Thoughts @

mobile bubble - growing or bursting?

Mobile Bubble

The question ‘are we in another bubble?’ comes up in a meeting I have at Bucks diner, which is a central meeting point between Silicon Valley and the City, five minutes off the 280 highway at Woodside. Bucks is a haven midst the world technology — unglamorous, lacking wireless and filled with the kind of nostalgia and memorabilia normally reserved for a kitchy 50’s diner (which it is.) But it’s here that deals are made, discussions of tomorrow’s technology occur and the bubble that is in question begins to grow.

My meeting is with a man who is no stranger to innovation. The company he helped to create now sits as one of the top Internet ventures of all time. At this remote spot, we discuss the late 90’s — filled with MBA’s with business plans trying to replace brick and mortar with pixels, one IPO at a time. We reflect upon the frenzy that became the dot.com era was reflective of the excitement surrounding innovation – and the potential of the internet. We agree that today’s two-point-oh environment gets a bit more real. Instead of hype and a focus on the marketing of a concept, today’s ‘bubble’ has become reflective of the real products and services we integrate into our daily lives.

Now small teams are building and launching instead of pitching: taking the internet to a new level and helping us to navigate through the hype into an open system of answers to our daily needs and desires. Friendster has transitioned to MySpace. Dodgeball is migrating to Twitter. Convergence and ubiquity is finally becoming a reality as devices merge with desktops, kiosks, GPS interfaces and personal entertainment systems and ‘placelessness’ is the new catch phrase. Platforms such as Ruby on Rails and .Net enable another level of prototyping and launching to occur, where designers can create like developers and vice versa. A movement from browser to desktop widgets is continuing to flow and flourish - creating new spaces for innovation and beyond. Speaking of Twitter (which I currently have a like-it/annoyed with it relationship with) I’m reminded of my favorite quote of 2006, which is so right on:

“There are a lot of good ideas out there, but not all of them need to be a company.” - Evan Williams

People are craving simple, easy, no-fuss interfaces that work with the way we live. Web-to-mobile services continue to come onto the market at lightning pace. My new favorite ‘integrated’ service is Jott (not Jot, which was acquired by Google), which allows for online GTD-based task lists or automated transcribed mobile calls that land on the same GTD page. I’ve met with several start-ups these past months who are offering mobile services as an addendum to their web-based offerings. Many of our clients are building downloadable mobile applications which supplement their web-based services. Today’s bubble isn’t about the IPO with brands launching and begging to be funded based on a business plan. The bubble is growing based on proven web and mobile products, services and applications that work. Simple and clean. Yet getting to simplicity is not as easy as it looks. Most manufacturers and software companies are busy trying to add features that will help differentiate and customize the experience. These companies are so busy adding onto the feature set, they neglect the core functionality the product was based on in the first place.

If companies were focused on designing for their customers instead of their investors, they would seek to eliminate redundant (and often confusing) features. They would step back and gain clear insight into their customer’s lives and answer the question, ‘what does my customer need, what do they desire, and how will they incorporate this (said widget) into their daily lives? The rift between simplicity and complexity continues to grow and real people are divided as to their real needs, varying aptitudes and willingness to change. Companies that talk to their customers - iterating between launches with one-on-one usability testing and feedback have a better chance at answering the right questions. Rapid feedback cycles with core customers can be done within an agressive development and deployment schedule, if the team is on board and the management team understands the value. If they realized what they were sacrificing by not doing it - it would not be worth the risk.

There is some frenzy and excitement going on. A race if you will — with ubiquity at the core. We’re moving past the desktop, past the browser, onto new platforms and new experiences. There are similarities to the late 1990’s, with individual teams hunkering down into small rented spaces with Ikea furniture — brainstorming, energetic and burning the midnight oil. But rather than meeting at City Hall for a night with Elvis Costello (the hype that accompanied the dot.gone was rather over the top), people are meeting in communities online, sharing ideas and best practices, striving to create a real voice in a saturated marketplace. I look forward to seeing the continuing creativity of innovation, and seeing how long this bubble will last this time around.

Posted on March 30th, 2007 in Thoughts
Tagged as , , ,
Written by Kelly Goto

8 Responses to “mobile bubble - growing or bursting?”

Comments

  1. skome says:
    March 30th, 2007

    Zap! Right between the eyes. I’d write more, but I have to run off to a design review for a stack of new features we’re stuffing into our mobile portal… Usability testing? No time!

  2. Justin says:
    March 30th, 2007

    I would say that the mobile bubble still has a ways to go. There are quite a number of innovate companies still in their early stages. I learned about an interesting company called ProximityMedia when I was attending a conference in North Carolina where the CEO of the Company, Colby Fede, was doing a live demo of his Bluetooth Mediaserver and I realized that there are still innovating companies left out there. Location-based marketing seems to be next leg up.

  3. Paul Ruppert says:
    March 30th, 2007

    Bubble ? Hardly, given the lifecycles of venture investments, we are now 6 years past the bubble, with a continuously growing market opportunity—1 billion new mobile users this year—hence, it is natural for innovations to start catching up with the opportunity. Given the flat topography over the last three years, we’ve creative innovative types are re-energized and looking at the mobile platform as the place to be within 3 to 5 years. Given the demographics and markets of these new users, you’re going to see development for solutions harvesting the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid. Net new ads will flatten in the west, and emerging mobile markets will be all the buzz next year.

  4. Avinash says:
    March 30th, 2007

    a bubble that will not burst soon i would say..

    It is to bring to your kind attention a small site launched by me which intends to bring the BAD internet to mobiles and also serves as a bookmark engine.

    Please review.

    Moblify.com works with any web URL, WAP site and .mobi site.

    It uses the best mobile transcoders(google,iyhy,Skweezer,Phonifier) available in the market and tap-reduce mechanisms to achieve this.

    Moblify is also a bookmark engine that will store all your bookmarks for use on any mobile browser or device.

    And best of all, it is FREE.

    For more details, visit http://www.moblify.com

    WAP URL : wam.tw

    Thanks,
    Avinash.

  5. Kelly Goto says:
    March 30th, 2007

    Interesting comments - all indicative that there IS NO BUBBLE. However, this all depends on how you define ‘bubble.’ I have to tell you - from a analyst/consultant’s perspective it smells, tastes and feels very similar to the .com frenzy circa late ‘90’s when ‘everyone had an idea’ and people were funding it. A mini—mobile version of course. Innovation by nature takes cycles and turns before the winners rise to the top. So by default - this means this is a time of trial and error on a global basis, not just limited to silicon valley this time around.

    Finding a revenue model, a way to tap into the youth generation (or the $$$ of the U.S. market projections), and to figure out the ‘killer app’ is part of the technological evolution. I suppose the other point here is that part of the nature of a bubble is that it will eventualy break. The point I think some are trying to make here is that the true breaking point is not going to happen for some time - because this is just a continuation of a series of innovations that will have just begun to hit our industry. So in that light, I do agree that the innovation and experimentation is just beginning to simmer…

  6. Antonio Peña says:
    March 30th, 2007

    MOOGA will really change the mobile content world.
    Mooga is a patent pending viral, self learning mobile entertainment ecosystem incorporating Artificial Intelligence techniques to understand, track, predict & recommend mobile content based on individual user tastes, downloads & popular contents. Mooga actively promotes viral spreading of content, allowing users to recommend content to their friends & get paid for it! Content sales increase exponentially as Mooga acts like a friend to the users & recommends preferred content to them. Mooga adapts to their tastes, likes & dislikes continuously, resulting in a vastly improved end user experience.

  7. Ivan Komarov says:
    March 30th, 2007

    I have just written my thoughts about the mobile bubble, so here we go:

    When you read exciting news about mobile start-ups receiving another bunch of financing, of course you get excited to be working in mobile industry. But on the other hand, you worry.

    You worry about the American economy, for instance. My wife obsesses with stories about people who had taken loans immeasurable with their income, and now are getting into trouble with the real estate market going down. Yet a few years ago the market was boo-oo-ming.

    So, does everything need to go from extreme excitement and overestimation to a fast slide down, bursting of the bubble and complete pessimism? Will mobile industry experience the bubble on its way to maturity?

    To understand what is going on, read (at least the beginning of) “The Great Unraveling” by Paul Krugman where he references (better yet, read this one:) Robert Shiller’s “Irrational Exuberance” on the Ponzi game (read “bubble”) economy:

    “Imagine, just hypothetically, that a new set of technologies – technologies that are really, truly, deeply fabulous – has just emerged. And suppose also that a number of companies have been created to exploit these new technologies, in the entirely honest – but very hard to assess – belief that they will eventually be able to earn huge profits. For the time being they earn little if any money; even if they make an accounting profit, they must continually raise more cash to pay for equipment, acquisitions and so on. Still, as the evidence for a true technological revolution mounts, the prices of their stocks keep rising, producing huge capital gains for early investors. And this attracts ever more investors, pushing the prices still higher. If the process goes long enough – and there is no reason it cannot go on for years – the doubters will start to look like fools, and the bears will go into hibernation. Everyone (well, almost everyone) may be completely sincere; nonetheless, in effect you get a Ponzi scheme without a Ponzi, a scam with no scammer.”

    Internet – which we all love now and which has delivered magic as (well, almost) promised – has lived through the burst of a bubble. The bursting has killed big companies and has discredited the idea for years. Will we witness the same with mobile marketing? (If yes, follow the Levi Strauss strategy: “Let other get caught up in the gold rush, we’ll sell them the supplies.”)

    There is a natural rush of operators to become natural monopolies and to grab onto the “everything on-deck” idea despite some rational voices to the contrary (see http://www.telecoms.com/itmgco.....15416.html on a story of the largest Indian operator choosing to outsource). The same is true for mobile marketing. I can hear conversations in offices of mobile operators on the C-level: “There is this buzz everywhere about mobile marketing. Don’t we have all the data and access that no one has? And what, you say we cannot sell a … (name it: e.g. on-deck portal)? Mobilemarket it NOW!”

    And guess what happens? Who will be implementing the campaign – marketers with years of marketing experience or techies without marketing background? Do I need to tell you? Right, technology people will implement and produce results that will discredit the idea for the tops as well as for the industry.

    When there is hype, we need people with experience to take care of it. Like the world’s top tennis coach in Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink” who does not know how, but who does tell if a person is going to double-fault on a serve.

    Experience counts! Despites the gold rush, think about what is “gold” for you, where “gold” is, and how to get it. Sending SMS spam may kill the idea; appending ads to the balance info may make you millions (http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.co.uk/my_weblog/2008/03/dont-stop-at-wa.html).

Trackbacks & Pingbacks

  1. Pingback March 30th, 2007 by gotomobile: mobile bubble - growing or bursting? at Matt MacQueen

Leave a Reply

Related Stuff