Russel & Carlo,

[company we thought was reputable, and which you've definitely heard of]’s partner and developer team is interested in purchasing email lists from MobHappy. Could you please provide me with the following information?

* Number of unique monthly visitors to your site
* Email list community size
* Newsletter list community size
* Audience breakdown, including number of developers
* How developers are segmented (iPhone, etc.); if they not segmented, can they be?
* Geographic breakdown
* Pricing information

I am currently unable to access my [company we thought was reputable, and which you've definitely heard of] email, so if you could please reply to all when you respond, I would appreciate it.

Thank you!

First, It’s Russell, with two Ls, but nice try. Second, this email brings to mind some of my rather ham-fisted attempts to pick up girls in college, because it, like me back then, elicited a certain response: “Do you find this approach to actually be successful?”

So just to make things clear: we don’t sell our email list. And we don’t “rent” it, either.

It seems likely that Symbian will live on in Nokia’s mid-range devices where its strengths as an OS running under constrained resources will be useful — and this is where the standard Nokia scale line gets trotted out: “Well, Nokia has 40% market share, and that sort of scale makes it really attractive to developers just on sheer size, etc etc etc. They’ll flock to it”.

Only that hasn’t exactly worked out, has it? Refer to Mike Rowehl’s excellent rant on the subject:

There’s an interesting discussion floating around that a fanatical devotion to iPhone is blinding mobile developers to larger potential markets. And I’m amazed. Really, just freaking flabbergasted, that the conversation could even be taking place. How can anyone seriously say “well, you’re ignoring all those potential millions of handsets out there running Symbian” and keep a straight face? … Stop lying to yourselves, and definitely stop lying to us. Is the Nokia store supposed to challenge Apple? Or Microsoft supposed to? Or RIM? You know what folks, you had your chances. If you want to impress me, if you want me to start developing for your platforms again, get your houses in order. Once things change, once you get your stores developed, released, and proven as a good commercial channels to end users – then we can talk again. Until then we’re all just going to keep laughing at you and developing for iPhone.

Sure, there’s a big potential market there, but the means by which developers are supposed to access it have been a mess, for any number of reasons, such as a poor development environment and poor sales and distribution channels (which is probably being generous to the Ovi store). And that doesn’t even get to the relatively horrific download and install experience Symbian offers compared to other platforms.

So I’m left wondering why any developers who aren’t already working on Symbian products would bother now. In two years, the OS won’t appear on Nokia’s “high-end” devices — ie its most expensive and fully featured devices, which you’d imagine would attract the sort of users who, you know, would be most into buying apps — which doesn’t seem like much of a vote of confidence in the platform. The scale argument has been proven untrue when the path to market and development environment remains so unattractive; it’s also undermined when Nokia itself fragments its devices among multiple platforms. And, in any case, it’s not clear exactly what market Symbian will have in a couple of years’ time, because of Nokia’s choices, but also because of Symbian’s declining market share in the face of increased competition.

A couple of things (at a minimum) need to happen for Nokia to sort this out:
- It needs to elucidate a clear platform strategy so developers (and the rest of the market) aren’t taking cues from comments by marketing staff at user meetups or leaks written up in FT Deutschland.
- Fix the Ovi Store.

Yeah, I mean, shame on us if the mobile internet actually became something useful, enriching, ubiquitous and valuable, supporting a plethora of business models on an open platform where content providers and users have lots of choices of how do do things without lots of unnecessary barriers.

Basically, Ryan, who (of course) used to run AT&T’s data services, contends the web taught us “some bad habits”, in particular that ad-supported business models work, and that consumers shouldn’t be paying for more content. Ignoring for the moment that the cat’s already out of the bag, it’s a little disheartening to hear these comments at the end of 2009. They bring to mind the statement from 3 UK’s then-COO in 2004 that “Anyone in their right mind who tries to do anything on the Internet with a screen that size has to be nuts.”

Ryan then picks probably the worst possible way to try and support his argument: by using news as an example.

Ryan says they should be charging, especially on mobile where the service can be more personalized and tailored to a interests and habits. “People will be more than willing to pay,” he said. “I want to pay for a news service that will deliver the top 10-15 stories that matter to me the most. I want them to be researched and well-written. I will pay money for that.”

Maybe Jim will pay, but it’s doubtful many others will. Jeff Porter of Mobilepeople has a great piece at Mobile Marketer about Why paying for news content does not make sense that’s well worth a read. The first reason he lists is that “news is largely a commodity”. Ryan doesn’t seem to get this: this wonderful paid service he envisions is already one that’s provided for free by any number of content providers (Google News, Mippin, etc.).

The idea that “people will be more than willing to pay” is only correct in an environment of scarcity. But we’re past that point in the internet space, either wired or wireless. Any scarcity has to be contrived and manufactured, with things like walled gardens — which, of course, didn’t (and don’t) work. There’s always lots of talk about operators building a “smart pipe” that adds value to content, value for which the operators can expect some compensation. But it really sounds that the pipe dream for people like Ryan is simply to contrive an environment in which simply being accessible by end users is that value for which operators (or their vendors, like Motricity) should be compensated.

The idea that simply because something is available on mobile makes it worth paying for doesn’t hold. Availability on its own no longer creates value; again, in a world of ever-increasing abundance, as opposed to scarcity, this will not be the case (a lesson Garmin and TomTom learned recently when Google announced its navigation app).

Congrats to Russell and the rest of the AdMob team, especially its founder, Omar. It’s been exciting watching them bounce from strength to strength and see the ad impressions pile up, and witness how they’ve supported so many publishers and developers by giving them an easy and effective way to monetize their content.

And I also wanted to say welcome to all our new readers who are coming to us from the WSJ’s Venture Capital Dispatch blog, which had a nice little writeup on Omar (and Russell), highlighting the series of posts Russell put together based on Omar’s lessons learned from his work building AdMob. They’re full of some great lessons, so I’ll link to them again here:
- Omar Hamoui on Ideas and Company Launches
- Omar Hamoui on Sales and Marketing
- Omar Hamoui on Deals and Negotiations
- Omar Hamoui on Competitive Threats and Team
- Omar Hamoui on Communication and A Final Thought

At Media Week, I wrote about the amazing success of Pizza Hut’s relatively new iPhone App, that has already generated over $1 million in pizza sales. mCommerce has been a long time coming, but it’s arriving at last.

Also on the subject of iPhone Apps (is there a hotter subject in mobile or marketing right now?) I wrote about Virgin Atlantic’s new App that helps people overcome their fear of flying.

Other subjects that caught my eye recently were Revolution’s coverage of a new AdMob campaign for STA Travel. What’s interesting is that it’s click-to-call, which has been slow to take off in mobile and which ought to be a no-brainer. Anyone have any thoughts as to why it’s not used more often?

Finally, I also like the new Guinness ad, though it reminded me a lot of one of the scenes from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie, when they’re creating Earth. The Guinness ad can be seen here and like most ads from the makers of the Black Stuff, it’s very classy indeed.

In remembrance of so many good times, I may pull out my N-Gage QD from the Carlo Longino Haul of Mobile Handset History and use it today. Or not. But in either case, I’d like to pay tribute to N-Gage with a reading from the great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

So long, N-Gage, and thanks for all the laughs.

I was honored to be asked by MH pal Helen Keegan to give some input to an event she and her team are organizing in London on December 7, called Heroes of the Mobile Screen. We’re working on putting together a fantastic list of speakers and sessions and we’ve got a great venue — now comes the fun part: you get to turn up, enjoy and make lots of great connections.

Here’s the pitch:

The team behind Mobile Monday London, Swedish Beers Mobile Networking, Future of Mobile, Over The Air, Mobile 2.0 and Tech Media Invest, today announced the launch of a brand new event coming to London on 7 December, Heroes of the Mobile Screen http://mobileheroes.net/

The day-long event at BFI Southbank will differ from anything else around and get the stakeholders of mobile involved in discussing the issues affecting them and their customers. Uniquely the event also has secondary school pupils, college students and other members of the same generation, to tell the industry what they want from their mobile, what they expect from their network operators and what’s most important to them in terms of their mobile life..

Heroes of the Mobile Screen is already attracting a number of high caliber ‘heroes’ with speakers and panelists answering the call from around the world, to unite in London on December 7. Speakers, panelists and sponsors will all be announced shortly.

Heroes of the Mobile Screen has four core pillars supporting discussion throughout the day.

The money
What’s making money, who’s making money and what’s being invested in and where the money’s going to be in the future? The answers to all the questions we want to ask of successful mobile service providers and VCs.

The impact of social/location
What is the impact of social media and location technology? What do customers want, what are the business models, what are the solutions to privacy issues. Carriers are placing their bets in this area, but will they pay off?

Teenage heroes
Led by digital youth marketing expert Julia Shalet, this is a new format where we invite four companies to pitch their product, service or device live to six teenagers and they tell us what they really think.

Real customers, real applications, real marketing
A double session with the first half covering customers and what they really want on mobile with a focus on women in particular with a keynote from an expert in this area sharing some new research and insight into what women want. The second half will cover mobile marketing and advertising, what’s working, what’s not and what’s coming next.

You can buy tickets now and get more details on the event at the mobileheroes.net site. We’re also looking for sponsors, and if you’re interested in that, you can get in touch with Helen (helen at mobileheroes dot net) or myself for more details.

This one was about a marketing stunt that’s badly backfired in Latvia, causing Tele2 to lose its Government contracts. Not all publicity is good publicity – the proof.

I’ve also been writing at Media Week about the implications of the imminent take-off of Android for mobile advertisers. Exciting times.

ESPN has now set up a college football site dedicated to co-browsing during games called Section 140. ESPN bills Section 140 as:

# A new MOBILE destination to cheer, comment and maybe talk a little trash with other College Football fans from all across the country.
# A MOBILE sounding board where you can join the conversation from anywhere during the game.
# A real-time, MOBILE place to meet like-minded and not so like-minded fans while your teams are on the field.
# A place to interact with ESPN College Football writers in the Virtual Press Box.

They’ve set up a schedule for games they’re broadcasting and staffing the site with their online writers, who will be there to interact with fans (who can of course interact with each other as well) during the games. Interesting link between the real and online worlds, and something I think we’ll definitely see more of.

My own Twitter and Facebook feeds tend to take on a life of their own during Texas Longhorn games in a sort of ad-hoc dedicated social network. I think it’s cool to see ESPN try and capitalize on this with something of their own.

Any other good examples of co-browsing destinations out there?

If it would be useful, I’ll let you know via MobHappy when I post there and you’re welcome to follow me via RSS too. And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter, where I’m also reasonable prolific @russellbuckley.

For now I’ll just link to a series of posts I wrote about the future of mobile, based on a presentation I gave at the Mobile Marketing Forum in Berlin a few weeks back.

Brands and Mobile Advertising
Privacy
Location
Mobile advertising formats – more interesting than it sounds actually!
Mobile is Measurable
Future Devices

Hope you find them interesting.