InterCasting Corp: Intercasting Archives

July 18, 2008

AlwaysOn Stanford Summit next week

I just wanted to post a quick note that I am speaking on a panel next week at the AlwaysOn Stanford Summit:

Mobilizing Your Social Network
Are social networks merely features of existing applications and services, or are they a more fundamental element of the mobile ecosystem architecture?

Moderator: Adam Zawel, Chief Collaboration Officer, INmobile.org
John Faith, GM & VP for Mobile, MySpace
Mauro del Rio, Chairman, Buongiorno
Babur Ozden, CEO, ZipClip
Kamar Shah, Head of Industry Marketing, Services & Software, Nokia
Shawn Conahan, CEO, Intercasting Corp

Adam Zawel is of course the face of INmobile, (the community for mobile professionals) and a very insightful guy. I think the discussion will be interesting, given the following:

You cannot talk about mobile social networking without decoupling the brands from the functionality and then asking who will ultimately win. Is it what we currently think of as the leaders, like MySpace or Facebook? It certainly looks like it is theirs to lose. But what about Nokia, with its software and services strategy? Could they roll social networking functionality into their devices, integrating the social networking sites, and accrete all value to themselves?

Here is a post I made a few days ago on INmobile responding to Adam's question about who will win in mobile social networking:

In my opinion, you cannot speculate about the future of mobile social networking without first examining what barriers or facilitators exist in the mobile space, as these will ultimately determine whether anyone even ::gets:: to win.

Secondly, you cannot handicap the winners without defining what "winning" is. I know opinions differ, but let me offer a perspective: Since social networking is an evolution of personal communication, and "facilitating the world's personal communication" is about as big a vision as one might offer, then "winning" in this space would to be the first link on the personal communication value chain. In the same way that the first stop you make when searching for something on the web is Google, the ambition of every social networking site should be to be the first stop you make whenever you want to communicate with someone. Everything else is secondary - with the pace of technology innovation, a SN site can hardly expect to compete on functionality when parity among all competitors is achieved within months if not weeks.

So how do you become the first link on the personal communication value chain, and how does mobile figure in all this?

Here are some dimensions that I consider important when thinking about social networking in the mobile space:

- Social networking should not be treated as an “app on the deck” but should be viewed as a native functional opportunity as big as SMS or MMS

- Social networking is an evolution of personal communication, not a fad

- The most personal communication device in history is the mobile phone

- Social networks are the distribution channel for new media, and in particular user-generated content

- Social networks compete with wireless carriers because they are in the same business, which is providing personal communication services

- The best way for carriers and OEMs to address this competitive threat is to integrate social networking functionality into the device

- The first link on the personal communication value chain is the address book

- Whoever owns the address book owns the customer relationship and becomes the first place where everyone goes to execute their personal communication

- If the address book is on a server and not on a device, you better DAMN WELL BE SURE THAT IT IS YOUR SERVER

Notice I do not direct that last point at a particular audience. My impartiality forbids it. The simple fact is that anyone on the value chain could own the address book and it would still be somewhere between better to great for consumers in general. Owning the address book is the MOST IMPORTANT THING for everyone involved:

Carriers: Vodafone bought Zyb so they could sync to and own the master address book on THEIR server. A friend of mine at Vodafone asked me last week whether I thought they overpaid for Zyb, to which I answered they got a tremendous bargain, given the strategic value of a company that enables them to own the address book of all of their subscribers.

OEMs: Nokia bought Intellisync so they could backup the address books of all their devices to THEIR server.

Any social networking site would do well to provide its users a mobile address book centered around their service. After all, if a person is a die-hard Bebo or MySpace user, then they would likely appreciate having all of their friends, regardless of communication mode, in one place and built around the tool they use most often to communication with. The value to the social networking provider is obvious: When a user puts all of their contacts in one place on your server, that will definitely keep them coming back every time they want to initiate communication.

But the opportunity goes far beyond that. Assume for a moment that in the future you will be able to make your identity (or identities) portable beyond the confines of a certain social networking site. You could add your Facebook friend to your friend list on MySpace, for instance. Additionally, your mom, who uses no social networking site, could add your MySpace profile to her mobile phone address book, which will not only have your mobile number, but also a link off to your profile.

The social networking site that achieves this in the biggest way the soonest will not only be locking its users to itself for a long, long time, but will also be the single starting point for all personal communication, regardless of channel. It’s like being the master switchboard for all communication. THAT is a valuable thing to be. Or will it be a social networking site per se? What about a sort of "meta layer" or facilitator of social networking functionality instead?

For instance, what about the carriers? If there is not someone at every carrier at the SVP level or higher who is completely and vehemently fearful of the implications of losing control of the address book, then they run the risk of fucking themselves by misunderstanding the nature of the mobile social networking opportunity and incorrectly embracing the seemingly innocuous functionality that will ultimately result in their downfall. It would be akin to Xerox PARC giving away the GUI that made Apple and Microsoft what they are today.

Perhaps that was a bit strongly worded. ;-) I am provocative because I know that most carrier execs fully understand that they are competing with every form of personal communication, from email and IM to Skype to smoke signals. Yet the default stance is to "put a link on the deck" and treat social networking sites like applications or WAP sites. They may understand that social networking is an opportunity of some sort, but most do not fully get the size of the threat. And the best way to neutralize a threat is to make them part of your army.

Anyway, the silver lining in that the carriers shouldn't even own this whole opportunity because there is a problem for the carriers in guarding the address book, which is that they are all more valuable when they integrate the top 100 social networking sites around the world into the address book. So if they give it up entirely, they lose. If they lock out the SN sites, they lose. If they partner, they win, but if they partner with the wrong company, they lose. The only logical move is to partner with everyone, accrete value to the mobile consumer by doing so, and monetize the hell out of it.

My conclusion: By building an ecosystem of interoperability and providing social communication functions via native device functionality, the social networking sites will enjoy more usage and happier users, the carriers will additionally monetize their base while reducing friction and at the same time checking a potentially competitive threat, the OEMs cross over to service model by facilitating device integration, and ultimately consumers get a better user experience. If executed properly, all ships will rise with the tide.

Posted by Shawn Conahan at 12:24 PM

June 19, 2008

T-Mobile, Bebo and Piczo launched

Yesterday T-Mobile UK officially announced that Intercasting Corp is their social networking category manager with Bebo and Piczo headlining its impressive group of popular social networking providers. (We have been "soft launched" for a few weeks, but now it is official.)

We are obviously very happy to be working with T-Mobile and their set of chosen social networking sites, which we expect to grow over time. There are a few things about this deployment that are notable:
- The My Social Sites link off the main menu of T-Mobile phones goes directly to the ANTHEM white-labeled interface
- Discoverability is high due to this preloading and low friction for consumers
- Consumers see a "dashboard" view of their favorite social sites, making it easy to check messages from multiple providers
- This thick-client approach enables PIM and Camera integration, which empowers consumers in a way that is not possible with WAP

This brings up a good point about WAP: To us, WAP is an important element of any mobile strategy. In fact, the entire ANTHEM solution is agnostic of any presentation layer, which means we can (and do) deploy the social networking category for our carrier partners in WAP, as well. However, the limitations of WAP make it best suited in the social networking vertical for mostly "read-only" deployments. Think of WAP as the widest part of the funnel to provide social networking users with a mobile experience. The more a mobile user centralizes their social networking experience around their mobile device, the more important it is to provide enhanced functionality, which is where a pre-loaded Java or BREW interface comes in.

As more mobile social networking users become "super users," demand for greater functionality will increase. We see it happening now as we look at our server logs, btw. The more functionally complete sites enjoy higher usage and greater customer satisfaction and lower churn. Mobile social networking is on a path to become as addictive to a certain set of consumers as mobile email has become for a certain other set of consumers, and a better interface can make a big difference.

I feel like I should discuss an important point regarding the deployment of social networking on mobile carriers: There is a divergence of interests between carriers and social networking providers.

The wireless telecommunications industry is NOT optimized for deployment and management of mobile data applications. This is a slow-moving industry with long development timelines and high friction to reach consumers. BUT, once you reach those consumers, they are worth their weight in gold.

Social networking sites are web-based companies that owe much of their success to their speed of execution and high-leverage model for deploying services.

When the two industries try to come together, the result is sometimes frustrating for both sides only because they are promoting different agendas. A social networking site may say, “We only want to support WAP because the development effort approximates our web-based model, making it easier to reach as many of our consumers as possible and we do not have the bandwidth to deal with each carrier individually.”

This agenda, while certainly sound, may be at odds with a carrier, which may say, “We want to bring social networking to our users in a way that integrates it as closely as possible into the native handset experience, which requires more effort and longer deployment timelines, but ultimately is better for our consumers.”

Both sides want what is best for THEIR consumers, but the truth is they are sharing the same consumers since the overlap of “social networking user” and “mobile phone user” is significant. These two parties are not at odds with each other in that regard, and the best outcome comes from working together.

We have found that the best solution is a multi-faceted approach. Offer WAP because that appeals to a certain segment of the user base, and also offer applications and device integration to address other user segments and further position social networking as a highly discoverable and usable feature.

The bizarre observation here is that preloading and device integration are incredibly significant value drivers, and instead of begging for this kind of placement, certain social networking sites have in the past pushed back, not understanding the high value and perhaps assuming the level of effort is not worth it. To that, I can only say that no matter what the effort is, it is worth it. But that is where the ANTHEM platform comes in anyway: A social networking site with mobile plans but not a dedicated mobile development team integrates once and then rides the coattails of the carrier’s plans to deploy the category deeply into its user experience. This is a complete win/win. Both sides benefit tremendously.

Many carriers are now asserting that their strategies for serving the mobile consumer are as important as a social networking site’s strategy for serving their web-based consumer in the mobile environment. They do this by making sure that WAP is an important part of the consumer offering, but also by providing a more feature-rich interface that encourages long-term use, and integration that drives discovery.

T-Mobile is a carrier that fully understands the value of providing a comprehensive consumer offering and we are proud to be serving them. With their commitment to T-Mobile through ANTHEM, Bebo and Piczo have also illustrated their understanding of the importance of a complete offering in the mobile space that engages their users almost as fully as they do on the web, and we are happy to be serving them, as well.

Posted by Shawn Conahan at 10:40 AM

May 28, 2008

User-generated Content and the Future of Mobile Media

Here is a link to the full version of the presentation I gave this morning at Qualcomm's BREW conference, entitled User Generated Content and the Future of Mobile Media. If your conscience allows, feel free to plagiarize the parts of this presentation that are obviously mine. For content that is obviously someone else's, maybe you shouldn't. (You shouldn't anyway, but since I don't personally care, I give you permission. In any case, proper attribution will get you good karma.)

If you have questions or comments or want me to deliver this presentation at your conference/meeting/class/retreat/bar mitzvah, you can email me.

I cannot get Powerpoint to respect file associations even when I attempt to embed video and audio, so below are the links to the videos in the presentation. Feel free to reassociate them yourself.
Cat flushing toilet
Welcome to the future
Green day Oasis
Live the Flavor
Nokia cat
Saddam
Sand

Posted by Shawn Conahan at 03:31 PM

March 13, 2008

I think the Mobile Media Era comes next

AOL is buying Bebo. That's further proof that social networking at least factors in the future of the traditional media company model. This week I received validation that mobile is not far behind.

This week we presented at the Montgomery Technology Conference in Santa Monica. The format, aside from the very informative content track, is essentially a marketplace of startups, buyers and investors. Michael, Jamie and James sure know how to put on a productive conference, and they sure as hell know how to throw a party. (I have incriminating pictures to prove it. Just kidding. Not really.)

The most interesting meetings we had this week were the ones with media companies. Based on what I learned, the very definition of what a media company will be in the future is now completely in question. Broadly speaking, the media companies we met with see themselves in the “audience” business, which includes in various combinations the following key elements:
- content
- distribution
- audience
- advertising
- direct revenue

I guess it really is pretty simple on the surface of it, but it gets fascinating when you hear the visions and aspirations of these very different players in the same space. The universal aspiration seems to be “engage the audience no matter where they are.” People literally only have so many hours per day to be an audience, and of course the goal of any media company of any sort is to gain the largest possible share of an audience and its time and attention. So say you are a newspaper publisher and you see your audience leaving your medium in favor of the web. What do you do? You redefine your business from “newspaper” and engage that audience on the web. This is ostensibly why Time Warner bought AOL at the time. Ok, so now say you are an internet portal and you are losing your audience to a closed community you cannot reach. You further redefine your business from “content” to “communication” to further engage that audience. This is ostensibly why AOL is buying Bebo.

We spoke with a few different media companies and of course asked the same question: “So why are you interested in talking to Intercasting Corp?” And the universal response was, “Because engaging the mobile audience is an important part of our future.” Of course, we fully believe this as well, but 2008 is the first year that I am hearing a universal commitment to “engaging the mobile audience” from all media companies. (Viacom is a partner of ours and they had this vision over a year ago.)

I did not use it in my presentation this week, but the movement I see toward a Mobile Media Era is best described in the Shawn Conahan’s Media Eras Infographic. Catchy title. I pulled this together a couple of years ago to compare the differences between the media eras we have seen in the last century. When I talk about it, I give it these labels:
Broadcasting (TV)
Multicasting (Cable)
Singlecasting (Internet)
Intercasting (Mobile)

The key distinction I make about the concept of “intercasting” and why I think it is descriptive of the Mobile Media Era that we seem to be entering is the fact that the mobile phone is the first device to have a camera and be always connected. This means the flow of media in the Mobile Media Era goes in a different direction (namely upstream) than it has gone in previous media eras.

To simplify, compare it to the cable model. John Malone built a media empire by being the gatekeeper between consumers and the television programming they wanted to reach. Cable is a “downstream” model, where consumers sit back and let the MTV wash over them. Being the exclusive distribution point is not unlike having a license to print money. Between 500 channels and the hundreds of millions of people they want to reach is a lucrative business model.

But what happens when media is moving “upstream” instead? Invert the cable model and you have the media company of the future. If John Malone were starting today, he would see hundreds of millions of ordinary people like you and me sending our pictures and videos from our mobile phones to…where? How about roughly 500 destinations, including Bebo, MySpace, Flickr and wherever else people communicate using their personal media? Just like you cannot mandate which channels people watch on TV, you cannot control where people will send and share their photos and videos. But if there is a manageable universe of destinations, (the same way 500 or so channels is a manageable universe in the cable model) then being the broker of all of those transactions is every bit as valuable as being a broker in the cable model.

That is the general premise on which we founded Intercasting Corp, and we have made great progress toward enabling the link between consumers and communities.

Of note lately is the realization by media companies that the upstream model truly matters in their future, and that it starts with the mobile consumer. The example I used in my presentation at the Montgomery conference was that you cannot roll a news van to a tsunami – when something happens, someone with a camera phone is there to capture it. The goal is to be in the stream of the content no matter where the user is sending it so that you can repackage it for other channels. So that tsunami footage from someone’s cell phone can be used in a media company’s broadcast news channel even though the user originally sent it to their Bebo page or to their Photobucket account. (Everything of course subject to the proper terms of service agreements, etc.)

The point is that the traditional media model is being augmented by an inversion of itself due to the popularity of social networking. “User-generated content” is really just a form of communication the same way that “mass media” is just a form of communication. It just happens that before social networking, the distribution friction of user-generated content was too high. Media companies like News Corp or AOL recognizing the importance of user-generated content by buying MySpace or Bebo represents the brilliant first step toward enabling the consumer. The next frontier is establishing the link between the mobile consumer – at the nexus of content creation – and the myriad destinations through which all the world’s content will eventually be shared. That so many traditional media companies are seeing the importance of the mobile audience is very exciting.

Posted by Shawn Conahan at 03:38 PM

January 07, 2008

Activity vs. productivity

I love the Consumer Electronics Show, but not because I ever get any real work done there. I love it because I personally love consumer electronics. I love seeing high technology applied to such frivolity as portable music and theater-sized television. Sometimes I speak on a panel or something to give me an excuse to go, but really I would go for a day anyway just for fun.

A month ago we started getting emails: “Are you guys gonna be at CES? We’d like to get together there.” So anyway, now we’re going for some legitimate reasons.

A friend of mine called last week: “Hey are you gonna be at CES?” I replied, “I have never had a productive meeting at CES. There is a lot of activity, but not a lot of productivity.” I think this may be true of all tradeshows. While I have definitely had important meetings at CES, CTIA, etc., they are always over breakfast, lunch or dinner, and in the case of CTIA, at the MTV party over rap music, gin ‘n juice and hot women who may be working, but clearly not in our industry. Productivity only happens when you have focused time and attention to really do some actual work. For that, you have to fly to Overland Park or Basking Ridge or Little Rock or whatever fine part of our great nation your business takes you to.

Since that conversation with my friend, I have been thinking a lot about activity vs. productivity as it relates to our business of mobile social networking. Mobile applications in general either:
A) Save time (this is productivity, like email) or
B) Waste time (this is activity, as in games and moporn)

Much of the mobile communication experience is about filling holes in your schedule with activity or productivity. When you are next on some form of public transportation, look around at the people either thumbing away on their blackberries or scrolling through their music lists.

The best mobile applications both save time AND waste time. As a result, they evolve the personal communication experience itself. Social networking is the biggest opportunity in the mobile space because it is as much about productivity as it is about activity. From an adult using Linked-In to a college kid using MySpace and at every point in between, social networking can be made more available and more immediate in the mobile space. It is already an important trend and we have not even seen the tip of the iceberg yet.

I assume the detractors who are banning social networks from school campuses see the activity part of the equation clearly, but perhaps not the productivity part. Would it be at all useful to engage political science students by using the MySpace/MTV presidential debates as a teaching tool? I think so.

I further assume these are the same people who propose banning mobile phones from school campuses. While it is true that mobile phones and social networking sites can be used together to waste a great deal of time, (which is not a bad thing, depending) it is equally true that they can be used together to greatly enhance productivity.

Email is a massively productive tool, but it also facilitates an even greater volume of spam. Does that make it any less of a tool? No. In fact, it makes it more of a tool, because it feels more like a communication platform than a rigidly verticalized application. We are simply seeing an evolution of personal communication. In three years, mobile phones will have built-in social communication capabilities as ubiquitously as they have cameras today.

This is going to be a big year for Intercasting Corp. We will be building on our momentum, which last year focused on distribution, to evolve the native personal communication experience. We have some exciting projects currently under development that will present the next layer of value of the ANTHEM platform. As those happen, I will discuss them here. Also, we have several more high-profile SNS partners integrating now, a new UI, and a long list of carrier deployments, all of which we will be announcing over the next several months.

Posted by Shawn Conahan at 11:01 AM

October 18, 2007

Upcoming speaking events

Just FYI, Derrick and I are speaking at some events in case you are going to be there and want to meet us, see some demos, etc.

Monday, Oct 22 5:00pm
Mobile Entertainment Live
Social Networking
Moscone Room 301

Tuesday, Oct 23 4:00pm
CTIA SF
Lifestyle on the Run: Taking Social Networking Mobile
Moscone Room 250

Mobile Monday Los Angeles 6:30pm 29th
Whatever - not sure. Derrick will be there though.

Tuesday, Oct 30 10:45am
Digital Hollywood
Personalized Mobile Experience – Social Networking: Breakthroughs in Messaging, Music, Video Capabilities & Advertising

Saturday, Nov 10 11:30am
Monaco Media Forum
Into Thin Air: Mobile Clicks

Friday, Nov 16 12:20pm
Mobile Broadband Americas
Strategies for capitalizing on the latest trends in user generated content

Posted by Shawn Conahan at 01:45 PM

October 01, 2007

Decoupling social networking

Not only do I think Facebook’s $10 billion valuation is far from ridiculous, I believe their future value exceeds that of Google.

Simply put, Communication is more valuable than Search. According to Netcraft, there were just over 135,000,000 websites on the internet as of September 2007. Does that seem low to you? It did to me. It is a respectable number, but not inconceivable. I mean, the internet is supposed to be unfathomably huge, but the total number of websites has fewer commas in it than Mark Cuban’s net worth. That means that Google, for all of its tremendous value, is deriving that value by enabling people to search for a reasonably small number of websites.

Maybe I’m looking at the wrong side of the equation, you might say. It’s not how many websites there are, but how many people are looking for them. Ok, the total number of PCs crossed the 1 billion mark earlier in 2007, but how many of them are connected to the internet?

It turns out that number is maybe less than half. Or at least, the number of hosts connected to the internet was as high as 489,774,269. This methodology looks like it provides a reasonable proxy.

So, given the world’s estimated population of 6,602,224,175 in July 2007, (CIA factbook) the internet is sort of smallish.

Well, it is smallish, anyway, compared to the number of people in the world who want to communicate. How big is that number? I am guessing it is around 6,602,224,175, but the real question is how many of those people want for their communication to be facilitated for them in some way? There are about 1.3 billion landline telephones in the world and maybe 1.5 billion TVs. Is that a sign that people want to communicate and will pay for it to be facilitated?

Facebook wants to own what they call the “social graph,” which is like saying they want to own your friend list, and by extension, every friend list of every friend in your friend list. Facilitating all that communication will create value.

Do you make more calls, send more emails, send more IMs and post more comments in a day than you search for websites? I do.

Now think about the communication value chain. Where, as a consumer, do you start when you want to communicate with someone? With your contact list. What is a contact list? An address book in your email client. A buddy list on IM. A PIM on your mobile phone. A friend list on your social networking site.

Right. The onramp to the internet is search, and that is very valuable, but the onramp to communication is your contact list, and that is even more valuable. And that, along with the persistent linkages between contacts, is the social graph.

A one-stop utility that facilitates all communication would be more valuable than a one-stop utility that facilitates all web searches. So by my logic Facebook deserves their $10 billion valuation on their next round. But if that is true, then you have to step back and look at the entire space and place a value on it, as well. Where will the value get created in the future? Why will it get created? If there is a single dominant player, who are the others?

Google may account for about 64% of the search space, but that means there is 36% of the market that someone else owns, and we are talking about real money. So even when you take Yahoo and Microsoft out, even the smallest players like Ask or AltaVista, still today, in the shadow of Google and while they are on their way out, are generating real value.

What I mean about decoupling social networking.
“Social networking” is somewhat, but not inextricably, connected to two things: “The Internet” and “Community.” To unlock the truly massive potential value of social networking, it must be decoupled from these two shackles.

Decoupling social networking from the Internet
First of all, there are 2.7 BILLION active mobile phones in the world today, compared to the less than 500 million internet-connected PCs. Any social networking site that is currently ignoring mobile is doing so at their peril. It is no longer a valid argument that “your core competency is on the web” or that “the carriers are difficult to deal with.” You are in the business of facilitating communication. There are 2.7 billion people communicating with their mobile phones. It is time to recognize the overlap in that Venn Diagram.

More importantly, if you are NOT a social networking site, it is time to recognize the mobile space as a way to leapfrog the internet. Perhaps you are a big media company and you really wanted to buy MySpace but you missed out on that deal. Don’t feel too bad: Remember at the time you thought it was a ridiculous amount of money to spend? Only now does it seem like the steal of the century, particularly given Facebook’s valuation. Mobile represents an opportunity that is at least 5 times the size of the web-based social networking market.

And, the opportunity is growing at a rapid clip. Did you see the September 15th 2007 cover of WirelessWeek? "Social Nets Catch Mobile Users." Monica Alleven wrote a great overview story that indicates that while MySpace is important to wireless carriers, the market opportunity for other players is wide open because users care about mobile functionality at least as much as they care about brands, and the mobile space is not the internet. (Most of the social networking sites listed on the cover are being powered by Intercasting Corp, btw.)

This means that if you have a compelling offering (and every media company, for instance, does) and you can reach a mobile audience in a social context, there is an opportunity to capture your share of the wireless market if you do it correctly.

But that brings up a good question. How do you do it correctly? “Does that mean I have to become the largest social networking site on the web and then go to the mobile space?” I don’t think so, because there is a second kind of decoupling in store for social networking.

Decoupling social networking from Community
Most social networking sites are focused on becoming “the largest” site, assuming somewhat correctly that audience size drives ad revenue, which is the business model of choice. The problem with the ad model is that the inventory, created by a site’s users, grows at such a rapid clip that it is difficult to create scarcity. This drives CPMs down. Also, this kind of audience isn’t really an “audience” like that of a million people watching a TV show that you can interrupt with your ad. Social networking sites are about communication, and the last thing a user wants to do is click off of the site to take a car insurance rate quiz or whatever.

I don’t disagree with the ad-based business model at all because it is working to some degree, I just know that there are inherent difficulties. Interestingly enough, the prime real estate on social networking sites is powering search, because the larger the community is, the harder it is to find what you are looking for.

But what if you moved the value of social networking over one link on the value chain? Why not provide users a portable profile they can take into any community? Then let them interact with anyone inside any number of communities, and attach those relationships to their contact list, too. Now for extra points make it mobile and interface directly into an active PIM on the device, which is now a “social browser” that enables everyone to communicate in the context they desire and incorporates such things as media sharing, camera integration, etc. By recognizing that “social networking” is about facilitating communication and “community” is the context in which people communicate, you can win, and by executing primarily in the mobile space where there are the most potential active users, you can win big.

This is essentially what I see happening in 2008. The rush to become “the largest” site will be replaced by the rush to become the first link on the communication value chain. So who is rushing?

Who isn’t? Like I said before, owning this position is like becoming the Google of personal communication. Interestingly, it doesn’t necessarily have to belong to a social networking player, though they certainly all have an advantage. In this group, Facebook is the horse I would bet on – they are already positioned as a communication utility and not a destination.

How about media companies? They have the most to gain, but typically recognize the opportunities later, though Newscorp has proven to everyone just how nimble a big media company can be, and Viacom’s recent Tagworld deal that will wrap social networking around their web properties is another good example of a big media company that can move quickly if it wants to.

Infrastructure providers like Ericsson are the unsung heroes of mobile communication. It makes perfect sense for them to work their way up the value chain a link or two and get a little closer to the consumer.

OEMs should be doing more, but so far the only real boat-rocking strategy has come from Nokia, which is turning itself into a software company. Their recent acquisition spree is an indication that they are in for wholesale change. I haven’t seen the positioning yet, but I imagine they will go from “device manufacturer” to “communication utility” soon enough.

GAMY. Google, AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo ::should:: own this category among them, but perhaps they are faced with the Innovator’s Dilemma, unable to escape the organizational inertia that their legacy products tie them to. Maybe, maybe not. I know a senior guy at AOL, for instance, for whom this blog post will resonate, but is one guy enough to move such a large company?

Lastly, there are the Carriers. They are already the gatekeepers of personal communication. They own the customer relationship, and all services flow through them. They can decide what application gets offered and what doesn’t. They can, and do, block IP addresses when a company tries to go around them. It is a small evolution for any carrier to become the “social browser.” Tweak the PIM a little bit, integrate the camera and bring messaging up to the top level on the device (like T-Mobile’s MyFaves) and they win. Many of our carrier partners are doing exactly what I just wrote, too, but I think many other carriers are still seeing “social networking” as a third-party application that they have to offer rather than as a communication construct they have to own – or else.

In conclusion, there really is no clear winner in the decoupled mobile social networking space at the moment, and any of the categories I mention has a good shot at owning the onramp to personal communication. Much will depend on strategic execution.

Posted by Shawn Conahan at 08:34 AM

July 20, 2007

Intercasting Corp named AlwaysOn Top 100 Private Company

This week we were selected as one of the hottest private companies by AlwaysOn. Read the overview and see the rest of the list here.

On the list this year are a bunch of companies for which we have a ton of respect, so we are happy to be in good company. I personally really like Bebo, Gaia, Loopt, Topix, 4INFO and Digit Wireless. (The latter has an alphanumeric keypad that really is better than a standard numeric keypad - very innovative.) Previous AO100 companies include Skype, YouTube, Facebook, DivX, TellMe, LinkedIn, BitTorrent and Glu Mobile.

Posted by Shawn Conahan at 02:04 PM

June 21, 2007

Today's presentation

My presentation from today at the BREW '07 conference, "User-generated Content and the Future of Mobile Media," can be downloaded here.

Before you click on that link, keep in mind that it is a gigantic uncompressed powerpoint file (41MB) and also that the embedded video usually doesn't work because of how powerpoint likes to point at files instead of embed them. (Or, more likely, because I simply don't know how to use powerpoint effectively.)

Feel free to plagiarize any content that was obviously created by me, however the 3rd-party content that I used for example I cannot grant permission to, so use your best judgement. (Though it is all attributed, so feel free to contact the owner directly.)

UPDATE: (6/21) To the scary guy who accosted me after my presentation: I was not "bashing" the media industry. I was explaining that the new media industry and the traditional media industry are colliding, and it is causing friction. The fact that the traditional media industry is in some ways helping its own demise is not my problem. If consumers prefer to get their "truth" from journalists who lie or from ordinary people who lie is irrelevant, but the point is that I EXPECT journalists NOT to lie, plagiarize or fabricate.

UPDATE #2: (6/21) I am sitting here with Mark Ewen, who just pointed out that tonight's Goo Goo Dolls concert is on the U.S.S. Midway. Which is a carrier. And there will be wireless carriers there. And then the jokes started: "Carriers on a carrier. har har." "Does this carrier have wireless?" "They could change the name to the "U.S.S. RTT." He thought this was worth blogging about. I think we are an industry full of geeks.

Posted by Shawn Conahan at 07:58 AM | Comments (5)

June 11, 2007

Digital Hollywood tomorrow and BREW next week

Just a quick note: Tomorrow I will be speaking on a panel at Digital Hollywood in Santa Monica. (The panel is about mobile social networking.) If you are going to be there and would like to see the commercial release version of ANTHEM, send me an email and we'll get together. I am going to try to stick around until Wednesday, but at the very least I will be there all day Tuesday.

Then next week on the 20th-22nd, Qualcomm's BREW conference is in San Diego and Sean and Derrick and I will be hanging around the hotel having meetings and doing demos, etc., if you want to see the BREW version of ANTHEM. If you are going to be attending the BREW conference sessions, consider coming to my presentation - "User-Generated Content and the Future of Mobile Media." This is a totally non-self-serving hour-long presentation in which I never mention our company or our products. It is a broad overview of media, user-generated content, the consumer market and megatrends affecting everything. Qualcomm let me do it last year and graciously invited me back this year, so I shined up the presentation and added a lot of new content. I think people liked it last year. It is an honest treatment of the future of media, complete with profanity, illegal use of copyrighted material, inappropriate references and animal cruelty. (I am not kidding, and it all makes sense and illustrates my points - trust me.) Anyway, if you can spare an hour, I would love to have you attend.

Also, a couple of points I am trying to find the time to blog about:
- InfoSpace sold off their content division to FunMobility. Adam is a smart guy and will do great things with it, I am sure. And I think bravo to Steve for focusing InfoSpace on their core infrastructure strength, which has always been in their DNA.
- Sprite Mobile Social Networking. I got like 20 emails saying, "Did you see this?" "Yes, I also get moconews, so you can assume from now on that I see the same shit you do at the same time you see it." (I didn't actually send an email to anyone saying that, but I mean, don't all roads lead to Rome?) Anyway, I was really excited when I saw this because it is the first time a really big brand has embraced the "construct of mobile social networking" which is one of my favorite memes. I have a lot of questions and some speculations, but just in case I don't have time over the next week or so to do some digging and blog about it, just know that at least I wanted to. ;-)

Posted by Shawn Conahan at 06:04 PM

December 28, 2006

I am speaking at CES

You know, Vegas stopped being fun for me a long time ago, but I always look forward to CES. I just like seeing abundant consumer electronics all in one place. I am not a gadget freak per se, I just like the sensory overload of seeing so much all at once. CES is exciting. It feels like progress.

Anyway, I am speaking on two panels at CES:

Monday, January 8
10:30am - 11:30am
Personalized Mobile Experience – Social Networking: Breakthroughs in Messaging, Music, Video Capabilities and Advertising
LVCC North Hall, Room N261
Moderator: Rochelle Grayson, Co-President, Business, Elastic Entertainment
Panelist: Courtney Jane Acuff, Associate Director, Denuo
Panelist: Bryan Biniak, General Partner, Providence Ventures
Panelist: Shawn Conahan, CEO, Intercasting
Panelist: Sachin Deshpande, Head of Developer Relations, Qualcomm Internet Services
Panelist: Morgan Guenther, Chairman and CEO, Airplay Network, Inc.
Panelist: Ashock Narasimhan, Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder, July Systems
Panelist: Raj Singh, Co-Founder, VP, Product Management, Veeker
Panelist: Mark Young, Head of Business Development and Strategy, Disney Mobile

This is a great topic, and I know several of the guys speaking and am sure it will be interesting. But yes, that is 9 people. Assume we start on time. The intro from the moderator is 5 minutes, then figure 2 minute intros from each panelist. That's 1/3 of the discussion. If the moderator asks two questions and gives every panelist 2.5 minutes each to give a thoughtful answer, that is 40 minutes, and we will be 1 minute over our allotted time. Those better be very important questions.

I think since we have enough people, instead of talking we should break into an impromptu game of jai-alai. That used to be big in Vegas in the '70's.

Then, later that day I am speaking on another panel, which looks pretty interesting to me:

Monday, January 8
1:30pm - 2:30pm
Making Media Meaningful: The Consumer as Content Producer
LVCC South Hall, Room S106-107
Moderator: John Barrett, Director, Research, Parks Associates
Panelist: Mark Brenner, CEO, vidavee
Panelist: Shawn Conahan, CEO, Intercasting
Panelist: Keith Richman, CEO, Break.com
Panelist: Bill Stone, Chief Operating Officer, Amp'd Mobile, Inc.
Panelist: Robert Summer, Executive Chairman, iMesh

Come enjoy, won't you?

Posted by Shawn Conahan at 03:48 PM

October 21, 2006

Someone likes my blog, plus events: Digital Hollywood and Wireless Influencers

This is nice. Apparently Fierce Wireless is doing a "vote for your favorite wireless industry blog" contest. I just got an email from Brian Dolan at fierce:

FierceWireless has always leveraged an aggregator/analysis content model, and as such we rely on blogs like yours for breaking news, industry gossip and leaked documents/photos. So we decided to put together a list of the best blogs in the wireless industry, which we’ll feature prominently on our website. One of your loyal readers has nominated your blog as one of the best covering the wireless industry! We’ve added your site to our nominee list so that others can vote for you to make the top 20.

I doubt I'd win, but vote anyway so I can claim status as "Wireless Industry Top 20 Blogger According To Fierce Wireless (Another Wireless Industry Blog)" Here's the clicky they sent:

So anyway, there's that.

Also, I am speaking at Digital Hollywood on Monday, w00t! Our panel session is: Social Networking on Mobile & on the Web: Content, Communications and Monetizing

And aside from my usual platitudes, it looks like a bunch of smart guys will be there:

Shawn Conahan, CEO, Intercasting
Mike Koss, Head Cheerleader, Blue Dot
William Volk, CEO, MyNuMo.com
Aaron Cohen, CEO and founder, Bolt Media
Michael Jones, founder and president, Userplane
Michael Grossi, VP of Business Development, HELIO, Inc.
Dorrian Porter, CEO, Mozes, Inc., Moderator

Okay, then the following Tuesday I am speaking at Rutberg's Wireless Influencers 2006. Here's the agenda.
That panel is called: Which consumer-generated services have parallels in mobile and which do not?

It looks like I'll be joining some more smart people on this panel:
Vivek Badrinath, Executive Vice President, Technology, Products and Innovation, Orange Group
David Payne, Senior Vice President and General Manger, CNN.com
Michael Yanover, Business Development Agent, Creative Artists Agency

Facilitator: Amy Francetic, Industry Consultant

If you are going to be at either of those events, come see my panels. And if want to see our cool new product, let me know.

Posted by Shawn Conahan at 10:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 01, 2006

User-Generated Content Presentation from BREW 2006

Here is the link to my presentation from today: "User-Generated Content and the Future of Mobile Media."

It is 21 MB, so be careful when you download it.

Some of it may or may not make a ton of sense without the narrative. If Qualcomm is producing a transcript, I will post it at some point if I can get my hands on it.

Feel free to use any content in this presentation that was obviously created by me - I only ask that you give me proper attribution.

UPDATE: (June 02)

For whatever reason, the videos embedded in the powerpoint are not working for some (maybe all?) people. Sorry about that. I swear sometimes I want to send a thank you email to Bill Gates for helping my Apple stock perform so well.

Anyway, I don't have time to f*ck around with powerpoint, so here are links to the videos in my presentation:

Chuck Olsen, Welcome to the Future movie
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/7821

Ferenc Cakó sand animation
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2885454285452719231

Green Day/Oasis Mashup
http://www.nauticaltech.com/~josh/greenoasis/

Nokia cat fan video
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/catfan.html

And here is a bonus for your trouble. I was originally going to include this video in my presentation instead of the Nokia cat video as an example of user-generated truth in advertising. The point I was going to make was that consumers can turn your image into something VERY different from what you want, and that is potentially negative. In the end, I went with the Nokia video simply because it is more humorous.

VW Polo terrorist video
http://www.snopes.com/photos/advertisements/vwpolo.asp

UPDATE (June 03)

Apparently, Qualcomm took my presentation and "qualcommized" it. Here is a very lame version of it off of their site.

One of my biggest complaints about the homogenization of presentation tools is that all presentations end up looking alike. That powerpoint paradigm of "Title, bulleted list, white background" does more to make ALL presentations mindnumbingly boring than even the mindnumbingly boring presenters. I purposely make my presentations visually different by using the exact opposite of the powerpoint paradigm to provide my audience a brief escape from the droning boredom that is the product of that tool.

Posted by Shawn Conahan at 07:05 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

May 30, 2006

Upcoming Events

This week is Qualcomm's BREW conference in San Diego. Earth, Wind and Fire is playing this year. Huey Lewis played last year, and the San Diego Business Journal ran a photo of me taking a picture of Huey with my camera phone, which seemed apropos. You may not think you like Earth, Wind and Fire, but you do, and on top of it, you know most of their songs, like Shining Star, September, That's the Way of the World, Serpentine Fire, and of course, Got to Get You into My Life.

This year, Qualcomm gave me an hour to speak so I am giving a presentation called User-Generated Content and the Future of Mobile Media. I am going with a big-picture view of the trends affecting media and consumers. I haven't given a long-form speech in awhile, but if the verbosity of my blog is any indication of my speaking style, I should have no trouble filling up an hour. (I'll try to leave 30 seconds at the end for Q&A.) If you are going to be in San Diego this week, try to come see me speak.

BREW 2006
User-Generated Content and the Future of Mobile Media
Thursday June 1
2:45pm - 3:45pm

Then in a couple of weeks I will be at the O'Reilly Where 2.0 conference. It was really nice of them to invite me to speak, since I was planning to go anyway. I am giving a "lightning round" about mobile social applications using Rabble as a case study on what to do and what not to do. I have five minutes. (I'll try to leave 30 seconds at the end for Q&A. ;-)

Where 2.0
Mobile-enabling the Rabble of the World
Tuesday, June 13
5:50pm - 5:55pm

Later in the Summer is Victor Harwood's Building Blocks 2006. Check out the agenda - I think this is going to be a really good conference. I am speaking on a panel about Mobile Social Networking.

Building Blocks 2006
Social Networking in Mobile: Content, Communications and Monetizing
Tuesday, August 15
12:30 PM - 1:45 PM

Posted by Shawn Conahan at 08:25 AM

March 23, 2006

I am at Dow Jones VentureWire in SF

I am speaking today on a panel called "Where is the mobile phone really headed?" As someone who views the future a little differently, Dow Jones was nice enough to invite me as an industry expert, so I am representing the views of Intercasting Corp. My assertion will be that the opportunities most people see today must be leapfrogged, and the real money is not in content downloads but rather in enhanced forms of communication. Given the comments I am about to make about "2.0" hype, I am going to try to resist the temptation of calling this opportunity "Mobile 2.0." (But between you and me, I think that is exactly what I am going to say.)

Yesterday I attended the afternoon keynote by Genevieve Bell, Anthropologist, People and Practices Research at Intel.

She gave a fascinating presentation on how people use technology around the world.

In India, electricity is scarce. What kind of decisions would you make if the only form of electricity you had was a truck battery? What percentage of your energy would you spend on using your PC to access the internet?

PC-Bangs are fast-growing internet cafes in Korea. Not because people don’t have connectivity at home but because they want certain of their computing experiences to be social, and certain of them to not happen at home.

Rural literacy rates in India are under 50%, and 70% of India’s population lives in rural areas. Infrastructural issues constrain connectivity.

In Indonesia, the concern about universal access across an island archipelago led them to launch an “e-mosque” program because there was greater mosque density than tele-density. Mosques are central to daily life and provide a cultural context for computing.

In Malaysia, Maxis (Malaysia telecom) offers built-in Islamic applications that help users find Mecca. Your phone will ring you five times a day to tell you when it is time to pray. 1.7 billion Muslims worldwide are served by new technologies.

In Africa, there is a 7:1 ratio between mobile connections and land lines. Africa is the fastest growing region for mobile phone adoption. A study found that in certain regions, 95% of calls were not being completed: Users were calling each other for free to indicate certain meaning. If you call someone once and hang up, that means “call me.” If you call twice, it means you’ll be late. Three times might mean there’s an emergency, etc.

It was a reminder that whatever bias you might develop from your experience in your own market should be ignored wholly when you enter another. Similarly, something that is hot in one market may not translate to another. In Japan they eat squid pizza. That isn’t coming to America anytime soon.

Jumping the 2.0 shark
There are a lot of “web 2.0” companies presenting. It’s sort of a cattle call approach: These companies get 10 minutes to give their company presentation to the audience of VCs. It is interesting to me how many companies are NOT looking for funding. So why are they presenting?

Most refer to themselves as a "web 2.0" company. All of the hype is making me wonder: How much more mileage can we really get out of the notion of a “Web 2.0”? As a concept, I admit that I like it. Calling something “2.0” is a simple way to denote that something has evolved to the point that it needs to be looked at as totally different from its predecessor.

“The Web 1.0” was a wild and organic thing built on top of something that existed before. It was essentially the consumer-grade version of the (D)ARPANET and was built upon the basic construct of distributed computing. That and no small amount of irrational exuberance led to “1.0” web businesses built around the efficiency and cost structure of the web.

We soon learned that the only business model the Web 1.0 understood was “broker.” Disintermediation of information-based businesses was the play that ultimately won that game. Stock brokers, real estate brokers, travel agents and many others all got disintermediated to the great benefit to consumers. Even dating sites to some degree disintermediate the local singles bar or your yenta grandmother who wants to introduce you to a nice girl.

And now we are knee-deep in “the two-way web.” If the killer app of the internet is email, then the killer app of the Web 2.0 is communication. Sharing pictures, video, calendars, blogs, profiles, preferences, friends, enemies, events, location or any other piece of multimedia content is the word of the day, and hundreds of companies are cropping up and getting real amounts of VC funding.

I just wonder if the froth is starting to look like the froth we saw during the Web 1.0 gold rush before the business models got fully ironed out. Companies like bbq.com and balls.com (that’s right, they sold balls) were getting funded even after dog food service providers had burned through millions of dollars in funding.

There are some scary similarities today. Read this opinion article from March of 2000, written almost exactly six years ago.

Here is a funny excerpt:

"Obviously, for a dot com, their most important asset is their domain name. So what do these morons do? They create artificial, nonsense words! Instead of something simple like cars.com, they get vehix.com. They come up with weird things like onvia.com. These names are hard to remember and impossible to spell!"

Now check this out:
Web 2.0 or Star Wars Character?

I got a 42. Kinda sad for me.

Here is another excerpt from the March 2000 article:

"I'm sick of the hype of 'net companies. Granted, there are many useful things about the Internet, and I firmly believe it will change society in ways we can't begin to comprehend now, but it hasn't happened yet. I predict that eighty percent of the 'net business that exist today won't exist in ten years: the Internet will be completely different by then."

What a seer this guy Marc Zeedar was. I think it is fair to assume that eighty percent of the 2.0 businesses that exist today won’t exist in ten years either. But twenty percent or fewer probably will, and they may be the Google of their age. Let’s wish them luck, but let’s also try not to jump the shark by over-hyping the concept. If you must, post your 2.0 company to the directory of Web 2.0 companies, but decide whether doing so marks your company as one of the eighty percent or one of the twenty percent.

Posted by Shawn Conahan at 11:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 07, 2006

Upcoming conferences

Just fyi, we will be at the following upcoming conferences. If you would like to meet and chat while we are there, please let us know.

SXSW – Derrick will be in Austin speaking on 3/13 about content on the mobile web. He is there through 3/14.

VentureOne Summit, San Francisco 3/22 – 3/23 – Shawn will be speaking about the future of the mobile space.

Digital Hollywood, LA 3/28 - 3/30 – Shawn will be speaking about video, marketing and the next generation of consumer reach.

CTIA, Vegas, Baby. 4/5 – 4/7 – We are not speaking, but we will be waiting in the taxi line outside the convention center for several hours as usual. Have you ever considered scheduling a meeting in the taxi line to make better use of that downtime?

Financial Times Mobile Conference, London 5/8 – 5/9 – Shawn will be speaking about serious content and upstream mobile media. This is an important topic with interesting implications: Do ordinary people eventually disintermediate the stringers and newsmakers?

BREW 2006, San Diego 5/31 – 6/2 – Right in our backyard! We should really think about hosting a party or something. Of course, there is really no need since BREWfest is always such a great time.

Posted by Shawn Conahan at 09:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 29, 2005

Europe Trip Report

What’s this? Another ridiculously long post from Shawn Conahan? (Sorry. Look, I post infrequently, so try to pretend that I provide the same amount of content as someone who posts every day but is less...verbose than I.) So, I am back from Europe and learned a few things. One of which is that I am going to be spending a lot of time out of the country next year. You can also look forward to Rabble going international fairly soon, possibly in Q4. Overall it was a very productive trip. Here is my synopsis:

1.) The Youth Segment doesn’t want to be pushed content and hates being marketed to
2.) Blogging is mostly an American phenomenon
3.) Carriers and customers want applications that extend and enhance communication
4.) Filmmakers will embrace the mobile space and see it as a new creative medium
5.) Airport security in Spain is scarily lacking

1.) Kids are smarter than you and me
First of all, the Mobile Content World thing, was VERY worth going to. You should go next year.

The panel I was on, Reaching Out To Youth, was full of very smart guys. (And then also me.) Al Gosling is about my age and very dialed in to the youth segment. Graham Thomas from T-Mobile was very pragmatic about their product offering, and I liked what he said about providing a balanced and useful set of applications that drive consumer value. Eric Mika from Variety is one of the most capable moderators I have seen in a long time. He did a great thing. After we all were done waxing philosophical about how to capture the imagination of the youth market, he got an actual panel of kids on stage. It was brilliant. On our panel, there was a lot of conjecture about what kids want, which was (predictably) fairly wrong according to the kid panel. I remember saying that there is no “youth segment” and that kids are just like adults, only smarter. Treat them with respect and give them tools and they’ll figure out what to do with them. Try to pander to them and you fail. Much of the kid panel confirmed this.

Some examples:

- Kids don’t need or want an “iPod phone.” One guys said, “My current iPod holds 5000 songs, so even if your iPod phone holds 3000 songs, that’s still a bit of a disappointment.”

- Kids don’t need or want to download music onto their phones. None of them said they would do this at any price. Al asked them what if they could get the top 5 songs that week for free, and some of them said they might check it out, but then they asked why would that be useful to them. I think we as an industry have come to see music as a valuable commodity that everyone wants. The formula may not be that simple. Ringtones are popular because they are personalization, not because they are music.

- Kids use their phones for communication. This was an important point, because on the adult panel, there was some discussion about mobile TV and the mobile phone as an entertainment device. That was totally unappealing to the kid panel. “Believe it or not,” said one of the panelists, “we don’t have to watch television ALL the time.” WAP was generally not used by these panelists, citing a poor user experience and general unsureness about how they were being billed for it. The one occasional exception was football scores.

- Kids are sensitive to cost. Trying to get a share of their wallet is worth doing, but trying to get them to increase the size of their wallets is a recipe for failure.

- Kids are suspicious of any offer. They hate any kind of ringtone offer and assume they are scams. One panelist said that if we as an industry could get all of the television commercials advertising “just text 1234 to 5555 to get your free ringtone” off the air, we would be doing everyone a great service. They assume that any time you give authorization for any kind of payment or permission, there is some fine print somewhere that is going to cost them dearly in the form of some difficult-to-cancel subscription.

- Kids form social hives. Paraphrasing: “One person may download a ringtone and pay for it, but then it gets sent around to everyone of their friends via bluetooth, etc.” The same was true for any other kind of content.

There was more, but you get the idea. The youth segment is more intelligent than a lot of marketers would give them credit for being.

2.) Blogging is the sizzle, the steak is communication
To the people I met with, “Blogging” has little meaning in Europe. “Social Networking” means nothing except in Brazil. “MoSoSo” (short for Mobile Social Software that someone came up with) got mostly laughs when trying to describe the concept of user-generated content and networking, as did “LMNO.” I suppose we don’t need another acronym. “Community” and “communication” are all that’s required. After that, just put your app in someone’s hand and if it works well, the rest of the meeting goes fine.

This got me thinking about what blogging really is. Some people would argue that it is about self-publication. I think that is only half the equation. The reason people publish is to increase their social capital, whether personal, professional or otherwise. I am writing this now because I know that someone I have never met with whom I want to be in business is reading it and if it resonates properly, then will send me an email. There is an assumed interactivity that really makes blogging (or self-publishing in some form) part of the required toolkit to make social networking useful and relevant. What you build around it is what makes it useful. When thinking about mobile community and communication applications, keep in mind that simply one-way publishing is not enough. Nor is “social networking” in the strict sense of the word where there is no content to transact, only a personal network to leverage. Furthermore, chat, while very useful, is only a part of the equation. Overall, “Blogging” is a term that means different things to different people, but I think the winning formula is to look at blogging as a part of a larger ecosystem that forms a communication loop. I illustrated this before in the user-generated content value chain.

Anyway, free advice: If you are going to Europe with a mobile blogging application, don’t call it that. ;-)

3.) Communication and Community are the future of data apps
Data usage is creeping up to around 10% of revenue for carriers, which presents an interesting challenge. When replacing voice revenue, ideally you would replace it at a higher margin or (if equal or lower margin) higher volume. The mix of data applications a carrier offers is therefore very important when managing growth. If you offer all downloadable games, you run the risk of selling a bunch of additional high-margin revenue one month, but then the following month risk zero incremental revenue because all of those users are playing their games offline and not utilizing the network. The business model of a carrier, oversimplified, is this: Carriers build the network, their subscribers use the network, and they pay the carrier for using the network. Of course, applications work the same way. The data applications that have the highest potential penetration (and therefore potential usage) are the ones that appeal to the widest audience. Gaming, for instance, has an inherently limited market and is highly segmented among genres. The Sports category is much larger, but still limited, when you consider it is generally dominated by a male demographic. The one category of application that everyone can use is communication. Mobile IM will eventually surpass SMS in total revenue contribution. SMS, MMS, picture sharing, blogging, social networking, community, scheduling and dating applications all do basically the same thing, which is facilitate communication, and that is the apparently high on the agenda of network operators the world over.

The carriers’ basic product, voice communication, hasn’t changed much since it was introduced other than conference calling, voicemail and some other small things. I think this is because it was, from the start, the most elegant application it was going to be. It’s simplicity to value ratio is extremely high. The only way to improve it really is to change the interface, which means data. If we have been limited in our communication by the voice interface, now we have myriad options for improving it. If a picture says a thousand words, then send a picture. You couldn’t really do that a few years ago but now you can, and a whole lot more. Hence our definition of LMNO – that people will communicate using multimedia and distribution will be via a series of overlapping personal networks.

Anyway, I thought it was worth noting that all the people I talked to said they are not returning calls of ringtone and game application providers, but companies like ours are very interesting to them. Furthermore, Rabble, even in its 1.0 limited incarnation, really blew them away with its robustness and usability. (“Wait til you see 2.0,” I told them.)

4.) A diversion to San Sebastian resulted in interesting conversation
While at the San Sebastian Film Festival last week, I had a chance to chat with a small group of directors over beers and pinxtos. We were discussing whether the camera phone was a viable film production tool and whether the mobile device was a likely medium for filmed entertainment in the future. I thought I would face fierce opposition from these types of people, thinking they would view the traditional notion of filmed entertainment as too much of an artform to render on (or with) a mobile device. Quite the opposite. Many of them already shoot professionally with consumer-grade DV cameras. These guys just want to tell stories. It doesn’t matter if the story is 2 hours long or 2 minutes long. They also generally liked the idea of working with a more challenging environment. I showed them Rabble and after they got the general idea, their imaginations started to wander. While they didn’t think Rabble was the ideal interface for creating the kind of content they would want to create, (more editing features would be required to make them happy) they liked it as a distribution mechanism due to the virality of personal linking and the fact that a channel can represent a person (like a director) and can contain an unlimited amount of content. Some ideas that came up were about creating serial programs on a weekly basis like little 2-minute cliffhangers. They also said they would be keen to see more direct and instant feedback in such an environment since it’s possible. From there, we got onto interactivity. Could a film be participative? A director could orchestrate an army of actors with cell phones in a location-aware environment to go out and create the story, which the director could collect in one place on their channel and assemble to tell their story, however impressionistic it seemed to me such a story might be. To me this was just a variation on the “citizen journalist” theme but instead of news, it’s entertainment. There were some other good ideas, and it all helped me to see Media Networking from the perspective of pure artists and creators. I wish you had been there, because I am not doing their level of insight justice. Overall, it was an interesting conversation and good food for thought. Later I thought to myself that even though we have no plans to turn Rabble specifically into a distributed amateur film production engine, it’s not really up to us. We just want to enable Media Networking. We have no bias toward a particular type of media. Our users will tell us how they want to use our product. We are just the facilitators.

5.) Airport security is woefully inadequate in Spain
At the end of my trip I spent a little time in Palma de Mallorca. On the way back, I set off the alarm at the security checkpoint at the Palma aeropuerto. The security guard asked me something possibly in Catalan and I pointed to my watch as if to say, “Maybe this piece of metal set off the alarm.” He seemed to agree, and waved me on without making me go back through the metal detector. I don’t think that is supposed to happen. Is that all it takes to get through airport security in Spain? Nevermind I could have had a glock or a nina stuck down the back of my pants. Just point to your watch and off you go. So now I technically could have boarded my flight (Iberia flight 8633 to Valencia) with my possible weapon. On the plane, to my amazement, I witnessed one of the passengers get up and go open the cockpit door and start chatting with the pilots. I don’t think that is supposed to happen. I would like it better if the cockpit door were locked and entering the cockpit required some kind of special clearance. Then get this: I took out my camera phone to take a picture of this security breach so I could post it to my Rabble channel and the stewardess comes over and chastizes me because apparently taking pictures on the plane is forbidden. Taking your gun or other weapon through security and onto the plane is ok, and getting up and opening the door to the cockpit is ok, but taking a picture es prohibido. Like my cell phone signal is going to interfere with the delicate cockpit electronics and crash the plane, but the guy with the gun won't. Good to know.

I know this has nothing to do with mobile media, but I thought you would find it interesting. I know flying is relatively safe and the likelihood of your plane getting hijacked is fairly low, but does that mean we have to make it exceedingly easy to do? I thought I would remind you to take your camera phone with you everywhere and take pictures of this kind of shit when you see it and send it to me so I can lobby for increased security.

Posted by Shawn Conahan at 10:44 AM | Comments (0)

August 08, 2005

We Just Took A $5.5mm Investment

Why have billions when you can have...meelions...
Good news: We just closed a Series A round of VC financing for $5.5mm. The round was split between two great firms, Avalon Ventures in San Diego and Masthead Venture Partners in Boston. These are great firms and really great people to work with, and we regard them as true partners, not just investors.

I cannot say enough good things about our investors. They understand the billion-dollar opportunity here, but are also pragmatic about building value incrementally, every week along the way. On a recent flight to Boston, Steve from Avalon gave me an essay, How To Start A Startup, by Paul Graham in which he said that aside from certain rockstar VC firms that can bring some kind of mythical added value, “Basically, a VC is a source of money. I'd be inclined to go with whoever offered the most money the soonest with the least strings attached.” It is difficult to argue with that logic, but I think there is one more thing that matters the most and that is the ability to believe in your vision.

Our vision is to build a populist media company. We want to reverse the flow of content, distribute it via a series of overlapping personal networks, empower people as producers, enable them on a location-aware grid and redefine media from something that is produced and pushed to consumers in a series of monetization windows to something that is discovered, added to, borrowed from, shared, redistributed and discovered again all to the benefit of millions of people with mobile-connected PMDs in their pockets.

While it happens to be true that Steve at Avalon was the first VC we talked to and we happened to settle on a deal that we thought was fairly founder-friendly, I think the reason for this is that Steve believes in our vision. He introduced us to Masthead, and the guys we met there, Brady, Rich and Dave, all immediately believed in our vision, as well, and we really hit it off. Once we all had alignment on the vision and the path to get there, it was a relatively easy and quick process to get the cash in the bank. (Around 30 days.) VCs are rightfully a skeptical bunch, so having so many more people around the table who are fully committed to delivering on our vision just added a ton of horsepower.

And there’s the money - that adds horsepower, too, and will help us go much faster now. We have several products in development, we are improving Rabble and have a bunch of relationships to deliver on. I know I mentioned before that we are hiring in a big way, but now we can actually afford to pay people. ;-) We hired three people last week, and we have several more positions open in core engineering, handset engineering, product management and business development. We aren’t building a huge team, but we definitely need more exceptionally talented people. If you believe in our vision and want to join us, please drop me a note.

Posted by Shawn Conahan at 09:09 AM | Comments (2)

July 23, 2005

We Are Hiring In A Big Way

Things are going pretty well for us. We have been four full-time people for about a year and we have created a good amount of value. Now we have to expand the team, so we are looking to hire a few great people.

Mobile application development is not for the passive, not for the timid and not for the faint of heart. People who can do this know it is their sheer will that gets the job done. The few elite geeks who embrace the challenge know that you must have serious bawls to get through the day.

We are looking for 3 rock star hackers for core development, (including a senior developer/manager) 2 of the best scary ninja handset developers in the world for some exotic new apps, (think massively multiuser rich media) a ridiculously smart product manager, a caffeinated project manager and a few others in QA, customer support and business development.

Think about your current job. Do you currently work at a mobile application company that has become bloated with business people in blue shirts and khakis that have no vision or direction? Sad. You need a change. You should come work with us in San Diego. (Google for “72 degrees and sunny” and witness the top search result.)

If you are the best at what you do and want to work at a fast-moving startup with other smart people, we would like to talk to you. Glory, honor, a fun work environment and a competitive compensation package with more stock options than you have now are yours if you get the gig. Please send us your resume, a bio, or just a quick note explaining why you are a genius and kick so much ass.

Please click on the link that best describes your skill level:

Powerful you have become, the dark side I sense in you.
Never send a human to do a machine’s job.
All shall love me and despair.

Posted by Shawn Conahan at 12:55 PM | Comments (2)

July 21, 2005

Flipped To Last

Clarifying On My Last Post...
I got a few emails on my last post asking if it was a thinly-veiled attempt to signal to News Corp. that they should buy our platform. When I re-read it, I could understand why someone would think that since I stated that they should add mobility to their offering, and yes, I think our platform would fit. Frankly, we built our platform because it would fit with a great many companies as they turn themselves into LMNOs and we think our services, in a variety of capacities, will be valuable to them.

What I meant was that the media industry is moving inexorably in the direction of the LMNO and I think at some point in the future more companies will be adding mobility to their media strategies.

There is a confluence of trends creating a perfect storm that will change our definition of media: Distributed overlapping personal networks, mobile connected camcorders, high-speed wireless data, open networks, open devices, maturing social networking infrastructure, P2P distribution, unprecendented consumer choice and the power to participate in the set design of media rather than having to sit back passively and let the cable television wash over them all points to this conclusion. (Even if I am the only one who thinks so at the moment. ;-)

I want to completely change the media industry from:

- Low choice, low consumer involvement, manufactured, hit-driven, center-of-network oligopsony

To:

- Broad choice, consumer participative, organic, changeable, personal, edge-of-network populist media enablement

...all while disrupting the current media production and delivery paradigm to the benefit of the incumbent media companies which have much to gain by making this shift while at the same time convincing them that their fear of the future is unwarranted and helping them see that the path to greatness lies in embracing the massive change that technology will bring. (In the same way that the movie industry should have embraced the VCR, the music industry should have embraced the MP3 format and Kodak should have embraced digital photography.)

It is a pretty big vision, but you know – go big or go home. If you shoot for the stars and you fall short and only hit the sky, that's still pretty good considering all the good ideas that never get off the ground. My point is that there is a very long value chain that has to be strung together to create the LMNOs and the industry that they will support and from which they will profit. There is no way that with our little company we will be able to do it all on our own. But we are still working on our piece of the puzzle because the larger vision is what is important. When I see major companies also evolving their business models in the right direction, working on their piece of the puzzle, I get excited at the show of progress.

I Want To Create Value For Consumers. That Is All.
Pick up a copy of this month’s Fast Company. I am quoted in the article "Flipped to Last" which is basically about what I am discussing. Senior Editor David Lidsky was doing a retrospective on Jim Collins’ 2000 essay “Built to Flip” and wanted to get my perspective as an entrepreneur. David asked why entrepreneurs don’t aspire to “built to last” status attributed to the greatest entrepreneurs among us like Franklin, Edison, Ford and Jobs.

I explained that it isn’t that entrepreneurs do not want to build companies that have lasting value, and indeed many are doing so right now. It is more the case, I argued, that entrepreneurs simply want to create value, and it is perfectly reasonable for the market to decide where that value gets placed and for how long it will last.

If you can see the vision, that will get you half way there. If you can then execute on the vision, then you are adding value where it did not exist before. How much value you can add depends on how well you can execute on the totality of the vision. And that’s where the line blurs between “built to last” and “built to flip.” Sometimes in order to execute on a broad vision that is built to last, some pieces of the puzzle have to be built to flip – intentionally incubated and hatched in a conducive environment so that their value can be added at the right time to complete the picture. To see the vision realized you don’t necessarily have to own 100% of it. I really like Lidsky’s choice of title, Flipped to Last, because that is exactly what I was explaining. Let's say the vision is "personal computing." Think about how many entrepreneurs have sold their software companies to larger software companies to help deliver the vision of personal computing. Nothing wrong with that.

And that is all I meant in my last post – that the now forward-thinking News Corp. is apparently putting together some pieces of the puzzle in a way I would be doing if I had their resources and wanted to build an LMNO. If they are doing what I think they are doing, they will eventually have to add a mobility piece to complete the puzzle. It's a piece they will soon figure out they want and they are going to find it somewhere.

Posted by Shawn Conahan at 02:45 PM | Comments (0)

March 30, 2005

Intercasting Corp in Time Magazine

Check out this week’s Time Magazine. There is a story called How Kids Set the (Ring) Tone.

It is a good piece about how mobile phones are evolving and how teens are embracing non-voice applications. The most important part, IMO, is not in the online version. There is an infographic in the print version that calls out the seven cool things you can do with your phone. It says, “Mobile Magic – High-speed networks are turning cell phones into multimedia machines. Here’s what they can do.”
Then it lists the following headers with a descriptive blurb about each:
Bloggers
Ringtones
Pictures
Games
Sports
Television
Wallpaper

This is the first time I have seen a mainstream publication call out mobile blogging as a clear mobile data category. Intercasting Corp is called out in the article as the only company focused on mobile blogging, and they did a great job describing what Rabble can do.

I also like how Time positioned teens as driving mobile data adoption. While it is true that every adult I know has had their (to other people) lame ringtone go off in a serious meeting, it is clearly a younger demographic that comprises the mobile data early adopters. That is certainly true of blogging in general, and it follows that mobile blogging is a trend that will be driven by the same teenager early adopters. An interesting caveat, though, is that blogging is also the domain of the technorati. The few Rabble beta testers we chose from the ranks of the hardcore bloggers really like it, which leads me to believe the older technorati demographic overlaps that of the mobirati.

Posted by Shawn Conahan at 05:25 PM