SMS turned 25 last week and I think it's showing its age

It's hard to believe that SMS, or short messaging service, or text message, is 25 years old. On December 3rd, 1992, the world’s first text message was sent. Fittingly, given the time of year, it read, “Merry Christmas,” according to TechSpot.

The first text message was sent by Neil Papworth over the Vodafone GSM network here in the UK. At the time, mobile phones weren’t capable of sending texts, so Papworth typed the message on a computer and sent it to an Orbitel 901. This wasn't a mobile phone, rather a telephone with a small digital display (pictured).

Text messages took off quickly in Europe but took longer to catch on across the pond in the USA due to the way US Mobile Network Operators (aka Carriers) were structured and how they priced their services.

It was SMS that brought me into the world of mobile marketing back in 2000 when I joined location based mobile marketing company, ZagMe. Our pioneering service was about sending text messages to shoppers whilst they were actually shopping at UK shopping malls - initially Lakeside and Bluewater, but with an aim to scale beyond that. We weren't quite the first to use text messaging for marketing, but we were the first to do this based on location. (For a short history of proximity mobile marketing, there's an article I wrote and accompanying video if you follow this link.)

At that time, young people had cottoned on to SMS and were using it to the exclusion of anything else. Voice calls weren't the done thing if you were a teenager. SMS was where it was at. Premium SMS was also used as the delivery mechanism for ringtones and logos (remember those?) and mobile games (snake anyone?) to small screen phones like the Nokia 3310 or the Sony Ericsson T68. Remember those phones? Parents were the next to cotton on to text messaging as a necessity for keeping in touch with their touch-texting teenage offspring. Others came later to the SMS party.

By 2012, mobile users in the U.K. were sending 151 billion texts a year. In recent years, that number has fallen quite dramatically. As of this year, users in the U.K. only sent 66 billion text messages. That's not to say people aren't messaging each other. They most certainly are, it's just they're using different apps and services to do it - Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, Snapchat, even email. Why would you pay for SMS or bother with a SMS bundle when you can get other instant messaging services for free with your data bundle - data being much more of a necessity these days than SMS.

I know from my own experience, that I send hardly any SMS at all and I receive very few personal ones. I've been thinking about how I use SMS... I occasionally use it for messaging someone and those who I use SMS with tend to be older and don't tend to check their email much so SMS is still more immediate for them. I also use it to send voice messages to my Mum's landline. When I travel by train to visit her, I usually message her from the train to confirm that I'm on the train and what my arrival time will be, or let her know if I'm delayed. In that use case, SMS is key because mobile coverage is so patchy when crossing the country. I also use it for 2FA (two factor authentication) for some services. I get occasional marketing messages by SMS. And I get all GP and hospital appointment reminders via SMS.

So, SMS is not dead, but it's most definitely feeling its age. In mobile years, 25 is very old indeed. It still has a use and I think it should still be available on our mobile devices, but it's definitely the poor relation compared with WhatsApp and their ilk.

How about you? Are you still a SMS addict or have you moved on too?

Day 9/25 Blogmas

New comScore report: Mobile's Hierarchy of Needs

I just got an email from comScore announcing the release of a new global report, ‘Mobile’s Hierarchy of Needs’. They tell us that this new report traces the global evolution of smartphones and tablets as they’ve become consumers’ primary digital tool, revealing specific behaviours for which these platforms are important to their daily lives. Data from 9 markets (USA, Canada, UK, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Mexico, China and Indonesia) demonstrates audience and consumption trends, along with regional differences in digital landscapes.

Key insights revealed in ‘Mobile’s Hierarchy of Needs’ include:

• Mobile devices account for more than 60% of all digital minutes in all 9 markets, led by app usage.
• The share of consumers abandoning desktop altogether varies dramatically by geography – from just 7% in the UK, to 70% in Indonesia.
• Messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, QQ Instant Messenger and Line account for nearly 1 in 7 minutes in certain markets and led to a decline in standard SMS messaging.

I thought it was worth a look. You can download the report here: Mobile’s Hierarchy of Needs report.

They have a bunch of other free whitepapers you may also find useful, including this recent one about Mums in the UK and their online behaviour, especially on smartphones.

It's so funny how we don't talk anymore..

Retro house phones in a hotel in Los Angeles. May 2016.

I have rarely been without a mobile phone for the last 16 years of my life. When I first got one, talking on the phone was the thing I did most of. Mainly because that's what the devices were designed to do and I didn't know any different having been brought up with a landline where it was the height of extravagance to listen to the charts on the phone using Dial-A-Disc (no really, we did do that and you can read about it here). I also used the alarm clock every day. I occasionally used the FM radio and did a fair bit of texting - but I was ahead of the curve on texting back in 2000 as I was working for a company whose only focus was on SMS marketing. If I hadn't been working for ZagMe back then, I'm not sure I would have been as quick to embrace SMS.

Fast forward 16 years and I can count the number of phone calls I make each week on the fingers of one hand. And when I receive a phone call, it's such an infrequent occurrence, it can sometimes feel like an intrusion of my private space. With messaging of all kinds, be that email, Facebook Messenger or lowly SMS, it's asynchronous so I can reply as and when I choose to and it's fair to say, I'm overwhelmed with written communication much of the time - especially email. A phone call is in real time, hence the feeling of intrusion. And if I need to get hold of someone, calling them feels like I'm intruding into their day unnecessarily. Although, that could just be call reluctance.

I'm not alone in this. A recent survey from GiffGaff (sample size 1,500 adults in the UK according to their PR team) showed that not only are we Brits spending 3 hours a day on our phones, but that less than a third of us use our phones mainly as a phone for making and receiving actual phone calls. The UK is a nation of texters with 36% of the 1500 respondents stating messaging (SMS / Messenger Apps) as the main use of their phone. Browsing is surprisingly low at 16% and Social media at 11%. I'm wondering if the last two were under-reported?

Also of interest, depending on the device you own, your use of that device will vary. There were 13% of respondents who own a Nokia device and more than 50% of them said they used their phones for phone calls. Apple users (29%) were the least likely to use their phones to make calls and most likely to play games on their phone. I'm guessing many of the Nokia owners have simple phones that do calling better than anything else and that's why their owners bought them as they have no desire to push their finger around a glass screen aimlessly.

It's something I've been thinking about for a while now. This song that my older readers may recognise comes to mind, Cliff Richard's 'It's so funny how we don't talk any more'.

So what happened? How come we fell out of love with talking? I used to spend hours on the phone talking to my friends after school. Is today's teenage experience with messaging and social media as rich? Do we need to be encouraged to talk more with an updated version of BT's 'It's good to talk' advertising with Maureen Lipman playing Beattie?

Of course, this survey was UK specific so usage trends are likely to be different in different countries, and especially in countries where literacy levels are not as high as they are in the UK. And communication in any form is a good thing - whether that's written or spoken. 

The main impact of all of this, especially for marketers, is about understanding people's preferred forms of communication and playing to it. If I want to get hold of my Mum, it's a phone call. If I want to talk to my friends, it's probably Facebook Messenger. For business contacts, it's Skype or email. And if you really want to cut through the clutter, a hand-written letter will do the trick.

Much as I love written communication, I think there is still a place for voice. A friend called me on the phone the other day. She knew I was having a rough patch so she took the time out to call me. Like people used to in the old days. And I'm grateful that she bothered as it was a much richer experience than the equivalent in SMS or email would have been. I need to remember that and maybe pick up the phone more often, for you know, phoning people. 

Sometimes, it's good to talk.

Update: Slate has picked up on this topic too and published a very good article about it here. Well worth a read.

The future of communications

A random email popped into my inbox this morning asking me my thoughts on the future of communications based on the questions below. I thought my answers might warrant a blog post as I’m interested in your thoughts too, dear reader, so please feel free to comment.

I thought I’d start the post with a little video from 1999 or thereabouts, from Motorola. It was their vision of the future of mobile communications. It’s easy for us to criticise the bits that are missing from the video, but at the same time, there are aspects of it that are spot on.

The future of mobile communications as predicted by Motorola back in ~1999.

And now for the questions posed…

1. What do you predict will happen/change in the communication sector in 2015?

I think my answer to this depends in how you define the communication sector. We are seeing a further decline in SMS and voice calls and I expect that to continue. At the same time, we are using our phones more and more to connect on social media and messaging apps – be that Twitter, Google Hangouts, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, WeChat and many more.

Email is also not going away any time soon. Despite the fact that many of us are drowning in email, it is still an effective communication channel. The major change here is that we are accessing our email on a mobile device first.

Companies and organisations need to respond by being flexible in how they communicate with their audience and customers. That means email has to be mobile friendly – with links going to mobile pages, with email content including words and not just pictures and for it to be quick to download and access. There is also an additional need to allow easy options to unsubscribe with one click or one reply of an email.

On the social media side, companies have to adapt their communications strategies for dealing with customers. And it’s not easy when you’re dealing with multiple channels and many people demanding your attention much of the time. Keeping track of conversations with the same person over multiple channels is not easy. But more and more, customers are expecting this level of continuity.

2. How do you think people's behaviour will change in 2015?

I am currently seeing more people saying they’re uninstalling Facebook Messenger or other messaging apps or social media channels and telling people to contact them via a specific channel such as email, voice or SMS, or whichever their preferred method is.

It has always been true that people have different preferred communication channels – in the old days it was face to face vs telephone vs letter. It has got a whole lot more complicated now when you add in the plethora of messaging apps, social media and more. If you’re on the other side, it’s hard to always remember your friends’ preferences – the ones who never do Facebook, or don’t read their email, and even harder to always accommodate them. Add in the scale of any kind of business and their audience and their individual preferences and it gets a whole lot more difficult. Nevertheless, there are benefits in understanding these nuances and acting accordingly. There’s no point forcing someone to talk on the phone if they don’t like voice communication. Equally, there’s little use in getting frustrated when someone hasn’t responded to your email. For all you know, they may never have seen it in the first place. It could be one of  200 emails received that morning, or it could be languishing in their spam folder.

I’m also seeing a rise in protecting privacy and an increased level of understanding (and misunderstanding) of what personal data you’re giving away in return for using all these services. There have been attempts by the likes of Ello to hand back the power to the consumer but with limited success. At the moment utility still outweighs everything else, but not for everyone.
And video is on the increase. There have been many attempts at video-based messaging, but services like Vine seem to be a real hit. I think we’ll see more of this in the next year or two.

3. How will communication platforms respond to these changes?

I think companies running these communication services will respond more to the privacy issues, or at least, I hope they will. I’d like to see better explanation of what data is used, where it goes and why it’s needed. I’d like to see more companies working harder to protect the security of consumer data – even if that means we have to pay for the privilege.

From a marketing perspective, I think it’s likely we’ll see more types of advertising creeping in. After all, these services have to make their money somehow and if it’s not through premium or paid-for services, the only other model that I can see is advertising. I hope we see some innovative solutions here that work for both customer and advertiser and that we can get beyond the banner ad.

4. What excites you in the communication industry?

It’s dynamic. I’ve been working in mobile marketing and advertising since 2000 and back then, we had voice, SMS, voicemail and WAP on our phones. On our laptops or desktops, we had email and Instant Messenger. It’s amazing to think of how many more ways to communicate we have now. And I’m sure there are more to come. It taps into a basic human need to share and connect.

5. And which companies or apps do you think will be doing exciting things in 2015?



I really like what Swiftkey is doing to speed up mobile communication. The way it learns how you write, the words and syntax you use, is impressive. Their recent project with Professor Stephen Hawking is also impressive and shows that these tools can improve life and productivity for those with accessibility issues too. Something we often overlook in tech circles.

SMS is dead. Long live messaging.

You may be forgiven for thinking mobile marketing is all about adverts on web pages seen on a mobile device or in-app advertising or sponsorship. For those of us who’ve been in the game for longer than we care to remember, SMS started the whole mobile marketing sector off back in 1999 yet it is often overlooked for newer ways to use mobile (i.e. mobile adverts) or for older formats (email, print, TV).

But it isn’t quite dead yet. I still use it – although not nearly as much as I used to. My sister is an avid texter and my nieces are still at it. However, for the first time, there has been a downturn in text messaging in the UK.

The main culprits for the downturn is the rise of messaging services like WhatsApp. It makes sense. As we find other, cheaper, more convenient ways to chat to each other, SMS services will get replaced. Why pay for SMS when you can have WhatsApp for free and you’re paying for mobile data anyway? I suspect Facebook messenger and email also have a part to play in this picture.

Let’s look at this growth with a bit of historical context… According to the Mobile Data Association (and they got their figures direct from the network operators), annual consumer usage 1999-2009 was as follows:

1999 - 1 billion; 2000 - 6.2 billion; 2001 - 12.2 billion; 2002 - 16.8 billion; 2003 - 20.5 billion; 2004 - 26 billion; 2005 - 32 billion; 2006 - 41 billion; 2007 - 56.9 billion; 2008 - 78.9 billion; 2009 96.8 billion

As you can see from the graph, SMS was still growing, year-on-year, at a healthy pace in 2010 and 2011. And even though there has been a drop-off, we’re still looking at about 120 billion SMS every year in the UK or thereabouts. That’s 4.5 times more than what we were using 10 years ago. That’s a lot of SMS.

So let’s not dismiss SMS quite yet. When you look at the annual figures, they’re still very healthy so I encourage you to think about SMS as part of your marcomms effort. After all, plenty of your customers are still using it and there may still be value in connecting with them via SMS – especially for customer service – another area often overlooked.

What is particularly exciting for us mobile marketers though, is how much activity is happening on mobile devices. Check out that email figure – 65% of us are accessing email on our smartphones. It really is huge. So if you haven’t ‘gone mobile’ yet, I really think it might be time for you to do so.

I was asked a few years ago what my advice would be to the first time mobile-marketer in terms of ‘going mobile’ and I said to make sure their email marketing was mobile friendly. I think the advice still stands. If you do nothing else in mobile, please make sure your email works on handsets – and test for lower end devices. Not everyone has the latest iPhone or Samsung Galaxy!

It was twenty years ago today

Well, almost. It’ll be twenty years ago on 3rd December since the first text message was sent over the Vodafone network and a new era of communication and data dawned or should that be ‘spawned’? It took some time for SMS to break through to the mainstream, but when it did, it seemed to happen pretty fast. Now it seems a bit old hat as I find myself reverting to email, twitter, facebook and IM to connect with friends, family and colleagues. As for calling, well, I barely need that function on my phone any more. We’ve all been part of this change and it has been hardly noticeable as we migrate from one service to another. And with these changes, you’d think that incumbents like Skype and BBM had the sector sewn up. But if Skype’s future isn’t as clear cut as we may have thought, that means there’s still wiggle room and there’s still scope for new services to emerge and I’m interested to see how and when these take off.

So the newest kid on the block is yuilop who happen to be based in Barcelona, one of my favourite cities in the world. My friend Phil has gone to work for them and I challenged him on why he’d chosen to go and work for a start-up in, what I thought, was a market hard to penetrate and with little (obvious) sources of revenue for all the above reasons. And why would you go for yuilop and not, say, Whatsapp (which seems to be almost ubiquitous now and a real threat to the once dominant BBM)?

Yuilop seems to have greater ambitions than Whatsapp or BBM and calls itself a ‘social communication app’. It allows free rich media messaging (so audio, pictures, video – what the operators may have described as MMS once upon a time), free yuilop to yuilop voice calls (all via mobile) and on top of that, you can message your friends who are not on yuilop via standard SMS or voice. This means you can get in touch with your friend who has an old Nokia handset without app capability and still message or talk to them. The latter has some significant cost to it, but they don’t charge customers for this at the moment, but instead require them to get Energy by getting your friends to sign up and by engaging in consumer offers. The free calls and messages angle is always popular in youth markets and they’re savvy when it comes to taking advantage of them.

The ad-funded telco offering is not new. We saw it with Blyk back in the day, and more recently with Ovivo Mobile. But it’s a tough one. Will the maths stack up or, like one commenter on Yuilop’s Google Play page, should you just let the customers buy credit if they want to? I’ve been wary of wholly ad-funded services for digital services. The danger is that you attract the freeloaders who suck you dry and find every loophole in the system. They’re also the customers who will never ever respond to an advert. Or even if they did, they don’t have the money to spend anyway. The customers you’re trying to attract can probably afford to pay. It’s a dilemma. That’s not to say new business models shouldn’t be tried. They absolutely should. And our digital lives are changing and moving so fast, exponentially even, that anything could happen and the innovators and the businesses nimble enough to try something new are the ones who will win out in the end.

So is there room for something like Yuilop? Yes, I think there probably is. They’ve had very fast growth in the last 6 months with over 30,000 Google Play ratings which is just a proportion of the overall number of downloads, it’s clear that this one is doing something right. If they can get the balance right between consumer insight and marketing offers, then they’re on to something. Add in a dollop of big data when they get to 250,000 customers to do interesting targeting beyond age, gender, location and device, and we might start to see some interesting results for advertisers and customers alike. Will they catch up with the likes of Viber, Whatsapp, Kakao, Line, Skype and more? Time will tell.

Phil from yuilop will be in the UK on 17th October and you can meet him to talk about the opportunities with yuilop in Spain and the UK at Swedish Beers.

Find Yuilop online at http://yuilop.com, on Facebook and Twitter. Download the app for free. Currently compatible with Android and iOS.

~~~~~~~~

Want to know more about what exponential actually means? Well, I could explain it, but I’ll leave it to friend and colleague, Russell Buckley, to do that in this short video.

Essential reading from Tomi Ahonen – the Almanac 2010

Tomi’s done it again. He’s published his 2010 Almanac – a veritable smorgasbord of stats, information, graphs, charts, facts, figures and insight into the world of mobile. It’s 180 pages of mobile goodness, including 84 charts, sized to work as an ebook on your smartphone as well as your laptop. Very neat.

It is, in my view, essential reading for anyone with an interest in the world of mobile. Data in the e-book includes - Size of Mobile Industry; Customers; Handsets and Smartphones; Mobile Messaging including SMS and MMS; Mobile Internet; 7th Mass Medium; Music on Mobile; TV and Video; Gaming; Social Networking; Other services including News, Jokes, Adult, App Stores etc; Mobile Advertising; Voice calls; Enterprise services; Network Infrastructure; Digital Divide; and a Historical Timeline.

There is tabular data included - Index of Mobile Leadership for the 30 most advanced countries; major comparative data on 60 major mobile countries; the 25 countries with largest subscriber counts and 25 with highest penetration rates per capita; plus 25 countries with highest rate of 3G migration. Plus the 20 biggest mobile operator Groups.

The whole document is available for immediate download, has been released today, and costs only 9.99 Euros. The only place you can order it (it is not available at major booksellers like Amazon) is Tomi’s company website. 

Wanna know more and order it? – then check it out here.

Enjoy. I know I will!

Technorati Tags: tomi ahonen,almanac,statistics,mobile,2010

SMS continues to grow in the UK

The Mobile Data Association has released it’s latest SMS and MMS usage figures for the UK. And interesting reading they are too. MMS or picture messaging is still a tiny proportion of overall messaging, but it is there and it is increasing.

According to the MDA, the continued growth of messaging is highlighted by a 2009 daily average of 265 million text messages and 1.6 million picture messages. 2009’s text message total was 96.8 billion (a 23% increase on 2008), while over 600 million picture messages were sent across the whole year.

Seasonal drivers still appear to propel the use of Picture Messaging, with 4.5 million picture messages being sent on Christmas Day itself – hence the spike in traffic in December -  while Network Operators’ figures also indicated an upturn in picture messaging during the recent cold snap. I’m guessing lots of people were comparing the snow in their area with friends and family.

Text messaging traffic over the recent festive period continued to rise proportionately.

Christmas Day    Increase on      NYE/ Day      Increase on 
2009                       2008                       2009/10                  2008
441,805,870          31%                   874,033,799               21% 

Assessing the findings of the MDA’s report, Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst at Quocirca, said: "New generation touchscreen handsets and the bundling of SMS messages into many tariffs has made texting easier, and seen its role develop. Now it is not only a convenient medium for a quick chat with friends, but also a way of participating in television voting and raising funds for needy charities. When a powerful call to action is given, the population of the UK often turn first towards their mobile phones." This is borne out with the recent campaigns to raise funds for BBC Children in Need and the DEC appeal for Haiti.

Q4 2009 Statistical findings

Text Messaging (SMS)

Total number of text messages (SMS) sent in:
2009 total 96.8 billion
2008 total 78.9 billion
2007 total 56.9 billion

Video and Picture messages (MMS)

Campaigns like the Radio 1 Free MMS Day appear to have had an effect on the figures by attracting 42,000 messages to the BBC radio station in just 24 hours with viewers contributing to an online mosaic of all their images (moderated of course). Let’s see if MMS continues to grow in 2010. The growth rate between 2008 and 2009 was just 9%, averaging 1.6m MMS per day. However, I’m in no doubt that SMS will continue to grow in 2010 and beyond.

Total number of picture messages (MMS) sent in:
2009 total 601 million
2008 total 553 million
2007 total 449 million

 

 

Source: Mobile Data Association / Text.It

Technorati Tags: sms,mms,messaging,picture messaging,text messaging,statistics,mda,text.it,mobile

Tuesday linkage

It is Tuesday right? And it is March already (how did that happen)? So it must be time for some links.

This is an interesting post from the Admob blog about iphone advertisers best practice. I would say that quite a few of those tips and hints are relevant for anyone doing stuff in mobile advertising. It’s not exactly rocket science (but then mobile advertising isn’t) but it’s good to be reminded of the simple stuff every now and then. And this is a great checklist.

Bango is also running an interesting experiment in running a mobile website, Mobislim. They have a real mobile website set up and are sharing all the analytics, results, learnings and more with their audience in a blog format. If you are a mobile webmaster looking to commercialise your offering, this is well worth keeping an eye on.

If stats are your thing then have a look at MSearchGroove’s post covering stats around mobile web traffic, mobile search and advertising. Peggy Anne Salz has some interesting insight and links to share.

There was a little flurry of excitement about Process Away recently and their iphone App. Agreed, it looks really good and looks like a great solution to be able to take payments at your live event without a huge investment in hardware, software, wifi and the rest. That I don’t doubt. But who are they and why would I trust them with my money? And even looking at the FAQs, that doesn’t reassure me much. Seeing as folks making business decisions about technology are very often  not technologists, the technology jargon about security is meaningless. Some explanation of who you are, some reassurance that customer’s money is safe, some reassurance of how the service is underwritten and this could be a real goer. Or am I being a curmudgeon here?

I’ve been asked to be a judge for 2009’s Mobile Messaging Awards which is very exciting. Get those entries in! I’m also judging this year’s Webby Awards… still very North American in its focus which is a shame as I firmly believe there is mobile talent beyond those shores. I guess there’s always next year to enter…

Technorati Tags: links,mobile,statistics,m-commerce,m-payments,m-retail,m-transactions,awards,160characters,mobile web,mobile internet,admob,mobile advertising,iphone

Did you know…

The lovely folks at Sharpcards just emailed me with some insight into the global messaging market and I thought you’d be interested to see what they had to share…

The mobile messaging market raked in around $130 billion in revenues by the end 2008, and is on target to increase that to $224 billion by 2013. Although the majority of this is made up by SMS, the popularity of MMS has been increasing steadily over the past few years. In 2009 MMS is expected to generate over $31 billion worldwide, $1 billion more than SMS was generating five years ago. MMS is also being predicted to pass 115 billion messages by the end of 2011 according to Portio Research last November.

In 2008 Sharpcards (the enhanced mobile messaging people) sold over 1.5m mobile personal greetings worldwide, with around 20% of those sales (300,000) coming from Valentine's Day alone. Key trends from last year:

• 40% of mobile ecards were bought in the four hours between 08:00 and 12:00 (around 30,000 greetings sold per hour)
• 56% of sales occurred before midday and less than 2% after 22:00 – there are some of us who obviously like to live dangerously
• It seems that most people in the world are soft at heart, with cute and cuddly outselling kinky cards by 3-1 in 2008
• Sharpcards sent 363 marriage proposals through mobile ecards on Valentines Day 2008: Perhaps not the most traditional way to 'pop the question' and I wonder how many of the answers were ‘yes’?

Hmm, that’s quite a lot of messaging going on out there.

Technorati Tags: mms,sms,messaging,ecards,statistics

Sharpcards secures deal with T-Mobile UK

Sharpcards has just announced its agreement with T-Mobile in the UK to embed its EMMA system (that's Enhanced Mobile Messaging Application to you and me) on certain of T-Mobile's handsets in the UK. This is to create a better MMS messaging experience for T-Mobile customers.

"Under terms of the three-year agreement, EMMA will be embedded within the messaging menu of the specific handsets. EMMA allows T-Mobile customers to send high quality ecards as easy as sending a text message, by putting the service right in front of the customer at a time when they're texting.

Ecards are designed as an imaginative was to send picture messages – fun and flirty animations for everyday sending, from the world's top brands.

EMMA comes in both Java and Symbian and is a fully integrated part of the handset software that requires no further installation by the customer. Content is continually updated and the customer does not pay a data fee to access the ecards."

T-Mobile in the UK, happens to be the cheapest MMS provider (as far as I know at least) at just 20p a message. And this represents very good value. The idea behind including the EMMA system, means that customers can access sophisticated mobile content such as animations and include that in their MMS messages. There's a one-off fee of 75p for the animation you choose, but once downloaded to your phone, you can use it as many times as you like.

I encourage ways to help normobs increase their usage of more sophisticated aspects of their phones and this is a great start. My only question is the pricepoint... is 75p too much for the average teenager (for I'm guessing it will be teenagers who might drive this) for something like this? I suspect once the service has gained some traction and is out there on a selection of handsets in the market that we'll see some ad-funded models emerging or specific sponsored content... I can already visualise Coca-Cola traditional Christmas animations and Love Hearts at Valentine's Day. I do hope so, as I think it will be at that point that this will really take off and could be an interesting spin on mobile marketing.

Technorati Tags: messaging,MMS,T-Mobile,animation,graphics,wallpapers,mobile content,mobile marketing

T-Mobile UK doesn't understand mobile web

or it's customers!

T-Mobile as a network operator has pioneered, to some extent, the mobile web by being an early adopter of fixed rate mobile data plans. They also opened up their portal to the wider web rather than focussing on creating and managing their own portal. I stick with them because T-Mobile has been value for money so far.

But I reckon there are some very weak links in the organisation for this to happen:

Message just received via SMS: "From 28 July we're increasing the charges for calling some numbers beginning with 08. For full details please visit our website at t-mobile.co.uk/08"

Can someone tell me why this information couldn't have been put into a mobile friendly page with a direct link so I can check it there and then? After all, it's only a list - there's nothing complex in there. And where do they get off putting up their prices anyway for this without any explanation as to why beyond 'according to OFCOM guidelines' with no link to said guidelines. In some cases the cost has gone up 400%. I find it hard to believe that OFCOM has been telling network operators to *increase* their prices. Details below:

08xx number changes
To make things clearer for our customers, we have aligned our 08 number charges with local and national calls to follow the latest Ofcom guidelines. These calls aren't included as part of your allowance in any of our price plans.

The table below will give you an overview of how your price plan has been affected by the change, the 08xx numbers affected and details of how the prices are changing.
08 number changes

0870 / 0871 / 0844 / 0845

Tarriff Current Charge New Charge
Flext 10p 20p
Combi 10p 30p
Solo 10p 30p
Everyone Off-Peak 10p 30p off peak / 5p on peak
My Faves 10p 30p
Freetime 10p 40p off peak / 5p on peak
Family 10p 20p
Relax 10p 12p
Just SIM 10p 30p
Web'n'Walk / Data Plans 10p 20p
N.b. Call charges are in pence per minute.
Changes will all take affect from the 28th July 08. If you have any additional queries please contact Customer Services by dialling 150 from your mobile phone.

BIG FAT FAIL T-MOBILE

Of course this isn't the first time, and probably not the last. I have countless useless marketing and service messages from T-Mobile - the most memorable being the one promoting Euro 2004 England football content. My surname might be Keegan, but I'm not related to the footballer and it doesn't mean I like football. I've never suggested I'm into football for one minute and my footie-mad pals would concur. But even if I was a football fan, they sent the message the day *after* the match that England *lost*. When will they ever learn...?

Tuesday linkage 31 July 2007

I'm having a clearout of all the tabs I have open on firefox so here are a few links for you

Keep stuff secure with your eyes (and your mobile)
Oki Japan has developed software that brings iris recognition security to existing mobile phones. Of course the focus described is security and that's *great*. Can you imagine, no more pin number or password traumas. But I wonder if it could also be used for iridology, either now, or at some point in the future when the resolution improves?

Mobile and fashion
Or perhaps we're better off with a mobile 'colour me beautiful' type service, courtesy of the folks over at HP. It's still in prototype mode but I can see it taking off and is a nice takeaway if you've gone through the whole Colour Me Beautiful (or similar) process. Maybe this is what the fashion industry needs to help get them more mobile. I can't help thinking though that lighting is going to play an important factor as to whether or not this will be successful. In certain lights, it's very difficult to tell what colours clothes are exactly and I'm wondering if the camera can get round this or not.

Get the message right
ICSTIS is investigating anonymous text message services as they seem to be used for bullying and rather insidious messages which is not what they were designed for. There's a public consultation under way, so get in there quick to add your point of view. You can download the pdf http://www.icstis.org.uk/pdfs_consult/anonymous_sms.pdf here and the deadline is 7th September.

Meanwhile, Darla Mack, wishes SMS a happy birthday this week. It's 15 years old. Can you believe it?! I only started texting in 2000 so as much as I like to think I'm an early adopter for some things, maybe I wasn't an early adopter when it came to SMS!

Social media continues apace
Online social networking isn't going away. Via Twitter, I'm finding friends are unhappy about being facebook-less today (it's undergoing maintenance right now - but only affecting *some* accounts, including mine). But never fear, there's always somewhere else to go play and connect with folks like you. So if you're a teenager (I'm not) and you're into anime, avatars and the like, then join 8.5m other teens like you at Gaia. Ok, it's not mobile, but it's big and we need to be keeping an eye on this social media type stuff.

Tuesday Tasters

In no particular order:

India's primary web connection is via mobile not PC

Vodafone is linking up with DatingDirect to offer mobile dating. I thought they must have already been doing mobile dating, but clearly not. And by the sounds of it DatingDirect is having troubles of its own if you read the comments on the link above so I wonder if Vodafone has chosen the right partner. Hmm. Elsewhere, Mobestar has teamed up with Bone Fish to offer mobile dating using its mDate service.

Mig33 is doing exceptionally well with 400 million customers in 200 countries for its mobile messaging service. "Simply download the application onto your mobile phone, and you’ll be connected to everyone around the world through the most popular online services. So you can IM, visit chat rooms, send email, share photos, SMS and, of course, make cheap calls—all from your mobile phone." More info at Mig33's website. Of course, they also have 10m dollars in the bank, so that's going to help get the service out there.

Meanwhile, MVNO Amp'd is shutting up shop leaving thousands of customers network-less. Customer services stopped yesterday and the service will shut down completely at the end of the month.

Incentivated is ramping up its recruitment.

Skandia Cowes Week is using SMS for research purposes. A series of short questions relating to that day's sailing will be sent via text message to each of the competitors. Questions will be asked on numerous topics, including the quality or difficulty of the course, the accuracy of the weather forecasts and the standard of stewarding.

And finally, young Britons prefer meeting face to face than using digital methods. Get away! You mean young people prefer going out socialising, going to gigs, dancing the night away, chillin' at a festival and hanging with their mates than spending time in front of a computer screen. Well I'm not sure I actually needed a research paper to tell me that. But there are some other findings that you might find interesting in there.

So much to write about, so little time

Ok, this post is going to be a little random as I'm very short on time but need to capture a few things on my blog before my firefox explodes with having too many tabs open simultaneously.

So it seems to be conference season.. World Telemedia last week in Amsterdam where I talked about mobile marketing in the PRS (premium rate services) world and then on Tuesday I was moderating a panel at Internet World around mobile marketing in the age of personalisation with very able speakers Stephen Pinches from the FT.com and Robert Thurner from Incentivated. I'm also due in the Heist Conference for Education Marketing today (I've got as far as my wonderful hotel room at least) and I'd really like to catch some of the sessions to help set the scene before I'm on this afternoon with Robert Thurner again and also Ramesh from Active Media. So I digress, lets get on with the links 'n stuff.

Voip and MSN/Yahoo/Skype messaging on your mobile from fring. Has anyone tried it? Looks like it's a pretty neat application that sits on your mobile phone allowing you Voip and integrates with your existing messaging apps. My poor old Nokia N70 is due for retirement so I'll hang fire in downloading this until I upgrade. But if anyone else has used it, please comment here.
Update: Alfie's done a rather good review of Fring over on his moblog. And both he and Whatleydude recommend it. So I guess I'll just have to get on and download it and use it myself then!

MP3tunes locker - this looks like a good idea - you can back-up all your mp3s from your 'puter for free and then you can access them anywhere over t'internet thus allowing for a back-up of your music but also the chance to access those choons wherever you are. It'll even stream over mobile (make sure you're on a flat rate data charge mind!). Another one I must try I reckon.

Limbo has raised USD8m for their reverse auction company. The founders are ex Enpocket (who were always good at raising cash it has to be said) and seem to be doing a good job of bringing the reverse auction concept to the US masses. As it happens, reverse auctions were in the news last week as well as Million-2-1 (who are one of the largest UK reverse auction houses) were up for a Eureka award last week at World Telemedia but lost out to ZoneMedia's made-for-mobile horror short series 'When Evil Calls' (it's not for the faint hearted!).

It seems teens are interested in receiving ads on their mobile phone so that should bode well for Blyk provided they can work out the economics to pay for it all as I discussed with one of the Blyk team in the back of a cab to Victoria after the W2F party (ably sponsored by our friends at Tanla Mobile).

Emma's Diary launches on mobile for expectant mums whilst GMTV and Opera's in a pickle again amid allegations that for some of their competitions potential winners were picked on the basis of their location and type of abode thus ruling out those living too far away or in tower blocks as these were too tricky for cameramen to reach. Opera brazened it out last week at World Telemedia and I've heard tell along the grapevine that they are in current negotiations with a very large UK broadcaster for a very large phone and text service despite the fact that it was said broadcaster who exposed them in the first place. The plot truly thickens and I'm sure we haven't heard the last of it and I'm quite sure we don't have the full story either. I guess it'll all come out in the wash..eventually.

Today's letter is J

Well, it feels like it. I was about to write up a piece on Jaxtr and how it compares with JaJah but The Voip Girl has beaten me to it with a rather good round up and she even throws in Jangl for good measure so I'll leave it to her rather than reinvent the wheel.

And if it wasn't so late and I wasn't so tired, I might find the energy to properly test SugarCandy or SgrCndy if ur in txt spk mde. Looks to be a group text messaging service but it uses email addresses rather than mobile numbers so I'm a bit confused. Perhaps the SugarCandy guys can explain how it works to us SMS shortcode addicts here in the UK?

Of course, we already have Hotxt here in the UK but that does necessitate downloading a java app to your phone, but once done, is pretty easy and cheap to use - and it looks a LOT easier to use than SugarCandy. How are you supposed to remember all those commands? And then there's also Phuser which I haven't yet had chance to try out which brings messaging and social networks together. George, I *will* give it a go, I promise!

Seems to me the digital world is a very exciting but complicated place. I can see how normobs (Ewan's term for normal mobile users) could get very confused and just not bother even trying to find out about this stuff and it's going to take some educating of the market to get this stuff to take off beyond the geeks and enthusiasts.