engagement. (though, to be fair to Admob, you can select which sites you want to serve on - and with increasing specialisation (into niches) that may well give a decent approximation of engagement).
However, if google adsense has cracked in-context, related (as it does on the fixed web) then there will be a better match between the 'advert' and the content. It closes the gap between the two. It makes it more engaging.
Both Admob and Google Adsense learned an early lesson many website operators would do well to consider - banners don't work. Text links do. They become part of the (albeit stilted) conversation. Translation: Interruption doesn't get response, Engagement does.
So now we have the staggering marketing power of Apple and the I-Phone, PLUS the global call to action (get a fixed rate data plan - get a 3G phone) of youtube to speed up the charge to mobile (pervasive if you prefer) computing.
AND on top of that there's now an easy-for-everyone AND engaging revenue model, too (Adsense).
Just watch mobile internet go now!
Make sure you are looking in the right direction (towards UGC) or you won't see it coming until it's way too late...
Google Adsense was the critical driver in the explosion of content on the fixed line web (it's one thing to create content left right and centre - quite another to get paid for it).
So the wait for google adsense or its equivalent to deploy on mobile has been pregnant with anticipation.
Well, now it's here.
A very reputable source told me on Friday (July 13, 2007) that in fact it had been available for a couple of weeks. And a quick scan around the blogosphere this morning reveals it is just starting testing with invited mobile content publishers (try here).
In my view, this is a very significant moment (please share what you think by adding a comment).
In combination with the arrival of the I-Phone and Youtube going properly mobile (in June) I think we'll end up looking back at the middle of 2007 as the tipping point of the mobile web.
Admob has already shown how taking the marketplace approach and making their code easy for publishers to deploy - gives long tail content creators a way of earning revenue for their efforts. As a result they are busily co-creating the new value emerging from the mobile internet (4billion ads served so far and currently adding around 1billion more a month).
And their biggest revenue earners are the likes of peperonity, itsmy... in other words User Generated Content in the classic long tail model.
But Admob can't serve in-context related ads. Yet (I'm told a version 2.0 is on its way...)
It's very hard to do for all sorts of very interesting technical reasons. So that makes their ads, despite their text-link design, more interruption than engagement. (though, to be fair to Admob, you can select which sites you want to serve on - and with increasing specialisation (into niches) that may well give a decent approximation of engagement).
However, if google adsense has cracked in-context, related (as it does on the fixed web) then there will be a better match between the 'advert' and the content. It closes the gap between the two. It makes it more engaging.
Both Admob and Google Adsense learned an early lesson many website operators would do well to consider - banners don't work. Text links do. They become part of the (albeit stilted) conversation. Translation: Interruption doesn't get response, Engagement does.
So now we have the staggering marketing power of Apple and the I-Phone, PLUS the global call to action (get a fixed rate data plan - get a 3G phone) of youtube to speed up the charge to mobile (pervasive if you prefer) computing.
AND on top of that there's now an easy-for-everyone AND engaging revenue model, too (Adsense).
Just watch mobile internet go now!
Make sure you are looking in the right direction (towards UGC) or you won't see it coming until it's way too late...
Friday, April 20, 2007
Long tail will wag the mobile internet dog
Internet success stories have long valued the long tail. And all the predictions are that the value of the mobile internet will follow the same pattern.
What's interesting to me is the way the socialisation/democratisation of the web has set new standards for users and means they want to take that with them into the mobile web.
The result of this is that while the fixed line net was initially grown by content providers of the mass industrial age, the mobile web will explode as a direct result of User Generated Content.
And because of the social nature of 2.0 I expect the growth to be exponential - and to dominate the way the mobile web develops in a faster and more pervasive way than we saw with the original fixed-line internet.
The long tail will wag the mobile internet dog more vigorously than it has the fixed line internet.
I don't know the facts and figures - and I'd welcome hearing from anyone who does - but I suspect, where mobile internet is concerned, already content provided by mass media makes up a tiny percentage of all content on the mobile web. The vast majority must be coming from users setting up their own mobile sites, creating their own content and services and selling them.
I think of sites like mynumo.com where users can create their own ringtones, and a mobile webpage to sell them on.
I think of sites like peperonity.com where you can create your own mobile internet page in seconds - and then start charging for content and downloads from it (360,000 plus have already).
These are sites which converge the user, the buyer, the seller, the marketeer, the employee - all in the one person. This is the social nature of trade described in more detail here.
I think of Admob, which allows you to start making money from your content - if you can add its code to your mobile site.
But there's still a gap in this. I set myself up a fasterfuture.peperonity.com mobile version of this blog. But I'd have to call it a 'lite' version. There's no ability to add an rss feed (ie of latest items from this blog) and there's no way I can monetise (should I wish), beyond actually selling the content in a micro-payments model. And who pays for content?
Peperonity do ok from this model as they place ads on my content. I get a site to play with, they get a way of serving mobile ads. But wouldn't you want a cut of the earnings from the ads?
Widsets.com allows you to choose fasterfuture as a widget to download to your mobile - and that delivers every post as it's made from this blog to an organised rss feed. But there are few design options, no ad model (from a ugc perspective), no ability to add code etc etc.
For the long tail to truly go exponential I think we need something which allows all of these:
1. Really easy creation of mobile pages (on fixed line and on mobile)
2. Really easy ability to change the design to our tastes (and I'm thinking icons/desktop style as well as background colours and layout)
3. Ability to add and create rss feeds
4. Ability to add code snippets (ie YouTube video, google adsense)
5. Really easy share/ creator propogation (ie socially networked)
6. Enabled for social trade.
7. It has to be free to the site owner.
8. Option to offer as an application-based widget.
So, a lot of the things we expect from our blogsites on fixed line - and a few which don't.
If you know of anything that ticks the boxes - or is about to. Please share.
If I'm asking for the moon on a stick, let me know why!
What's interesting to me is the way the socialisation/democratisation of the web has set new standards for users and means they want to take that with them into the mobile web.
The result of this is that while the fixed line net was initially grown by content providers of the mass industrial age, the mobile web will explode as a direct result of User Generated Content.
And because of the social nature of 2.0 I expect the growth to be exponential - and to dominate the way the mobile web develops in a faster and more pervasive way than we saw with the original fixed-line internet.
The long tail will wag the mobile internet dog more vigorously than it has the fixed line internet.
I don't know the facts and figures - and I'd welcome hearing from anyone who does - but I suspect, where mobile internet is concerned, already content provided by mass media makes up a tiny percentage of all content on the mobile web. The vast majority must be coming from users setting up their own mobile sites, creating their own content and services and selling them.
I think of sites like mynumo.com where users can create their own ringtones, and a mobile webpage to sell them on.
I think of sites like peperonity.com where you can create your own mobile internet page in seconds - and then start charging for content and downloads from it (360,000 plus have already).
These are sites which converge the user, the buyer, the seller, the marketeer, the employee - all in the one person. This is the social nature of trade described in more detail here.
I think of Admob, which allows you to start making money from your content - if you can add its code to your mobile site.
But there's still a gap in this. I set myself up a fasterfuture.peperonity.com mobile version of this blog. But I'd have to call it a 'lite' version. There's no ability to add an rss feed (ie of latest items from this blog) and there's no way I can monetise (should I wish), beyond actually selling the content in a micro-payments model. And who pays for content?
Peperonity do ok from this model as they place ads on my content. I get a site to play with, they get a way of serving mobile ads. But wouldn't you want a cut of the earnings from the ads?
Widsets.com allows you to choose fasterfuture as a widget to download to your mobile - and that delivers every post as it's made from this blog to an organised rss feed. But there are few design options, no ad model (from a ugc perspective), no ability to add code etc etc.
For the long tail to truly go exponential I think we need something which allows all of these:
1. Really easy creation of mobile pages (on fixed line and on mobile)
2. Really easy ability to change the design to our tastes (and I'm thinking icons/desktop style as well as background colours and layout)
3. Ability to add and create rss feeds
4. Ability to add code snippets (ie YouTube video, google adsense)
5. Really easy share/ creator propogation (ie socially networked)
6. Enabled for social trade.
7. It has to be free to the site owner.
8. Option to offer as an application-based widget.
So, a lot of the things we expect from our blogsites on fixed line - and a few which don't.
If you know of anything that ticks the boxes - or is about to. Please share.
If I'm asking for the moon on a stick, let me know why!
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