I’ve been impressed by the team at Mobile Messaging 2.0 (MM2) since the last CTIA when Beeline Labs, the company that manages the site, contacted me to help facilitate a discussion around Web 2.0, the companies in the emerging value chain and their collective responsibility to bring Web 2.0 services/apps to consumers in meaningful new ways.

The roundtable, which revolved around the theme Web 2.0 comes to Handsets — New Issues and Upside for Monetizing the Mobile Web, was hosted by Airwide Solutions, a provider of next-gen mobile messaging and wireless internet infrastructure, applications and solutions, that also sponsors the MM2 blog. Airwide’s role in this is to seed and support substantive discussions about the industry and where it’s headed, and the company achieved this on all counts! The debate was lively, the insights thought-provoking, and the feedback from the roundtable was overwhelmingly positive. (Check out the clip below and judge for yourself).

The event didn’t only introduce me to some great ideas for future columns/articles/analysis; it allowed me to connect with the top-notch bloggers who contribute regularly to the site. (They include: Tarek Abu-Esber, Imran Ali, Darla Mack, Ewan Spence and Paul Ruppert, who has recently been named managing editor of MM2. Congratulations Paul!) After a few exchanges via Skype with Hylton Jolliffe, a partner in Beeline Labs and founder of Corante, the pioneering blog media company behind the blog, I am proud to announce I am now also part of this thought leadership blog.

By way of background MM2 has emerged as a hub of content, conversation and community for those interested in the latest news and developments impacting mobile messaging technology including enhanced SMS, Mobile Instant Messaging, MMS, the mobile Internet, mobile payments, advertising, marketing and media. The blog was  recognized last year with a 2007 Award of Excellence from the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR).

My first post focuses on some promising start-ups such as Zipipop (which MSG has covered in this post) and the larger trend to a more context-aware Internet dubbed the Pragmatic Web. Are the pieces falling into a place for a new breed of mashup services that combine features and functionality including mobility, presence, location, calendar, time, and address book (to name a few), to help us make a better judgment about future events and experiences – if not predict them?

Excited by the prospects of services that lay the groundwork for the Pragmatic Web, I caught up with Richard von Kaufmann, Zipipop Creative Director, for a brief chat and a profound mind-meld. We have agreed to explore this in a future podcast, and judging from the email I just got, the conversation won’t stop there.

He writes:

Hi Peggy,

It is great that you share our passion for this subject. And I look forward to exploring it with you.

Inspired by our conversation I have written another blog entry related to Zipipop & The Pragmatic Web.
I read it and urge you to do the same.

It’s early days – and these are exciting times! I encourage you to join in the conversation – or simply follow it here and at MM2.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 5:35 pm and is filed under Mobile Content, Mobile Social Networking, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.