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NewsWhat's At Stake With iPhoneProfessional contrarian John Heilemann has a cover story about Steve Jobs in the latest issue of New York Magazine, and tackles the "reality distortion field" around iPhone, and how things could go wrong, taking cues from Jobs' past. A very good job with the story, though his observations coming out of D conference sounds very anecdotal and well, wrong, since I was there too and observed pretty much the same things he did.
BREAKING: Yahoo Replaces CEO; Founder Jerry Yang Back In Seat; Decker Is PresidentThis is a huge surprise, even though we knew it was imminent ... Jerry Yang, Yahoo co-founder and long-time board member, as Chief Executive Officer. Terry Semel, current Yahoo Chairman and CEO, will assume the position of non-executive Chairman and serve as an advisor, while also working closely with the Board. The board also named Susan Decker, formerly EVP and Head of Advertiser and Publisher Group, as President of the company. Release. In Yang's post on Yodel Anecdotal titled "My New Job," he thanks Semel, writing that today "marks the close of a great chapter in my life with Terry Semel as my partner." Why Decker as president? "In addition to knowing this company inside and out, Sue has incredible talents, leadership abilities, a fierce focus on winning, and intense dedication to this company and its people. I look forward to teaming more closely with her as we pursue our joint vision." What vision? Yang has an answer for that, too: "A Yahoo! that executes with speed, clarity and discipline. A Yahoo! that increases its focus on differentiating its products and investing in creativity and innovation. A Yahoo! that better monetizes its audience. A Yahoo! whose great talent is galvanized to address its challenges. And a Yahoo! that is better focused on what's important to its users, customers, and employees. The past year has obviously not been an easy one for us. But we've taken important steps to address the challenges we face, and we're starting to realize some of the benefits – especially with the successful launch of Panama, which continues to receive positive feedback from advertisers and is exceeding our expectations. By the way, that's directly attributable to the operational excellent mentality Terry has instilled and is a clear sign one of his most critical initiatives is succeeding." We have more coverage on sister site paidContent.org. Tune in there. Recommendation Engine Provider MyStrands Receives $25 Million In FundingA huge amount for what it is, though it shows recommendation is gaining traction as a solution to the content discovery dilemma. MyStrands has raised $25 million in its second round of funding, according to the company's blog. The main investor is 25 year-old Spanish media mogul Antonio Asensio, owner and CEO of the Spanish media group Grupo Zeta. Existing investors Debaeque and Sequel are also backing this round. This latest rounded brings total investment in MyStrands to $31 million. The details are thin, but the company has told me it plans to sharpen its focus on delivering mobile advertising – a feature that would likely get a lot of mileage out of the social networks already forming around MyStands' music recommender services. MyStands was founded in 2003, and based in Corvallis, Oregon. Competition is fierce in the category: Last.fm got recently bought by CBS, then there's Pandora, iLike, Mog and others in a similar space. Looks like MyStrands wants to make a big push in mobile music as a differentiator. Related SPONSOR POST: Radio On the Go Is Here – CelleCast Brings Radio to Any Cell PhoneCelleCast is cell phone radio and all things audio, on demand. Top tier radio personalities and audio content providers of all kinds can offer listeners access on any phone, at any time, from anywhere, generating additional revenue. Short Features Top The List of Popular Mobile TV Content, Danish Mobile Operator ReportsAn analysis of view habits during the first six months of TDC's mobile TV service reveals size does matter, Cellular News reports. Users prefer short TV snippets such as news to other content. This realization has prompted the Danish mobile operator to add two new short feature channels to its mobile TV offer: the news channel DR Update and the music channel MTV Shorts. The line-up will soon be expanded to include the entertainment channel Star! All channels focus on short feature content.
TDC's stats also show that the each user (on the average):
Anders B. Christjansen, Vice President, TDC Mobile concludes: "The analysis has confirmed that mobile TV has its natural place in the media picture and that TV on the cell phone is particularly suited for breaking news when people do not have access to traditional television."
Theatres Start Text PromotionsTheatres have joined the text-promotion craze that is becoming popular with music concerts. At a recent Saturday matinee of Broadway musical Spring Awakening audiences were asked to send an SMS to win the chance to go backstage, as well as get a ringtone of one of the songs and a wallpaper of the musical, reports the New York Times. The people who responded will go into a database for future promotions, and it's hoped the ringtone and wallpaper will be "talking points" to introduce the musical to more people. So far it seems reasonably successful: "About 8.5 percent of audience members have been sending text messages in the 14 contests that the production has done so far, but organizers expect participation to reach 10 percent...For a similar promotion with a tour of the rock-oriented theatrical production Blue Man Group, an average of 16 percent of audience members sent text messages, Mr. Bazadona said." Pay TV Operator To Launch DVB-H In MalaysiaMalaysia will be one of the first countries to get a DVB-H network with a deal between Nokia and pay TV company MiTV (the first DVB-H rollout in Asia was Vietnam). The service is due to launch in the second half of 2007...MiTV is also planning a 3G service launch in the second half of 2007. (release) Related 3UK Expands Music Video Service, With Dual DownloadSomething I missed while I was at the conference last week: 3UK has signed a deal with Groove Mobile to sell music videos via a dual-download service. "The video downloads will cost GBP 1.49 (US$2.95), with audio tracks still at GBP 1.29 (US$2.56) for existing 3UK customers. In the event that a customer loses or deletes a video, they are able to re-download the video up to three times, free of charge" reports TMCnet. The file sent to the computer is a higher-quality WMV file. The service will launch with 1,000 videos, which is three times the previous mobile-only service—although I'm not sure why it's limited to that...what's to stop them offering all the music videos they can? The Groove audio track service allows people to search the service on the net so this one should too, and I really can't see any good reason to limit the numbers (I'm guessing Groove would offer more if it could, but only guessing). The service will include videos from UMG, EMI, WMG and Sony BMG, plus some independent labels. Related Big Plans For ESPN On MobileThe New York Times has a comprehensive piece on mobile video/TV, although most of the info comes from ESPN (it also talks about CBS, Hearst, MediaFLO). John Zehr, senior vice president for digital video and mobile products at ESPN, said that he believes ESPN's mobile content will become more important than its web content for many viewers, describes it as "being the first screen because it's the closest to you". Nine million people visit ESPN's mobile site each month..."tens of thousands of them receive an average of 22 ESPN text messages on their phones each week". ESPN is also doing a lot to link its mobile and PC websites—it tracks what computer users read on its website to "determine what like-minded sports fans want to view on their phones" and is seeking a patent to cover its multiscreen effort. "The goal is to monitor individuals' interests on the Web site and then use the information to match cellphone content to their tastes. If someone is watching a football game on ESPN.com and has to hit the road, Mr. Zehr says, chances are that they would like the game to appear on their cellphone 20 minutes later." Last resort: "The experience of content on your phone is worse than almost any other venue you could think of," says Charles Golvin, a senior analyst at Forrester Research. "If you have a choice between a phone and any other outlet for content, you'll almost always choose the other outlet because it's a better experience. The phone is the device of last resort." NYT reports that the comeback to this is that people are reaching the last resort far more often than in the past. The NYT has a graph showing the device people "could not live without"—PC always beats mobile, and in the younger groups they both beat TV, but TV slowly climbs as the groups get older while the other two fall—the cross-over is around Gen X. One last thing—can people please never say "mobilely" again? I'd prefer if this article was the last place I saw it… @ Mobile Content World: Geek TV Case Study—USG Not Important, Exclusive IsKristan Rivers, general manager of Player X China, gave a case study of Geek TV—a streaming TV/video service—at Mobile Content World Australasia 2007. He argued that mobile video is not being driven by brands but rather content that is made for mobile from the start, and said that on 3UK Geek TV is the second most used video stream, coming behind ITN which has Big Brother...but it beats big brands like MTV, FHM and so on. "People buying this content are the people buying FHM," said Rivers. "It's not highbrow stuff." Usage stats: Rivers gave some figures for mobile video usage in Europe (I'm not sure where he got them from). The average viewing time per session is 3.1 minutes in Holland, 2.8 minutes in Switzerland, 3.2 minutes in the UK. The total monthly viewing time is 23 minutes in Germany and 28 minutes in the UK, which isn't going to cause concern to regular TV broadcasters—Rivers said that this service is complementary to fixed TV, it doesn't replace it. User Generated Content not important: Geek TV is a one-hour looped streaming channel which changes every week—Player X figures that if people are only watching an average of 7 minutes a week there's no point putting up too much programming. The stream includes links so if the viewer sees something they like they can click through to video-on-demand clips and buy them—In fact, Player X initially wanted the stream to be offered free as a marketing channel for the video-on-demand stuff, but all the carriers insisted it be charged for. The channel had 25 percent user-generated content, but Player X is lowering that to 20 percent. The content they got wasn't very good, and it wasn't driving the channel as much as they thought it would. Rivers cited usage research on sites like YouTube and Wikipedia showing that one percent of users uploaded content, 10 percent commented and 90 percent were happy to just watch. A more popular features is the interactive feature, which lets people send shoutouts and so on. Rivers emphasized that user-generated content doesn't drive mobile TV usage, community participation does. Exclusivity is necessary: Rivers said that the stream was 60 percent premium made-for-mobile content "If it's not exclusive they'll go to the web," he said. This view was supported by Jack Ford, managing director of Sony Pictures Television, during the MobiFest video showcase. This was where four potential mobile video producers pitched their ideas to a panel, with the winner getting the series produced—pretty interesting to see the pitching process and hear what the panel thought was important. One of the pitches included user-generated content, and Ford questioned how the team would ensure the content was exclusive and not posted on YouTube, for example. He said it was very important to Sony that the content was exclusive, because otherwise people would just watch it on the web. Frontline Gains Political Support For Spectrum Auction ProposalFrontline has gained political support for its plan for part of the spectrum in the upcoming auction to include rules that the winner must build out a national wireless network to be used by first responders. "Key Senate lawmakers voiced support for what would be an unprecedented—and unproven—hybrid licensing approach to dramatically upgrade public-safety communications capabilities that were lacking in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina" reports RCRNews. A final ruling on the auction has been pushed back to July, but that is likely to be the final delay as the FCC needs to conduct the auction by January next year, and give bidders enough time to prepare applications and line up financing. Related Digital Chocolate Signs Pre-Load Deal With LGDigital Chocolate has scored a deal to pre-load its games onto mobile phones made by LG Electronics. Games from Digital Chocolate will be preloaded onto multiple LG phones to launch this month, and more pre-loads will follow, along with co-marketing efforts. The two companies say more details will come later, so it's unclear whether this is a few games in the games menu or a branded portal, or whether it will include the DChoc Cafe Series. LG has about a 6.2 percent of the global handset market, and shipped 15.8 million handsets in the first quarter of this year, which made it the fifth largest handset manufacturer. (release) Related MSN Launches New Mobile VersionMSN has relaunched its mobile site, and is a rather elaborate and nicely designed one (access it directly on the phone...the online version doesn't show the site). The site has news, sports information, entertainment features and access to services like e-mail, search, maps and instant messaging all in the single page. More details in this Reuters story. YouTube's Videos Go Beyond VerizonYouTube's exclusive deal with Verizon Wireless has ended, it seems: on m.youtube.com, it has launched several hundred editor's picks—the supposed cream of the YouTube crop—in mobile-friendly 3GP format. Staci adds: The mobile site opens with a warning that users should have an unlimited data plan for the "data intensive program." The limited nature of the mobile library isn't obvious. Searching for a video I just watched online brought up a notice that "only a portion of YouTube videos are available on mobile at this time. We are working to bring you more." Clicking on a most-watched video brought up a warning from IE and then a Windows Media error so I have yet to see a video. Related Teens & Young Adults Want Targeted Ads: Alcatel-LucentAlcatel-Lucent has released results of research into the preferences of teens and young adults in buying mobile content—interesting results, but bear in mind the company has just released a Mobile Content Platform offering a more flexible mobile store. The results are from Alcatel-Lucent's Worldwide Lab, which is made up of young users from 20 operators around the world. It shows that teens and young adults are used to having marketing messages targeted at them both online and when they shop in person, but aren't getting the same level of service on mobile. The research found that the mobile experience needs to be more intuitive, easy and fun—and the formats need to be compatible with all types of mobile devices. Young mobile customers are used to receiving targeted messages and expressed significant interest in receiving targeted ads, apparently including "unsubscribed, personalized advertising and awareness campaigns" that put relevant content on the mobile devices. I'm not sure whether this refers to ad-supported content or straight-up advertising—but if it's the latter the advertiser would want to make sure the campaign is personalized. However, all of the Lab members want special offers sent to them. (release) @ Mobile Content World: Personalizing Sites By Knowing The UserJennifer Wilson, managing director of HWW, gave a very good talk on personalizing mobile content sites (WAP, portals, whatever). She started by describing an internal checklist adopted by Ericsson to identify a "perfect user experience", the 0-1-2-3 rule:
Wilson said that in order to do this you really need to know the user, and that's best achieved by carriers and content providers working together. The carriers know who the customer is, some of their spending habits, whether they're post- or pre-paid, and so on. The content provider knows the customers behaviour on its site, their interests, what they look at and what drives them. "Together it's a rich psycho-demographic profile of actual behaviour, mapped against type for recommendation of unused content types," said Wilson. The best form of personalization is to restructure the site based on the history of the user. For example, if someone constantly goes to the entertainment section of a news site and ignores news and sports, the site should move entertainment to the top of the list. Two caveats—the site is restructured but all the information is still available, nothing is eliminated. Also, the site should take into account consistent behaviour over a period of time and not a single action. There also needs to be ways to let people know what their friends are doing, and things they have discovered that I may be interested in. @ Mobile Content World: Ad-Supported Is Good—But Consumers Have To Buy SomethingOne of the big themes at Mobile Content World was ad-supported content—it's generally accepted that mobile advertising will occur, the discussion is now around how much there will be, how it will be delivered and how much it will subsidize content and services. Anil Sabharwal, chief marketing office of MobiK, gave a good talk on mobile advertising and quoted that Google CEO Eric Schmidt that the phone should be completely free—advertising should subsidize the handset, the voice calls, the SMS, the content, evereything. It left me thinking that if everything was free, who would pay for advertising? After all, the whole point of advertising is to get people to spend money—if the consumer isn't buying things no-one will have money to advertise. Sure, there will be advertisers from outside the industry, but if Starbucks ever decides to give away coffee in exchange for reading ads we'll be in big trouble. MobiK has just launched an ad-supported free SMS service, so it's clearly going the free route, but it seems the industry is currently torn between those who want to charge customers through the nose for content (pay for every "channel", for example) and those who want to make everything absolutely free. There is a middle ground that will find customers paying a reasonable amount for a lot of high quality content supported by a reasonable amount of advertising—the companies which find this middle ground will prosper, because I think that will be the mass market. Fully-paid "premium" services and completely free "ad-supported" services will be niche markets. But that was just an issue that was raised by a small part of Sabharwal's talk, and which applies to a lot of comments and positions I've heard—Sabharwal answered a question from the audience by admitting that some people won't like a lot of advertising and will choose to use an ad-free premium service. Most of Sabharwal's talk was about mobile marketing both from a "targeted" perspective and a "captured audience" perspective. He said a mobile ad was a guaranteed single impression, for example if there is an ad before a news story "we have to scroll to get the news, the first thing I get is the ad and I usually have to read it to make sure it's not the news". I'm not sure that will keep customers happy in the long run, and Sabharwal went on to say that the challenge is advertising to people without annoying them. "The problems is balance, how do you make sure both the users and advertisers are happy? WIthout the users the advertisers don't care, and without the advertisers you can't provide the content to the users," he said. Mobility Developer Gets $3.5 Million Second Round FundingMontreal, Canada-based Trellia Networks has received a second round of funding totalling US$3.5 million. The funding was from Solidarity Fund QFL and Skypoint Capital, and will be used to grow the company aggressively. Trellia has developed numerous mobility solutions that enable secure and seamless connectivity for the mobile workforce in a multi-wireless-network environment. Trellia's first round of funding was in 2005, when it received $3.3 million from Skypoint Capital. New Features on Our Sites: Mobile Versions; Tip Box; Network Search; Social Tools; Jobs SectionWe recently relaunched our sites with some new features worth pointing out:
-- the News Tip Box, which has been there for a few months now, has seen very good pickup in terms of the inbound volume of tips we're getting...we have broken a fair amount of stories based on these. So the Tips box is in the left column on each page of all the sites, and is completely untraceable. So send us rumors, tips or any other news items through this box...it comes directly to the editorial team here. And in case you do want us to contact you back, make sure to put in some contact info in the form...otherwise there's no way we can know who sent us the tip.
Mobile Social Networking Service Flirtomatic Gets $4 Million FundingLondon-based mobile and online social networking service Flirtomatic has secured $4 million funding from Seraphim Capital to finance its expansion into international mobile markets...Flirtomatic allows users to create a personal profile and flirt with other users both online and using their mobile. Three-quarters of Flirtomatic's traffic comes via mobile, reports Guardian. It claims a combined web and mobile audience of 380K users in the UK, recording around 103 million page views every month. Flirtomatic initially received seed funding from its executive chairman, Avi Azulai, co-founder of mobile content firm iTouch, and later first-round funding from Doughty Hanson. 
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