Prompt's TechBlog

This week I attended the Chinwag MoSo Rising panel discussion The panel was filled with many mobile social networking gurus and was lead by well-know mobile journalist, Bena Roberts from GoMo News . It was a great opportunity to hear about the future of mobile LBS (location based services), mobile pricing for application usage and what the next steps will be in mobile convergence.

Out of the guru panel came some interesting ideas:

The mobile world is still seen as separate from the digital world by consumers
With the exception of MVNOs like Blyk (the world's first MVNO based on mobile advertising) mobile advertising has not been living up to expectations and it not yet a sustainable business on its own

Successful mobile social networks need to be niche i.e. based around a football club at the moment. Sites like Facebook have not been developed for the mobile space but there is lots of untapped potential for them in this space

The Apple iPhone has started to pave the way for more mainstream consumers to use mobile web apps and to set the expectation that the mobile user should have the same UI as the PC user

Some really effective mobile web campaigns include a recent one from Strongbow and flirtomatic to give friends and flirts a virtual pint of Strongbow where they can register to receive a free pint mobile voucher, along with details of the nearest pubs where it can be redeemed during Bowtime (5pm to 7pm each Tuesday). Clever indeed!

What does the future hold for mobile? Greater personalisation of location based services and making applications easy to use. The catch phrase of the night was 'sharing your life in real time'. No doubt this will be a hot topic at the 2009 Mobile World Congress - watch this space!

Labels: Chinwag, Facebook, iPhone, LBS, mobile phone, Mobile World Congress

# posted by Melanie Antonucci at 4:40 PM  | 1 comments | Blog home