Mobile 2.0 and Communities

On July 10th, we organized the fourth MonbileMonday Beijing Event with the subject of “Mobile 2.0 & Communities”. Mobile 2.0 is basically the “mobilization” or “ubiquitization” (sic.) of Web 2.0: user-generated content (text, pictures, audio, video) and online communities (social networks, instant messaging). The technical keywords associated are UGC, SNS, IM, tags. The economics of Mobile 2.0 are not yet in place, and we can see two approaches: companies extending to mobiles a service that was operating on the Internet and/or offline, or companies who try to build a large community they will be able to leverage when mobiles start to get more attention as a “personal media”.

The first presentation by Bradden Wondra, Director of our celebrated new sponsor Kodak China, belonged to the first category: after a few years of soul-searching, it seems like Kodak has taken on the challenge and found how to leverage its expertise in imaging, its distribution network and its understanding of people’s emotions towards memories. All this without giving too much consideration to Adwords revenues or selling opportunities to the usual suspects Google/Yahoo/eBay/NewsCorp/Amazon. Providing simplicity to users with a high-quality end-to-end solution is something very difficult but Kodak offers his targeting not only the early-adopters crowd (those who got an i-pod in 2002), but also the mainstream (those getting one this year).

Today, Kodak’s service offers a snap-to-print solution extended to mobiles to upload, synchronise, manage, tag, edit, share and of course print! All Kodak shops in China are now on their way to be wired to the service and create a new way to delight digital imaging consumers.

The second presentation by PDX.cn CEO Markus Xiang told us about mobile blogging. The PDX solution includes the possibility to blog not only text, but pictures, audio and video. Of course the networks do not really help (China is GPRS and CDMA 1x only at the moment) but the combination of mobile and online blogs is making the blogging experience more hassle-free for users, Markus even demonstrated the service by snapping a few shots and showing them online.

Another interesting aspect was the analysis of who are the users and what they actually do with the service, ranging from the highly personal couple shots to the side-business owner promoting its products. The challenge seems now to lie in how to create new value from cross-sections of content, and overall make it easier to navigate on this digital ocean.

The last speaker, Alex Liang, CEO of mobile IM provider Pica.com introduced their software product, providing a much richer experience than good’ol’SMS. Including avatars, buddy lists and a controversial interoperability with MSN and QQ. Mac users have enjoyed this type of services through Adium, but this is quite a first for mobiles.

This is all the more interesting as China Mobile has introduced its own IM service (Feemoo / Feixin) and apparently decided unilaterally that it was not only the best for its subscribers, but that they would probably not need any other IM. Pica’s approach, outside of the operator’s deck and relying on direct download by users was probably the only mobile IM company relatively untouched by the news…

We try to give some takeway ideas, and this time what we see is that:

(1) Mobile is the de facto largest media, though not recognized yet as such, and community applications are very efficient in gathering users in wait for a future where brands will understand better. The services presented are by no means frozen in time and will certainly evolve *a lot* as users and companies alike get more familiar with the medium.

(2) Providing a satisfactory experience with mobile only is very difficult as mobiles have strong limitations and come in all forms and shapes. Thus, the entry barrier for attractive services (meaning, other than SMS or pure WAP browsing) is actually higher than one could think, and this is without mentioning the possible conflicts with operators. Pica’s stance is quite interesting in this respect.

(3) Linking mobile with not only the web but also traditional activities (like Kodak shops) creates a lot more value than having just “print shops” and “flickr” without a direct relationship. We actually see this increasingly happening in many business fields.

Here are the presentations for this session:

• Kodak – 21st Century Photography
• PDX.cn – Mobile Blogging Community
• Pica.com – Network your mobile
• Mobile Monday Beijing – Introduction