Tomi Ahonen quotes Ray de Silva, Product Manager at Vodafone, speaking at the Mobile Content 2008 Summit in London.
While very positive, i would have to disagree. Mobile Social Networking is what we already do with our mobiles every time we read a message or talk to our friends or colleagues (they are our Social Network).
What i think he should have said is that “Mobile Communities are the Killer Application for 3G!”
A new study by Nielsen Online’ Mobile Media View has found that mobile Internet usage in the UK grew by 25 percent between the second and third quarter this year. At a time when the PC-based Internet is showing signs of saturation (rising only 3% to 35.3 million users) UK Mobile Internet Consumer numbers increased by from 5.8 million to 7.3 million.
Mobile Internet audience also has a higher concentration of younger users than PC-based Internet, the study found, noting that 25% of mobile Internet consumers are aged 15-24 compared to only 16% for PC-based consumers.
Kent Ferguson, Senior Analyst at Nielson said: “The fact that almost seven and a half million Britons now access the Web through their phone shows that mobile Internet is fast becoming a viable way for advertisers and publishers to reach important demographic groups”.
An advertiser has approached us wanting to sponsor The 3G Dating Agency to generate more awareness of their brand amongst our community. Considering all the depressing recession news we thought it would be a great idea if we could design it so that our members could benefit. So we devised a plan and we’re going to call it “FREE on Friday”.
Every Friday between the hours of 1pm and 7pm validated members of the 3G Dating Agency community can benefit from free messaging. To remind members we’ll be sending out an email every Friday morning which will also include the advertisers message.
Everyone is talking about it and most of us are by now feeling the effects of it, so I thought it might be worth saying here how we think The 3G Dating Agency will fair in these cash strapped times…
> Daters will become more strategic and frugal with their dating methods, making them more prepared to invest time looking for love online and meeting with other members virtually before committing to the expense and time involved with a proper date where they also have to buy the tickets, drinks and maybe dinner…
> Daters will become more interested in services that don’t involve subscriptions, and particularly ones like 3G Dating – where they can pay for results only…
> Daters will seek Dating services that save them wasting time… fake profiles are the biggest waste of time and customers know that it’s hard for free sites to afford the processes needed to avoid these…
> Singles are particularly sensitive to the economy as they can’t rely on a partners income, anytime anywhere mobile solutions will be sought as they seek to manage their work/life balance…
Whilst everyone is going to look to rein in those non-essential expenditures, daters in search of new friends or a soul mate consider this as much of a priority as paying the monthly rent or electric bill and hopefully certainly before additional frivolous expenses like premium SMS services…
I’ve been with a new advertiser this week discussing a collaborative advertising campaign involving printing unique QR codes to enable a fun way to engage with us that was relevant to specific locations.
It was interesting because the client couldn’t see the need to make the URL straightforward, for example they suggested using abbreviated versions of the URL such as tinyurl.com/3gdating etc
I had to demonstrate the user experience to show how a potential customer when following the URL that they get from scanning a code, wants to be confident that they are going somewhere recognisable and they might be wary of going to a completely coded URL.
For example which would you rather click on?
http://tinyurl.com/6rdsbm or www.the3gdatingagency.com/bbc
To me asking someone to use their mobile to click on a coded URL is like asking would they like sweets in their mouth rather than a voucher to get sweets from a store!
An article on Cabel’ Blog got me thinking today… One look at our site stats and it’s obvious a lot of our traffic (particularly from mobile browsers) is originating from Google. I understand that this is because most people are searching for URLs rather than just typing the full URLs into their browser, and most mobiles have the Google search page set as their default.
As we top Yahoo, Google, Taptu and all UK and Irish mobile operator search results, might advertising like that shown be a little more effective than the complete The3GDatingAgency.com URL?
I have a feeling that this advertising technique (already being widely used in Japan) might make more sense when we’re advertising on printed ads in the future as it might complement our QR Codes better too…
Is there anyone who could put up with having their day interrupted by the following?
…Oscar Jones and Norma Jones are now friends
…kevin Joyce is eating marshmallows
…Ollie Dale is attending toodles renoodles!
…Bronwyn Holmes wrote on Brendan
…Elmo Spears, Joe Biggs and Juliet South updated their profile picture
Facebook may have made the leap to the mobile device but to me the experience still looks like it’ll only be tolerated on a desktop… and we haven’t seen the adverts yet!
The Mobile Entertainment Award finalists have been announced and we’re very grateful to have been nominated as the Best Mobile Social Networking and UGC.
Unfortunately we’ll have to wait until the awards ceremony on the 10th December at the Mobile Entertainment Conference held at Londons prestigious Grange Holborn Hotel.
