Posted on February 6, 2007 at 1:31 pm | 
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I left the Mobile Monday networking event in London last night with a deafening worry banging inside my head. I’m now even more concerned about how difficult it will be to persuade some people that ‘the mobile internet’ isn’t about creating something new. Worse still, it appears that some brands need to be told that they can’t take ownership of the Web.
The theme for the night was entitled “Mobile Search (Where are you?)”. It should have been called “Get your Web here everybody, buy one get one free” with brand owners shouting above each other from different parts of the courtyard - each with different versions of a Web on their stall.
The speakers were very good on the night and I enjoyed listening to them – mainly because they actually expressed real opinions. Even though I disagreed with most of them, I’d rather listen to speakers who don’t make sweeping statements that are obvious to everyone.
Getting side tracked for a second, it really bugs me when speakers start by saying “what I’m about to say is my personal view and not that of the company I work for”. Any time I hear this, whether I’m listening, speaking or facilitating, I’d love to ask them to remove their company profile or stop making such statements. If you’re not representing the view of your organisation then you shouldn’t be permitted to use your company’s name. In which case, you’re not likely to be invited to talk.
Martin Wilson, Yell
Martin started with the disclaimer above so I have no idea what Yell’s opinion on all this is
Martin started out by saying he believes
consumers are stupid
I would have agreed with this when I started out as a technician at AOL in 1995 – a time when HP had to recall over 10,000 manuals as a result of consumers not being able to find the ‘any key’ (think about it, wait for installation to complete and then press any key to continue…). Classic!
The point I’m actually trying to make is that this opinion would have been expressed when I was inexperienced. That’s not to say Martin is inexperienced, but, I don’t think consumers are stupid. They are always right, even when they don’t know what they want. We are the ones who are stupid for not making it easy for consumers to find our products and services. We are the ones who are stupid for not making our products and services accessible to as many people as possible.
Martin went on to say
consumers should trust brands such as Yell and the BBC to deliver whatever content they search for.
This is very closed minded in my opinion and highlights a lack of awareness for what consumers want and what brands must deliver if they’re to stay one step ahead of their competitors. Yell isn’t an independent source of information. They provide names and addresses that belong to companies that pay them money.
Nic Newman, BBC
I was late arriving so missed the start of Nic’s presentation. What I did pick up however did worry me a little. Nic stated that
we won’t go into direct competition with Google but we are looking into search
Nic believes the BBC’s brand should be trusted enough to deliver whatever content consumers search for.
Nic went on to say
should a consumer not find the content they’re looking for on the BBC Web site; we will recommend content which is related to their search.
Again, I think there’s a fundamental flaw in Nic’s thought process - (or my interpretation of what he meant). The Web isn’t a walled garden. It’s not something which you can (or should try to) own. Although the BBC’s content is impressive to say the least, you can’t stick a search engine on top and call it ‘the Web’.
If we were to permit Yell and the BBC to deliver a mobile web experience according to what Marin and Nic think, we’d end up with a fragmented Web. We’d have lots of different Webs, each with a search engine on top.
So, how would you find the most trusted Web? Will another brand create a search engine to sit on all these trusted Webs? Ah, but Google has done that already – so why don’t brands just make their content as accessible as possible so they can be found by major search engines. Better still, why don’t they adopt Content Labels to help differentiate themselves from competitors?
AOL abandoned the old business model of a walled Web when it realised the huge shift in trend. Users now have the power to browse the Web outside their walled garden which was home to restricted premium content. This is down to a number of things such as education, pricing, bandwidth and better browser software.
The AOL business model worked very well in my opinion and worked miracles for the Web in general. AOL provided users with user friendly content which they could find easily using keyword search. This helped consumers become familiar with the Web as a friendly medium to find content. This is where WAP has achieved the same positive response in mobile.
So, rather than creating another WAP equivalent, that is, a walled garden full of premium content which only works on mobile phones, we should try to adapt ‘the’ Web as much as we can. When this isn’t possible or feasible, then provide an alternative.
Claudia Poepperl, Mobile Entertainment Forum and Mobile People
I was dismayed with most of the comments that came from Mobile Entertainment Forum special advisor, Claudia Poepperl.
Claudia presented a number of browser and search vendors on one slide. Nokia and Opera were placed in a tag cloud called ‘other’. This was actually quite painful as it demonstrated Claudia’s lack of understanding for the mobile search/browser market. Opera is actually widely accepted (as far as I’m aware) as the market leader and possibly the best mobile browser on the market. Nokia have an almost equally compelling browser, even if I don’t like the way it works personally. Claudia did have her own company’s search engine in the ‘mainstream search’ cloud. I’m not sure how accurate that is, but I won’t assume it’s not.
Claudia made me wince when she voiced her support for Internet fragmentation as
the only way to get mass adoption
I’m sure there’s some logic in there but I can’t find it. She said that there were
organisations such as .mTLD (owners of .mobi) that help with this cause.
What Claudia doesn’t know, is that .mobi’s development guidelines are actually based on the W3C Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) Best Practices . The W3C guidelines are about helping to ensure the Web isn’t fragmented as Claudia suggests.
I must declare my interest in the W3C MWI. Segala is a founding sponsor of the initiative and I’m a member of its Steering Council. Segala is also co-editor of the Trustmark specification called mobileOK with Google and ICRA.
Furthermore, .mobi asked me for advice on certification and monitoring of all .mobi domains before they launched. After providing lots of answers to question they hadn’t even thought about, they decided to do it in-house. Oh well, that’s business I guess!
Priya Prakash of the BBC
Priya’s presentation was great. She immediately interacted with the audience and grabbed everyone’s attention whilst demonstrating her point seamlessly. A very difficult thing to do. Her point was that
it’s much easier to send a text to the BBC which then automatically configures your phone to connect to specific Web sites, than it is to configure the phone and setup URLs manually
I think there’s a brilliant use case for this. So I won’t assume Priya’s idea was to replace the typical Web.
I met Priya afterwards and expressed my opinion about fragmentation and she agreed with me. So I’m not 100% sure what the BBC’s ultimate goal is. Perhaps they want to help improve the mobile web experience until something better comes along. I would love some clarity on this as they’re a huge voice, even on a global scale within the Web world.
Steve Ives, Taptu
Steve can only be described as a gentleman and serial entrepreneur. A combination that’s very difficult to get right. He didn’t really give much ‘insight’ to his opinions but that’s because he has
some patent pending technology/processes
Steve did mention that his search engine will change the ranking order depending on the suitability of Web sites for mobile phones. In my opinion and after a huge amount of time and money spent on R&D, he’ll be looking at Content Labels if he wants to achieve his goal using a scalable method.
Kimmo Passo of MCN
I’m afraid I couldn’t make Kimmo’s demo out. I had no idea what he was saying and would greatly appreciate some feedback from anyone who attended.
So, overall, I was delighted I attended. I met with a few good colleagues with whom I like to continue to build a strong relationship. One such person is Ken Blakeslee. It was great to catch up with Jag and Nic Brisbourne , albeit for a short time.
Jag, what’s with the fetish for London’s public transport? Didn’t get a chance to ask you!
10 Comments
So far,
February 6, 2007 @ 
In any case, when you’re sitting on the top deck of a bus with nothing else better to do, what better than to “blog” about it, and any other things that come into your head. 
Paddy Byers
Hi,
> I’m afraid I couldn’t make Kimmo’s demo out. I had no
> idea what he was saying and would greatly appreciate some
> feedback from anyone who attended.
I’m just about to put up a blog post where I discuss some of this. I’ll let you know when it’s there. In the meantime, see here:
http://opengardensblog.futuretext.com/archives/2006/11/mobile20_great.html
and look for “MCN” where the approach is described a bit.
Paddy