Several weeks into MSG’S exciting line-up of mobile industry projects (mobile advertising and mobile search), and I am impressed by the pivotal importance the majority of interviewees place on context. Whether it’s advertising or contextual search, the new business mantra is personalization. It’s all about delivering the right advertising/content/app/results to the right person in the right context.

But this time it’s more than warm-and-fuzzy lip-service. This time it’s hard-nosed business. Two developments - flat sales of  more traditional mobile entertainment offers such as games and ringtones (albeit at a high level), and the phenomenal popularity of apps and app stores - exacerbate the content discovery dilemma, forcing companies and operators alike to admit that better personalization is a must if higher revenues are the goal.

Last week I directed your attention to this excellent column from Mark Lowenstein, who drives home a point the significance of which I cannot overstate: “The most important way to differentiate in this growing but increasingly crowded market is to deliver a more personalized, contextual applications experience.” He was referring to app stores, where we are forced to sift through thousands of apps. (Déjà vu! It was our frustration with scrolling up and down mobile operator portals and hierarchical menus that opened the door for a variety of mobile search and content discovery solutions and providers that promised to take the pain out of finding and buying content.)

Put simply, personalization is not just central to app store schemes. It is critical to the delivery of content and advertising we will likely appreciate because it is in tune with our lifestyles (through profiling) as well as the important clues we leave behind though our browsing behavior, purchase patterns, and download history. (JumpTap, for example, has built a business connecting the dots between these data points to match relevant advertising to relevant consumer segments. As this MSG post recounts, the company  first released tapLink, a platform that builds targeting intelligence from multiple sources including search queries, browsing history, demographic and location data, and then followed up with the recent launch of tapMatch, its pay-per-click (PPC) performance mobile ad marketplace.)

As I have written many times on MSG, the new paradigm is personalized content-push based on a deep understanding of the individual. It’s even more compelling if the technology can learn users’ likes and dislikes over time to dynamically and consistently deliver the right content mix.

One company making its mark is Xiam Technologies, a Qualcomm company that I have tracked from the start. I recently caught up with Colm Healy, Xiam CEO, in a video interview to discuss the role of recommendation and personalized discovery techniques. Xiam worked with Stuart Willett, who heads up MSG Media Solutions, and the film crew we assembled for the project to co-create the video I am proud to showcase in the MSG video player. (My personal thanks to Martin Clancy, Xiam Marketing Manager, for arranging the interview, and to Curtis Shmigelsky and the rest of the great people at bnetTV for including it in MSG video jukebox!)

I encourage you to check out the video interview in the sidebar. A highlight: Colm’s comments on the opportunities in personalization for mobile operators. As he puts it: “Mobile is a uniquely personal device and if you [operator/service provider] aren’t taking advantage of that by building in recommendations and personalized discovery techniques, you’re missing a beat.”

Almost as exciting as the array of business opportunities Colm describes, is his view of filtering. To cover all the material we did in a reality short video didn’t allow us the time to explore this topic as deeply as I would have liked. However, Martin has kindly offered to set up another interview following this week’s debut to delve into Colm’s vision for filters and systems that will - as he hinted in the video interview - “filter out the noise around us to focus in on the things that really make a difference to me.” His vision: “What you need is to get to a situation where a service becomes like a personal assistant that’s helping you get through the clutter and find what you really want.”

My take: Colm’s sharp focus on improving our mobile experiences - through improved personalization and, moving forward, the development and implementation of better filters - is the way to go. It’s also a perfect fit with a milestone, must-watch keynote speech by Clay Shirky, aptly entitled It’s not information overload. It’s filter failure. In this address, Clay puts his finger on the problem of our times: “What we’re dealing with now is not the problem of information overload, because we’re always dealing (and always have been dealing) with information overload…Thinking about information overload isn’t accurately describing the problem; thinking about filter failure is.” If we apply it to mobile, content and apps aren’t stalled because we don’t appreciate them or want to purchase them; we are confronted by a content overload problem and we need better filters that will help us find and buy what we - as individuals (hence the critical role of personalization) - appreciate even before we know we want it.

BTW: Qualcomm, which recently beefed up the personalization element in its Plaza suite of solutions to include Plaza Retail, has also reached out for a briefing to walk me through improvements to the storefront, and the nuts and bolts of the modular toolset it introduced for creating or managing app stores, and personalizing the content experiences they offer.

If you are interested in learning more about filming opportunities and events where MSG will be on hand to film interviews and product demos, please contact Stuart at sw@morianamediagroup.com or by phone on +44  7734 315 506.

Disclaimer: Xiam sponsored the creation of the video, but did not influence the questions/topics covered in the interview.

Judging from the high level of interest in social search-related companies and concepts - such as Taptu, abphone, and people-powered answers search from ChaCha - expressed by participants at conferences where I have spoken, I am confident social search is more than just another hot topic.

In fact, this new breed of services, which combines mobile social networking fun and community with the utility of mobile search, potentially creates new forms of interaction and new opportunities for the delivery of relevant mobile advertising. Granted we aren’t there yet, but there are some signposts that I believe mark the way. One start-up that that stands out is HeyStaks (www.heystaks.com).

The company, based in University College Dublin, Ireland, was founded by Dr. Maurice Coyle and Dr. Peter Briggs, and is a spin-out from the research group of Prof. Barry Smyth, who is perhaps best known as co-founder and Chief Scientist of ChangingWorlds (now a Unit of Amdocs Interactive), a company that has pioneered personalization technology. I recently caught up with Barry for a guided tour of the service and an update on the company’s mobile ambitions.

I am also proud that Barry recently partnered with me to publish a series of thought leadership columns exclusively on MSG. Understandably, Barry took a break from the series (which kicked off with this exploration of the “hidden interaction costs” associated with surfing and exploring the mobile Internet) to develop his path-breaking HeyStaks service - now in Beta. But he’ll be back soon with a typically cool column focused on the intelligent delivery of personalized content and advertising, so watch this space!

What is the problem?

As the company cleverly points out in the cartoon strip below, we waste a lot of time searching for things our peers are also searching for (or may already have found!). To make matters worse, we have a lot of trouble sharing what we find with people once we find it. A solution is to make search a social activity (and that goes double for mobile search, in my view) and provide people the tools to create and communicate the searches that matter to them most.

What is HeyStaks?

HeyStaks is a search utility (a browser toolbar for both Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers) that adds collaboration features and a host of social networking functions to your favorite search engine. (It currently works with Google, but Barry tells me that Yahoo and others are in the pipeline.) The beta service is squarely focused on enhancing Web search, but an iPhone app is also on the roadmap.

In a nutshell, HeyStaks allows people to collaborate while they search. With the toolbar, people can create and share what the company calls search staks, which act as repositories for search experiences. HeyStaks also improves the results list because it promotes the results that have proved to be relevant to friends/peers during similar or related searches. (More further down in the Q&A.) As Barry put it: “A search stak is like a folder of your search experiences. You can create as many search staks as you like to cover your different interests and activities.”

To show rather than tell, Barry, a long-time MSG reader and supporter, has created a search stak around MSG content. In addition to keeping all the searches together in one place, HeyStaks also “reminds” us of searches we have found interesting in the past (and previously forgot to bookmark) by highlighting them within the search results delivered and listed by Google. HeyStaks can also make recommendations by inserting other results that Google may have missed or simply buried too deep in the list of blue links for us to find. (Thanks for using MSG Barry! You’ve given me a great idea. The sceenshots below illustrate this new stak. The next step is to make the MSG stak public and so create an MSG search community where readers can join, add their recent related searches, or simply keep up to date with the search activities of the wider community. After all, knowledge is most powerful/valuable when it is shared.)

***

Q: Creating and organizing the searches in HeyStaks is pretty straightforward. How do people share them?

A: Let’s take the example of you planning for a vacation. You create a search stak, call it “Vacation,” and store all your searches there. Suppose the vacation you’re planning will involve family and friends. You can share your Vacation stak with them, so that they can benefit from what you have found as they search, and vice versa. You can do this directly from the HeyStaks toolbar by selecting “Share active stak” in the staks menu. You then enter their email address and each person you invite will receive an email invitation that, if they accept, will add your stak to their own list of search staks in their toolbar. Sharing search staks in this way means that the search knowledge can rapidly grow because relevant searches from your friends and family are added to the Vacation search stak.

Q: HeyStaks can also highlight results in the search results from, say, Google and promote these to the top of the ranking. How is this possible?

A: We have a couple of ways to help people get more out of search. Once you share a stak you have essentially created a search activity feed that will provide you with a live update of searches carried out related to the stak - or staks - you have chosen to share.

At a deeper level, HeyStaks is looking at the various searches that different members of your staks are performing. It’s looking for patterns in those searches, and it’s looking for results that are related to those patterns.  So, you’re not just reminded of results that were clicked for the exact same query by other members of the stack. HeyStaks goes one further and actually figures out that certain results may be relevant to similar queries that haven’t been used before.  So, it’s a way of helping people to understand the sort of things that you’re finding interesting in a particular context, and making sure that everyone else who is sharing in that context is getting the benefit of your finds and you’re getting the benefit of theirs. Put another way, the stak is gradually learning more and more about your interests and is able to better predict those interests and better highlight the results from Google that are likely to serve those interests.

Returning to the Vacation stak example, the  screenshot below shows a typical search using Google and how HeyStaks has highlighted two particular results and promoted these to the top of the ranking. These results were previously selected by other members of the stak for similar queries. HeyStaks has picked up on these being results that others in the community have found interesting and therefore promoted these at the right time and within the right context.

Q: How else can I promote results in what Google delivers to me and others in my search community?

A: Using the toolbar’s tagging function, users can manually add any Web page to a stak. This makes it easy for users to add important pages that would not normally appear in Google’s results, for example. So, going back to the Vacation example, let’s say you find an offer at a hotel after clicking down deeper into the site. Finding this result again is going to require some extra effort, and the others in your community are sure to miss it. How do you make sure the result you found will catch their attention? HeyStaks solved the problem by letting you tag the page from the toolbar, using a tag you choose. You add it to the Vacation stak and - when you search using similar queries in the future or your fiends and family search - HeyStaks will promote this previously hidden result for all the stak members in the search community to see. This tagging feature is a practical way for HeyStaks to mine the deep Web that is all too often invisible to major search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

Q: What are the opportunities and use cases highest on your radar?

A: There’s a very important enterprise search opportunity here, particularly when we look at those enterprise 2.0 tools that promote collaboration within the enterprise as a side effect of capturing certain important pieces of knowledge. Some studies estimate as much as 10 percent of salary costs are effectively wasted because people aren’t able to find what they’re looking for easily. So, there’s lost productivity there and a huge opportunity for HeyStaks.

Using HeyStaks in the enterprise would allow an organization to capture all of that latent search knowledge that is lost as people perform the searches. HeyStaks allows searchers to share that knowledge, so that novice searchers in the organization can benefit from the expertise of more practiced searchers. It’s a way for organizations to start to parcel up the various different types of search knowledge that they have. You could also imagine that, as a new project starts in an organization, it’s just a matter of creating a new search stak to capture the relevant information that is found during the course of that project.

Q: Search results become content. Do you see opportunities in publishing and social media?

A: Yes, there are also huge opportunities in what I’ll call the consumer space. Individuals can create a small number of staks and share them with a small number of friends. You can even envisage larger staks being created by special interest websites or media portals, for example. They could create a stak, populate it with relevant search results, and share that stak with their subscribers, readers, or website visitors.

In the context of MSearchGroove, for example, you can create an MSearchGroove stak, feed that stak with relevant information, and share it with your readers. This way, any time they perform a search which happened to be relevant to MSearchGroove, MSearchGroove results would be promoted within the result list that comes back from Google. So, it’s a way of helping your subscribers get a more personalized version of the Google results list that takes account of the sort of interests they have as subscribers to your site.

CREATE MSearchGroove stak

TAG cool content

PROMOTE pages in Google results for everyone to share

Q: You are focused on your Beta, but iPhone is also in the pipeline. Describe the fit with mobile and how it might intersect with social networking.

A: HeyStaks has created a whole social networking site based around your search activities and if you go onto HeyStaks.com, you will see the social networking that is built around people’s search patterns.  Just like Facebook provides you with social networking services around your friends and your interests and what you do on a daily basis, HeyStaks.com provides you with social networking around your search interests, what you’ve been searching for, the various stacks that you have created, the people that you’ve shared stacks with, and what they have been searching for.

That sort of information can be readily made available as part of a mobile interface so that people can have access to their search communities on the go and they can keep up to date with what other people [in their community or organization] have been finding, for example, especially in projects that are related to their work interests.

Q: What are the business models that would make this possible?

A: I think what’s appealing is the sort of software as a service model. We would envisage keeping the basic service free of charge for all to use. However, for certain types of users who wanted to take advantage of more sophisticated services, if they wanted to create a very large stack and potentially share it with thousands of users; there might be a subscription-based charge.  Ad-funded is another potential source of revenue.

My take: There is plenty of room for innovation in the search space. HeyStaks provides us a glimpse of the future of social search and an important confirmation of the increasing importance of people in the equation. HeyStaks isn’t mobile yet, but when it is it could be game-changing. (Indeed, social search, sharing and community go hand in hand. Taptu, a socially-assisted search service “gets” this - which is why it has recently introduced features and functionality that allow people to share their search results.) Although HeyStaks is aimed at turning our simple search queries into serious content, I also see opportunities for brands to enhance (rather than interrupt) the information flow. In this scenario, search queries and results, created and maintained by tight-knit social networks passionate about their quests, could provide a starting point for brands to get actively involved in the exchange, and even lend a hand in the search by suggesting related answers/products/services members are likely to appreciate. But why stop there? Brands could also post search staks around topics where we need and appreciate some solid advice (such as recipes for food manufacturers, how-to tips for repairs around the house, or remedies for colds/flu or whatever ails us). What a great way to add value for a change!

Between the Mobile Advertising U.K. research project and interviews for MSG’s own global mobile advertising reference work (more about that in future posts), I’m naturally eager to connect with the companies and the brands that set the bar. (If you have a story you would like me to consider for the projects I mentioned, or you just want to share your news with the growing MSG community of mobile operators, influencers, senior executives, and decision-makers, I encourage you to contact me directly or email my PA Andrea Henninge to set up a briefing (andrea@msearchgroove.com).

With all the excitement (check out this recent report on CNN) around location-based advertising, it’s a given that coverage of this trend will have a top-notch spot in both research projects I outlined above, as well as MSG analysis going forward. (A great example is an upcoming column from Nate Janewit, computer scientist, location expert, and frequent contributor to thinking spaces and websites such as ReadWriteWeb. I just went over the draft with Nate yesterday and greatly look forward to the industry discussion it will spark when I post it later this month.) Another indication of how big location is: MetaPlaces 09: How to monetize location data and services (September 22-23 in San Jose, CA), an exciting industry event that will discuss context-enabled content and the service models that will benefit advertisers. MSG is proud to be a premium media and marketing partner and will circle back with exclusive pre-event promotion content, such as podcasts with keynote speakers and in-depth Q&As with key players.

A company that has caught my attention, with a potentially path-breaking approach to location-based advertising, is BipBip, the brainchild of Lasse Larsen, Chairman of the Board, WIS  International. (Wireless Information Services). The company - headquartered in Riga, Latvia - has an impressive stockpile of patents around the service, and ambitious plans to  launch BipBip worldwide (including the U.S., China, India, and 21 cities across Europe) following a successful pilot in Denmark last month. (My personal thanks to Lasse for contacting me on Twitter (@peggyanne) and for giving MSG the exclusive.)

What is BipBip? On paper the ad-funded service fulfills the criteria mobile advertising evangelists Andrew Grill and Jonathan MacDonald would no doubt agree are essential to delivering effective advertising services. I’m thinking here of the 3Ps: Permission (people will decide what brand messages they interact with); Privacy (people will decide where their data is collected and how it is used); and Preference (people will decide what content they find relevant).

The permission-based BipBip advertising scheme requires users to log onto the service via their mobile or PCs to provide personal data (gender, location - zip code), but there’s a twist. It also collects information from consumers (Preference) who sign up for the service on what products they are interested in (a sort of combination shopping list/wish list), and the price range that would make them buy, and a proximity that would clinch the deal. (Privacy, because users decide what happens to the data. It is passed on to retailers, who can only deliver a coupon discount on the wish list item when it matches the conditions (price and proximity) the user said they would accept.

At the other end of the spectrum, BipBip has pulled together retailers and advertisers that have the goods/services and discounts to make consumers an offer they are likely to appreciate. The back-end system makes a match, and location technology closes the loop, alerting consumers via free SMS to when they are in the vicinity of an item on their list at a price they are willing to pay.

But the real differentiator is an even cleverer feature that turns greed-is-good bargain hunting into a mission to make the world a better place.

This is because BipBip donates up to 50 percent of its profits (what it earns when a user agrees to receive a text ad/coupon) to a good cause that the user has chosen (as part of the opt-in process).

Do the numbers add up? Lasse tells me they do. Because BipBip has cut deals to buy text messages in bulk at good prices (and developed IP that prompts the SMS gateway to send cheap texts (from advertisers) to users on the move. With no mobile operator to feed in the value chain (even payment is outside the operator with transactions handled by PayPal and credit card companies), the company only spends 5 percent of its income (from advertising) on sending SMS advertising and coupons on behalf of the advertiser. Plenty left over to donate to the user’s favorite cause, organization, or local soccer league.

My take: Give consumers what they want? It’s possible because BipBip plays the role of an honest broker, bringing people together with the nearby offers they want most (otherwise they wouldn’t have put them on their wish list). Supply and demand are in synch, and BipBip makes its money in the middle. What’s more, BipBip doesn’t pay lip-service to the causes and concerns that motivate a large number of today’s empowered and socially responsible consumers. It pledges to spend real money on real non-profit organizations (in fact, no user can sign up for the free service without naming the organizations that should benefit from them accepting text advertising and coupons). I’ll reserve judgment until the service is live. However, a mobile advertising model that allows consumers to do good while they do their shopping sounds like a good deal all around.

UPDATE: DOWNLOAD LINK HAS BEEN FIXED

Just two weeks after release and my new white paper (Mobile Advertising For The Masses) counts 500+ downloads. (Again, I am honored that Bango (white paper sponsor) refers to me as a “mobile guru.”) I always endeavor to communicate complex ideas in a way that everyone will understand, and am told people enjoy my accessible and entertaining writing style. But the real reason behind the popularity of this hands-on analysis of campaigns across three mobile social networks (BuzzCity, itsmy.com, and Peperonity) is timing. Mobile social networks are on the rise (a recent Informa report counted 200+ of them) and open for business.

Where is the money?

I was fortunate to speak at Mobile Advertising & the Rise of Social Networking: What does it mean for Brands, Agencies and Service Providers?, a Knowledge & Networking Seminar organized by AIME (the Association for Interactive Media and Entertainment) last week in London. I enjoyed the opportunity to network with mobile professionals in a casual atmosphere and will most definitely participate in future AIME events. Andrew Darling, AIME Director of Communications, tells me upcoming events/topics include: WAP publishing, mobile payments, mobile coupons, and mobile widgets.

My session looked at the nuts and bolts of mobile advertising in social networks, and the real results, revenues,  and strategies first-mover companies such as pioneer mobile flirting service Flirtomatic and brave consumer brands (via full-service mobile marketing agency Inside Mobile), have to share.

As I am currently conducting my own mobile advertising research, I was particularly interested to learn from Eric Mugnier, Inside Mobile Product and Innovation Director, that the agency has also done its homework in the form of an in-depth survey of 80 key decision makers in the global mobile advertising value chain. The report won’t be released for a few weeks/months but Eric, who is also interested in my input and ideas, has promised MSG will have it first. (Thanks Eric!)

In his presentation, which included video interview excerpts from a selection of interviews, Eric outlined a few clear trends/requirements for effective mobile advertising in a social network. Mobile advertising must be targeted and relevant; the industry has no shortage of good ideas, but it must address issues around scale; and finally, brands and agencies have built the proper foundations, and  now the priority must be to create a toolkit approach that will allow more companies to execute on the lessons they have learned.

“Killer app”

Where are the brands?

Further along than I thought if we consider the example of a major sporting goods and sports apparel company, an Inside Mobile client gearing up to release an iPhone app that combines creativity, communication, and community to deliver a compelling advertising experience that users can make their own.

In a nutshell, the app allows people to customize their shoe and share it with their friends. In the next phase, people will be able to buy what they created with their phones, share what they created with the community (and this is where it gets really interesting), geotag their creation to add another dimension to the discussion (this is what I created and where), and have the ability to post their creation as part of their Facebook profile. (More next week when MSG has the exclusive on this innovative campaign.)

As Eric put it: Allowing people to customize, share, and - most importantly - make the end-result a part of their own digital persona paves the way for effective and enthusiastic viral marketing. He’s right!

It was refreshing to hear Eric describe the campaign elements in these terms. I read it as proof the advertising ecosystem has moved a giant step forward in understanding that: 1) The emergence of empowered individuals, the advance of so-called digital natives (individuals who have grown up with the Internet), and the abundance of applications designed to give consumers more of a say in how they create, access and enjoy content have transformed communication and, more specifically, the business of advertising; 2) Advertising has become content, and brands and agencies must find ways to turn their one-way pitch to “consumers” into invigorating and effective two-way conversations; and 3) Advertising in a social network is all about active participation in the community and developing ways to interact with members and enable them to interact with each other.

My take: The principles I have discussed and debated with Jonathan MacDonald, mobile advertising activist and close friend/colleague for almost a year now, are no longer just ideas; they are the building blocks of ideal business models. Well done (!) - I’m sure Jonathan’s many presentations, trips, and workshops play a role somewhere in this transformation.

Mobile metrics

Speaking of progress, Henry Stevens, Director of Media and Entertainment, GSMA, updated us on the Mobile Media Metrics (MMM) initiative to use independently aggregated and audited metrics from operator network data to develop a common methodology (what to measure) and common process (how to measure). Agreement on these key points would enable media owners to measure performance of their media properties across mobile networks, and help media planners better understand audience trends and behavior.

Where are we now?

As we know, all five U.K. mobile operators are on board. Now the GSMA is well on its way to a commercial launch in the U.K. (the feasibility study is complete) and working with operators in other European markets to duplicate this across other regions. A technical solution for the anonymization and aggregation of operator data (allowing a persistent and unique ID), as well as integration with other relevant databases and third-party demographics, top the agenda.

But the real news is how all this can be integrated into existing reporting tools. The GSMA is currently seeking the input of brands, agencies, and media owners to ensure the process meets the long-term objective of the organization to drive the growth of mobile as a multimedia platform.

Another presentation that underlined the pivotal importance of analytics in the scheme of things came from Nandi Gurprasad, VP of Alliances, Bango.

In a case study of Tapatap, a Bango customer that was recently acquired by women’s social network LimeLife, Nandi showed how the social gaming community used analytics to measure the success of its mobile Web ad campaigns and refine advertising pitches and presentations to target countries, networks and handsets which it determined (through analytics) yield the best conversion rates. Accurate tracking of response rates across different ad networks also allowed Tapatap to better plan campaigns and, more importantly, determine customer acquisition cost.

As Nandi put it: The example shows how and why companies should leverage tools that “give them an edge” - specifically, tools that provide real-time and reliable information on users - and which provide answers to the all-important questions: Who (are my customers)? What (did they look at)? Where (did they come from)?

Vendor spin aside, mobile social networks are here to stay and grow. They offer opportunity for advertisers and drive demand for analytics solutions. (As I point out in my white paper: When the end-game is all about getting a big(ger) picture view of what you achieved and where you missed the mark, then a more comprehensive analytics solution is a must. In practical terms, the two (offered by mobile social network ad networks and independent vendors) are complementary - not competitive.)

Flirtomatic’s phenomenal numbers

Saving the best for last, a real highpoint was the inside track on Flirtomatic, a combination mobile social network and mobile flirting service with the ability to monetize mobile users through conversation with content such as virtual flowers, chocolate, and kisses.

Matt Dicks, Flirtomatic Commercial Director, reported the community counts over 1 million U.K. users and outlined how Flirtomatic turns people with a passing interest in flirting to spending customers.

The trick is retail 101 all over again: Delight the customer.

In a nutshell, Flirtomatic “makes newcomers feel welcome when they come in.” Some 55 percent of daily new users go active and send a Flirtogram (signaling they want to flirt); some 20 percent of users go on to spend with Flirtomatic on items such as virtual gifts or features to enhance their own profiles. Flirtomatic chalks up revenues of $10 per month per spending customer.

At the other end of the spectrum, Flirtomatic counts “over 100 million WAP impressions per month.” Where does mobile advertising pay dividends?

A whopping 84 percent of page impressions are generated on-portal (where Flirtomatic essentially plasters operator portals with banner ads). Next are ad networks with 12 percent, followed by paid search with 3 percent (a category Matt said shows significant growth as more users go off portal and explore mobile search services to get where they want to go).

So, operators have the volume now, but will this continue? Matt expects operators will rule the roost for another 2-3 years. After all, operators are the gatekeeper and the billing agent. An envious position between the content company and the customer indeed!

Flirtomatic has also made the move from virtual gifting to the real thing (overcoming a logistics nightmare to let members give the objects of their affection chocolate and sexy underwear). The results: 500 gave chocolates and 300 gave underwear. More important than the numbers, the experiment proves members are willing to give and receive real gifts using their mobile phone.

Read between the lines, and this behavior bodes well for brands and advertisers.

As Matt pointed out: It’s a golden opportunity for brands to get involved. Think of the sponsorship and sampling opportunities. Encourage members to send flowers (and plug Interflora in the process, for example.) Cross-sell and up-sell chocolates (you just sent your loved one Cadbury Creme Eggs, have you thought of trying a milk chocolate bar?).

The possibilities are endless - and the conversions can peg the needle. Matt walked us through the example of an early experiment Flirtomatic conducted with a popular brand of cider. Members could “shout a pint” to their buddies using their mobile phones. The recipients got a voucher on their mobile phone for a free pint of cider and the location of the nearest pub that would redeem it. The results: 348,000 members sent a pint to their friends over a two week period; CTR peaked at an impressive 10 percent.

Should mobile advertising stop at delivering a message? Or should it seek to unite the virtual and physical worlds (a topic I also examine in detail in the Netsize Guide 2009 on offer in the MSG sidebar)? The jury is out on this one, but the discussion will continue at MSG.

What do YOU think?

BTW: Matt kindly invited me to visit Flirtomatic during my next trip to London, an offer I will gladly take him up on. I have long admired the company and Mark Curtis, Flirtomatic founder and author of this  well-known book on disruption culture, whose views I also hope to capture in a thought-provoking podcast. If there was ever a mobile social community success story worth telling, then Flirtomatic is it!

Disclaimer:  Bango is an MSG supporter.

In a special contribution from Mippin, a mobile portal providing mobile phone internet users access and enhanced discovery of optimized content for mobile phones, we look at Mippin Mobilizer, the company’s PC-based tool allowing publishers - including MSG - to mobilize and monetize web content to target new and existing internet traffic from mobile phones. Justin Baker, Mippin Marketing Manager, explains the process of mobilizing MSG step-by-step.

When Peggy recounted the main points of her recent - and extremely pragmatic –mobile advertising white paper and hinted that the next step might be to mobilize MSG, we decided the timing was right to provide publishers with a how-to guide to mobilizing their content using MSG as a real-life example.

And what better time that the week of Mobile World Congress (MWC), an event that showcases the best in the mobile space and celebrates an astounding 4 billion connections. According to Wireless Intelligence, the GSMA’s market intelligence unit, this milestone underscores the continued strong growth of the mobile industry and puts the global market on the path to reach a staggering 6 billion connections by 2013.

In addition to this impressive subscriber growth, we’re also seeing a similar upswing in mobile Internet usage. In July 2008 a comScore report counted nearly 13 million mobile internet users in the U.K. alone - translating to approximately 25 percent of the U.K. population. Though this number is less than the 70 percent of the U.K. population using the PC internet, it represents a seismic shift in the absolute number of mobile Internet users compared with 2007.

This increase in interest, coupled with the impact of the iPhone and the introduction of cheaper data tariffs and new off-portal mobile services, positions the mobile Internet for phenomemal growth.

What is the impact on publishers?

While they could continue to focus on the PC Internet rather than tackle the task of creating a mobile site (reasoning that the emerging nature of the mobile market, a set of different technologies and standards, unknown potential set-up costs and lack of certifiable return on investment make this a smart business move), we strongly advise against this inertia.

Waiting is a mistake for two reasons. First, mobile users are already exploring the so-called PC Internet, turning up the pressure on publishers to deliver a good experience. Second, they would be foolish not to take advantage of the opportunity to increase incremental revenue by targeting new users with a mobile-optimized site.

Of course, websites designed for viewing on PCs don’t always render particularly well on tiny mobile phone screens. For this reason, many publishers are pursuing a strategy that requires them to develop a second site, specifically optimized for mobile screens, thus providing the mobile traffic that arrives on their PC websites with a mobile-optimized destination.

It’s too early to tell whether users with smartphones or touchscreen devices (iPhone, G1 and BlackBerry, for example), who can view full PC websites, actually prefer the full PC experience to accessing a mobile-optimized website. But even if they are, these users still do not represent the mass market. As AdMob shows in its monthly metrics report, the vast majority of mobile phone users own low-end and mid-range devices, a large sector that can indeed benefit from being able to view mobile-optimized versions of the websites they know and love from the PC.

To be clear, not all websites require a mobile version to reach their audience. Sites such as Twitter, some text based blogs, and some listings websites for example make the jump from PC to mobile quite easily. However, at the end of the day, there is no easy way to tell whether a specific PC site will make for great viewing (as is) on a mobile phone. This depends on a variety of factors including the choice of mobile browser, the nature of the website content, the actual handset capabilities and latency (amount of data transferred and bandwidth available), each playing a role in determining how well a PC website converts to mobile viewing.

This is where Mippin and other similar services come in. Mippin Mobilizer enables publishers and content owners to build a mobile site for free and customize it in line with the PC equivalent website design. Mippin Mobilizer also provides the ability to promote the site for free, by either creating a custom mobile URL so that traffic can be redirected to the mobile version of the site, or by taking readers through to a PC-based mobile site emulator (more on this in the Mobilizer “how to” section further down in this column).

Finally, Mippin enables publishers to monetize their mobile-optimized destinations through mobile advertising, returning 100 percent of the revenue generated around publishers content in many instances.

Granted Mippin is not the only company offering this sort of service - FeedMate, Wapple, mobiSiteGalore, Mofuse and Wordpress plugins also go a long way toward helping publishers optimize their content for mobile. However, Mippin goes one decisive step further, incorporating sites mobilized with Mippin into the Mippin mobile portal, a top destination that generates significant traffic. This way the burden isn’t entirely on the publisher to boost visibility or discoverability through investing in SEO or paid search schemes; they benefit from being part of a portal - and an ecosystem — that generates traffic for all its members.

Other providers - such as Mofuse - also allow publishers a place on their mobile portal. With Mippin, however, the added emphasis is on discovery (through the use of tools and technologies) to further match publisher content to the right user.

To this end Mippin has purposely drawn from a  range of web 2.0 principles and added new features including portal auto-personalization, content recommendation and social likeness features (in the form of a “similarity meter” identifying common interests, or lack of) to connect users to relevant publisher content based on preferences and passions. It’s a virtuous cycle: Publishers can connect with new readers and users get the content they want most.

Whether a publisher chooses to use Mippin Mobilizer depends on their business case and objectives. But it’s important to know what is involved if you want to mobilize your content.

At Peggy’s invitation we have mobilized MSearchGroove and documented the steps in this process in a simple how-to guide.

There are four quick steps to launching PC content as a live mobile site: Mobilize, Customize, Publicize and Monetize.

The first step was to re-render content from the msearchgroove.com website. This needs to be in the form of a feed, in an RSS or Atom based format.

The msearchgroove.com feed here is mobilized in a few seconds, where it appears in the emulator on the same page. This takes us through to the second step, customizing the new mobile version with branding that reflects the website. As you can see, the process is pretty straightforward.

It’s easy to spend time trying out design combinations with the adjacent emulator; you might want an individual look for your mobile site, or a design that resembles your website. Either way the colour palette provides a good selection of colours, and can additionally handle any hex or colour value that is currently available. The msearchgroove.com site was completed in a few minutes, with the logo uploaded and colours reflecting the website easy to find and replicate.

Once the msearchgroove.com site was branded, the next step was to get the word out to existing and potential readers. To assist publishers Mippin Mobilizer offers a vriety of tools and feaures such as reader auto-redirection (directing readers to the new mobile-optimzed destination). Mippin Mobilzer also helps publishers promote the new site from their PC website by providing a “Make It Mobile” button (which publishers can add to their site or blog) and the option to create their own mobile URL.

In this case, we chose www.mippin.com/msearchgroove. (If you wish to go one further and automatically redirect PC traffic to a mobile site you must change the DNS settings for the website. Mippin provides step-by-step Information explaining this procedure here.

As I noted, publishes have the option of embedding the “Make It Mobile” button by selecting the relevant blogger platform (Mippin Mobilizer is currently integrated with Blogger & Typepad), or using the html code generated. Embedding this also links the msearchgroove.com website to a PC emulator demonstration of the mobile site. We recommend this highly as it also provides publishers access to QR codes (or 2D-barcodes), which can help users navigate quickly and simply to the new site by just capturing the QR code with their cameraphone.

Another way to get the word out and generate interest in the mobile-optimized website is through tags. With Mippin Mobilizer it’s possible to assign a selection of predefined tags to the mobile site, thus improving the number of times the site is returned within Mippin mobile portal site search results.

It’s possible to create an infinite amount of tags, but it’s important to note that Mippin’s portal search algorithms also rank search results on that basis of other factors such as relevancy (determined by tracking the sites a user has visited previous) and user recommendations (similar sites and content recommended by like-minded peers).

Almost there! The last step is all about monetizing the traffic you get, whether that traffic is direct to consumer (users found you on their own) or acquired through a presence on the Mippin mobile portal. To enable monetization, Mippin authorizes the site feed and provides the publisher with a  validation key. In this example, the process requires the publishers to submit a recent blog post to verify that the real owner of the site authorizes the destination to deliver mobile ads.

Once authorized, advertising from AdMob will be inserted in to the site at the top or bottom of the pages, though not within stories. (Note: Mippin doesn’t take a revenue share if the publisher uses their own AdMob ID. Click here for more details.)

And that’s it - the msearchgroove.com mobile site is live! It’s now optimized for any mobile traffic arriving on the site and can be viewed at www.mippin.com/msearchgroove!

Peggy adds: Hope you enjoy the MSG mobile-optimized site. MSG will also be a test case for a cool new product Mippin is slated to launch a little later on this year, so please check back. MSG will also  road test a variety of solutions for a new how-to white paper on mobile publishing, so watch this space.

12 percent of users first access their mobile social network each day while still in bed, a survey has found. Results from a worldwide survey of 15,000 active itsmy.com users (a mobile only social network based in Munich) found that:

· 16 percent of users don’t have an email account

· 90 percent would increase mobile internet usage if they had a flat rate tariff, a quicker connection and a more capable device

· Average page views per day is 160

· On average 50 percent of users access itsmy.com more than 5 times per day

· Users send from 12 to 34 community messages per day

These results reinforce the widely held belief that the mobile device is the first and only, truly personal, mass media and also signal the decline of email as a communication channel. What is clear (given that some users are accessing their social networks in bed, first thing in the morning) is that any brand wishing to use this medium as an advertising channel cannot simply broadcast or spam in this personal space – it comes as no surprise that users are turning their backs on email given the prevalence of spam, junk and marketing sent over email.

In fact, engaging the user on their terms is really the only way to sustainably create brand equity on mobile. People are more media savvy than ever before and can spread bad brand experiences like virtual wildfire through social networks, twitter and blogs. Any interaction must be on ‘our’ terms – when we want it, where we want it and how we want it. It must not, it cannot invade our privacy otherwise we are ignoring the personal nature of the medium and killing this market before it has even got going. And it must also be based on our interests.

This is where itsmy.com have got it right. They consistently ask their users what they want, what they use itsmy.com for and are therefore able to leverage their single biggest asset – the users themselves. By asking users what they want/think/need, itsmy.com have placed user preference in its rightful place – firmly in the hands of the user. This avoids making usage based assumptions to produce a handful of user segments, and instead allows each user to exist in a segment of their very own. After all we are all individuals.

The survey was carried out from September to November 2008 with users of 30 different operators, across a full range of devices and aged between the age of 16 and 52.

For further analysis of itsmy.com, circle back here soon for Peggy’s in-depth look at the tie up between social search pioneers, Taptu and itsmy.com