Monday's mobile marketing tidbits

Blyk's delaying its launch until October. No bad thing as July and August are quiet times in retail. IMHO, Blyk should be launching in September to get the school, college and university kids signed up as they go back for the Autumn term, and that starts early September for schools and Sixth Form Colleges. Come October, we'll already be into half-term and well into silly season for Christmas which may be too late to launch something. I wonder if Blyk realises what an enormous task they've taken on? And I wonder if they've managed to sort out data charges so they can offer their customers a proper mobile content and media experience via wap or mobile internet?

Borders is extending their mobile marketing effort to provide sample chapters to customers' phones for free to promote new book titles. Details are currently a bit sketchy. I'm interested to see how this works in practice. The best example I've seen of this in the past was a poster campaign I saw at a railway station promoting a new thriller, Mr Clarinet. You texted in a keyword to a shortcode and by return, got back a link to a wapsite where you could read a synopsis of the book, part of the first chapter, find out more about the author and also click to buy the book. Perfect for whiling away 10 or 20 minutes while you are waiting for a train.

Three UK has launched 3next.mobi which is a user generated catalogue of stuff to do on your phone. A very nice idea where you can add applications and services that you like and add them in with your review of the service. It's free to join and not restricted to Three customers although it's designed specifically for Three's X-Series customers. Worth a look as an example of how to market content services. http://www.3next.mobi

And finally, Admob has now served more than 4 billion wap adverts, the last billion being published in the last 35 days. Way to go!