Get your Web here everyone
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 forâ€. 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 Responses to “Get your Web here everyone”
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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
Thanks Paddy. Just looked at your site.
Looking at your comments regarding Jo Rabin’s work – I’m extremely surprised that he didn’t mention me given that I was the one who first redefined the ‘One Web’ for the MWI. Jo then wrote his view, Phil Archer then merged the two views for the group to start a debate. Oh, how we forget little things…
Look forward to your comment re Kimmo’s demo – thanks for getting in touch.
Well, not so much a fetish, but it’s a simple fact that I spend far too much time on public transport. Daydreaming most of the time. But isn’t that when the best ideas come to you?
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. 
Anyway, it was good catching up with you, maybe for longer next time. I, too, enjoyed the event due to the fact that people seemed to be quite “open” in terms of their opinions. Spot on re being irked by people qualifying what they say as not representative of their employer.
Re Kimmo’s demo, I know Kimmo and have had him demo that kind of thing to me in the past, but what he was doing at MoMo was demoing MCN’s work with DoCoMo in Japan. DoCoMo has several content providers on i-mode offering a visual radio type of service and there’s a “search” button on the screen of the radio which the user get more info about the artist currently playing. This invokes the MCN search, which returns the results relevant to the artist, e.g. ringtones, wallpaper, CD etc – all with onward “actionable” links to purchase pages etc. So, basically, DoCoMo CPs pass the artist keyword to MCN – who do the search and serve up the results. The thing that Kimmo wanted to point out was the sheer simplicity – no entering a search item – just press the button.
Hope that helps!
Hey Jag,
I didn’t realise you blogged live from the bus – brilliant!
Thanks for the update on Kimmo’s presentation. Sounds extremely interesting. Don’t you think however (not sure if you can remove your O2 hat for a minute) that it might be a little more difficult to get that simplicity in Europe given that DoCoMo have specific devices that they churn when they see fit. Whereas in Europe it’s very difficult for Operators to give specific requirements to Vendors.
Furthermore, DoCoMo choose which Content Providers to use. So, you’re not talking about the ‘Web’ but another WAP-like solution. Ouch! I feel another post coming ïŠ
I upload pictures live from the bus (and trains and wherever I am) quite a lot, you can see them on my Flickr most of the time: http://www.flickr.com/photos/route79/ – but most of the time I just make mental notes and blog later when at PC.
O2 hat off: I don’t think it would be difficult – because I forgot to mention that the button Kimmo was referring to didn’t appear to be a hard button, but just one of the softkey ones. So, any CP (i-mode or not) offering content, could for example have “search” on the right hand soft key (or some other soft key) which searched for the thing relevant to what you were viewing on the page at that time. e.g. perhaps you were viewing Arsenal football score and you hit the search key, you might get news about Arsenal, buy shirts, fixture info etc. The idea being that you don’t ask the user to type something in.
I do agree though re device requirements that it’s hard to get operator specific requirements involving deep-change in the device vendor roadmaps.
Re choosing the content provider line-up – it’s not such a bad idea really. One of the speakers on the night talked about “stupid” customers. Whilst I wouldn’t go that far, if you give your average joe a phone and they hit the “Internet” button – which one are they going to respond to most warmly: a empty search page or a page full of links to recognisable brands? Personally, I think there has to be both. But someone needs to choose the brands. In DoCoMo’s case, they choose the lineup – but they do so in order to ensure a “mobile OK” experience, not because they have favourites. (In fact they vary the order of the lineup depending upon customer popularity don’t they?) The net result is thousands of CPs offering mobile OK experiences – which customer’s *actually use*. Sorry I don’t mean to abuse the term mobile OK – but I think you get what i mean.
mobileOK? Funny you should say that because I think you’re totally right to use it in any context that’s referring to the content being suitable for a mobile device.
Actually I had a huge debate with DoCoMo’s W3C rep regarding this. I attempted (and failed) to help him understand that the W3C mobileOK Trustmark represented content that could be deemed technically appropriate for a mobile device. That is not the same as saying the ‘content is ok’.
I agree totally that there’s a use case for both XHTML-MP (or better) and WAP/iMode experiences. In fact, I thought O2 Active was perfectly good. There will always be a use case for an iMode, WAP or application interface to content that you can easily access and purchase. When I talk about mobile web some people think I’m taking the extreme view of getting rid of WAP – I’m not.
I was on a panel debating the whole iMode thing so I’ll write a post about it soon – I hope you can contribute your wealth of experience in this area and tell me if you think I’m mad
Everyone seems to have an opinion about the Mobile Web, but some opinions are more equal than others 
[...] Following on from my post about the “Mobile Search †presentations at Mobile Monday, I thought it was worth putting my thoughts together to clarify why I believe the Web will be accessible on the move, anytime anywhere in the near future. [...]
Walshy
(When are we going to catch up? I am sure one of us owes the other a beer or two. Right now I am in India working with various people on the idea that they could do with less, rather than more fragmentation…)
Interesting read. I am, as you know, with you on the idea that there is one web (and yes, that is also the opinion of my company
) and that fragmenting it is not a helpful way to get anything except a mess.
I reckon you’ve got DoCoMo a bit wrong. I don’t think they misunderstand the value of a label like mobileOK or even mobileOK Basic, but it threatens their business model in various ways. The major one is that their own technology, i-mode, works a bit differently and to see mobileOK in Japan might wake up their core market to the fact taht the rest of the web is not marching to the DoCoMo drum. They are in the position of going from a near-monopoly to an open market, and I suspect they aren’t that happy about it. But they do have an open web, it’s just that you don’t get onto their portal without giving them some love – and because searching a portal is generaly easier on a phone that has a huge impact on visibility and therefore visits.
Given that a large number of phone browsers actually handle tag-soup rubbish as well as nice XHTML Basic, many i-mode sites are generally viewable on other sets as well (except where they use wierd proprietary extensions).
..just my equal opinion
Well, well well. My good friend Charles. It’s great to hear from you. We’re having a BarCamp Dublin in April if you can make that. If not, tell me when you can get to Dublin and I’ll arrange something specific around you.
If there’s one person/company that understands the value of providing access to the Web to everyone, it’s you and Opera. It makes good commercial sense, but it’s also the right thing to do. India has a few potential surfers who’d like to access the Web and I’m damn sure they don’t give a toss about weather forecast.
Regarding DoCoMo, I remember speaking to them over dinner in Rome. Their W3C rep actually said it was all about the name of mobileOK, not the label or the Trustmark itself. He said it was all down to ‘protecting customers from illegal content’ – in other words, content that the rest of the world is permitted to see, adult content.
However, we’re not disagreeing because I was very diplomatic with my original post. I agree with you. DoCoMo’s position on the Web is revenue driven to help ensure they don’t lose it by opening the gates. Perhaps we should go over and show a few users what the rest of the world can see ïŠ Instead of the mobile industry here thinking it should be taking a leaf out of DoCoMo’s book!
BTW, your opinion is more equal than others
I wish it was possible to write short comments about this stuff.
[...] Following on from my post about the “Mobile Search †presentations at Mobile Monday, I thought it was worth putting my thoughts together to clarify why I believe the Web will be accessible on the move, anytime anywhere in the near future. [...]