April 22, 2011

Scenes from the Where 2.0 mobile conference

I caught a fair chunk of the Where 2.0 conference yesterday in Santa Clara, Calif., plus part of Tuesday’s sessions. I think it’s fair to say this is the best annual gathering of thought leaders in the mobile space — people from the future who beam to bring us up to speed on where this whole mobile revolution is taking us.

Here’s my modest Flickr photo set of 14 images.

I got to spend some time with two of the rock stars of the mobile world: Di-Ann Eisnor, VP Community of the cool beat-traffic-jams app Waze, and DJ Patil (another initial guy), chief product officer of the hot startup Color (and former chief scientist of LinkedIn). which recently raked in $41 million in venture backing.

I’m always impressed by the visual eye candy at Where 2.0 and this gathering was no exception. Check out the 90-second clip above, Waze Presents: An LA Traffic Story (music), which visually represents a 24-hour time lapse of traffic congestion, accidents, police activity and more in Los Angeles, based on the automatic GPS tracking in the Waze app as well as reports by Waze members. Fun!

Some other highlights from Where 2.0

Alexa Andrzejewski of Foodspotting, Jyri Engestrom of Ditto, Di-Ann Eisnor of Waze.

I didn’t get to all the sessions I wanted to, but here are a few other highlights and takeaways:

• Good to meet the folks behind SeeClickFix, a site that lets people report community problems to local government, and one that I’ve admired for some time.

“We’re getting to the things scale and person scale, with almost everything being able to have a unique identifier associated with it — even plants and animals. Then the whole conversation changes.”
— Jyri Engeström, Ditto

• My favorite new toy: the GroupMe app, a group messaging service for ad hoc groups of friends, family, co-workers, college buddies. Says co-founder Steve Martocci: “It’s like a it’s like a reply all chat room on your phone. … This is a very intimate tool that’ll buzz everyone’s pocket.” Yowza!

• 40 percent of ratings on Yelp is coming in through mobile devices. Yelp now has 50 million unique visits per month in eight countries.

• One out of every 10 Israelis (not just drivers) uses Waze.

• Localmind is a new service that allows you to send questions and receive answers about what is going on — right now — at places you care about. If it scales, this would be an awesome service.

• Loved this quote from Jyri Engeström of Ditto (just downloaded the app: “Looking to hang out? Find out what your friends are up to, have a conversation, or get a group together. Ditto makes it easy to get recommendations about restaurants, movies and things to do.”):

“A lot of the conversation that goes on at conferences like Where 2.0 is based on the assumption that we’re talking about places and buildings. But the resolution of social objects is getting higher and higher so we’re getting to the things scale and person scale, with almost everything being able to have a unique identifier associated with it — even plants and animals. Then the whole conversation changes.”

• Raffi Krikorian of Twitter: “People want to say ‘I’m in Vegas, baby!’ without giving away their exact location.” His hourlong talk about the different tiers of “local” was fascinating. I was also digging terms like “geohash.” And: “The holy grail of geo-location is to use some kind of GPS triangulation.” Follow him on Twitter at @raffi.

• Jack Abraham, Director of Local at eBay: “Any product that can be digitally distributed, will be.” He noted there were 465 million active IP addresses in 2009 and that number continues to balloon. Also: ecommerce still makes up only 5 percent of all commerce in the United States. Continue reading →

February 2, 2011

Social businesses: Glimmers of a macro trend

Social Business Design (CC image by Dachis Group)

Annual look at the best strategies, tactics, case studies & insights in the enterprise space

Compared to 2009 and 2008, the past year was a relatively calm one because the amplitude of market gyrations clearly diminished and businesses began to find a new floor on which to build stakeholder expectations. Although I watched with high interest the unfolding financial drama in Europe, I didn’t have the time to conduct the research necessary to do a rigorous interpretation, although I published a brief reflection last week. The big story of the past year was this: 2010 marked a turning point in the adoption of social technologies and in the recognition that analysis and strategy are necessary to achieve consistent results with social initiatives.

Macro trends: Moving from broadcast to relationship building

Until recently, being on Facebook was an end in itself, agencies produced vapid content and little interaction occurred because people rarely interact when brands are talking at them instead of listening

Social has been in adolescence until recently — “being on Facebook” was an end in itself, agencies produced vapid content and little interaction happened because people rarely interact when brands are talking at them instead of listening. People feel it when a brand is interested in using social tools to promote itself. They also feel it when a brand is interested in building relationship, which is marked by active listening and responding, along with a relative absence of self-promotion. Brands that build relationship learn that they don’t have to try so hard to promote themselves: when they are truly interested in people, people will promote them. However, this approach remains a future state for most companies. Relationships take serious work — thus, a need for a strategy.

The growing use of strategy is also a harbinger for what I call “social business” (a step beyond social media), in which leaders use social technologies to transform their businesses by collaborating openly with various outside and inside stakeholders to innovate constantly. Early movers will begin emerging this year: Only a few gutsy players will aggressively adopt social business practices in 2011. I believe they can change markets.

Continue reading →

September 20, 2010

What’s your guilty pleasure app?

Is it Angry Birds, Air Hockey, or an Air Horn?

I know you like to think that you’re highly productive with your mobile device, but in reality you probably spend more time playing Angry Birds than any other application. At the APPNATION Conference in San Francisco, shooting interviews for Dice, I asked the attendees to reveal their “guilty pleasure app.” Do you know all these apps? Have you played with any of them?

Got a guilty pleasure app of your own? Reveal what it is and why on the Dice Facebook page and you could win a Samsung Galaxy S mobile phone.

To enter the contest go to http://facebook.com/dice and click on the “Contest” tab. Hurry, deadline is September 30th, 2010.

September 17, 2010

Two must-attend mobile events coming next week

Angry-birds
Roxio’s “Angry Birds” game.

Today Socialmedia.biz welcomes Jessica Valenzuela, a top branding expert, as part of our team of consultants providing thought leadership in social media and social marketing.

This week was action packed, with Demo Conference Fall 2010 and WITI Technology Summit — I am revved with excitement from my first week of exploring the Silicon Valley events! I can’t wait to share the key learnings from CIOs of high-profile organizations and my personal top picks among the startup companies that presented and were on exhibit.

Meanwhile, if you have not yet, make sure to add Mobile 2.0 Silicon Valley and Think Mobile West to your events list. Here are a few reasons why you should attend:

The future of evolving media is in mobile. Learn how the experts are building their mobile ecosystem.
What is the latest technology and innovation in mobile? Get your answers from CTOs, CIOs and guru developers.
How do you effectively measure performance and metrics?
What is the secret sauce of the successful mobile applications? And more!

Who should attend?

Both events will benefit brand managers, product managers, IT and mobile leaders within global companies and high-growth startups. I also recommend it for entrepreneurs who want to have a better understanding of mobile platforms, resources, distribution channels and metrics. As an entrepreneur who works closely with clients in the creation of their products, it is important for me to understand how to extend my client’s platforms into the mobile arena at the very beginning of each creation process. Continue reading →

September 15, 2010

What do you wish you knew about mobile app development?

Even looking back most people still can’t figure out the mobile app market

At the opening night party at the APPNATION conference where I was reporting for Dice, I asked the attendees, “What do you wish you knew a year ago that you know today about mobile app development?” Their answers are fast, impulsive, and conflicting.

Also from APPNATION is this Amazing example of augmented reality on top of a print magazine. Check out this new way of cheating at crossword puzzles.

November 5, 2009

Highlights from ad:tech New York 2009

I just finished up my second day of reporting at ad:tech in New York for ad:tech, a conference about the digital side of the advertising industry. The event happens ten times a year all over the world and I last reported on the event for ad:tech in San Francisco.

At this year’s New York conference I saw many of the same things I’ve seen at ad:tech over the years, and that’s ad networks. I believe they’ve been there since day one of this conference and they’re never going away. They’re the bread and butter of the business.

I was more interested in what’s trending and at this show I saw a really big push towards businesses generating revenue from content. Advertisers are slowly realizing they need to be media companies as well, but not wholly. In fact, there’s a symbiotic relationship between paid advertising and earned media.

Watch the day 2 show report and the day 1 show report for an overview of some of the stuff I saw. Almost everything I mention in the show report videos you’ll find in a subsequent video below. There’s a total of 30 videos.

While I do a lot of live event reporting, understand that ad:tech is a very big conference and there’s no way to feasibly see it all, so these show reports should be titled, “What David got a chance to get around to see in his two days at ad:tech.”

Continue reading →