I was invited to join the panel to discuss the role of Mobile Advertising at the User Generated Content conference here in Munich last night and very interesting it was too. Thanks to Daniel Melter of M-Squad for the last minute invitation. I can’t say the idea of having a very poor German speaker on a discussion panel worked brilliantly, but I think I made some contribution (in English, I’m ashamed to say).
Having said that, I did understand most of what the other speakers were saying, so that, at least is progress on the language front. And I did manage to order beer very competently afterwards, but that was a skill I mastered some time ago.
On the panel were
Robert Wiedemann of Vodafone, taking about Orb’s Mein PC, that I wrote about a few weeks ago.
Robert Lang of Fon which hit the headlines, big time, a few months back when they raised a huge amount of money from a blue chip list of investors. Nothing to do with mobile (and not really very much to do with UGC either, to be honest), but interesting nonetheless. Fon encourage people to create their own wifi hotspots, which they sell access to, or give away free, in return for a free access at other nodes. To be honest, I’m a little sceptical about the model as to offer meaningful roaming access, the penetration has to be so intense that I fear critical mass simply won’t be achieved. On the other hand, if a node could be upgraded somehow to give coverage of say 1/2 mile or more to create a mesh, it would be a real winner and maybe that’s the master plan. Companies like Sequoia, Google and Index Ventures are smart cookies and Fon have got an amazing list of advisors, so definitely one to watch.
Mark Gazecki of Atlas Ventures, one of the foremost VCs in the European market gave an interesting talk about the development of media and where mobile fits in with the whole thing. Clearly someone who “gets” mobile which is an interesting contrast with some of the US VCs I’ve met. Of course, if you’re a US VC and are reading this, you’re not included in that huge generalisation. How can you be - you read MobHappy 
Mark’s perceptive, if tongue-in-cheek, advice was that if you add “social” to the description of your business model, you’ll substantially increase your company’s valuation.
Vince Staybl of itsmy.com, which is a really cool glimpse at the future of mobile UCG and very much how I see the market developing. It offers a mobile home page, free content, blogging and community features. The famous Anina, the model/blogger/geek (pictured)was in the audience and asked why the site had such limited functionality on the web, which is a very good point as a quick visit will demonstrate. I didn’t really understand Vince’s answer to this, but I guess the functionality is intentional as it seems a very smart operation otherwise.
Maybe more on Anina at a latter point.
Bernhard Palme of Jumbuck, an Australian mobile entertainment company that specializes in dating and games. They work exclusively through operators and have 14.5 million users worldwide. Bernhard had some fascinating stats about USC/communities, which are hard to come by in this part of the market, so very valuable indeed.
Last year, Jumbuck alone accounted for 19% of wap traffic in the UK, which totalled 2 billion page impressions. 30% was accounted for by other mobile community sites, with 51% being “the rest”. Wow. I know that UCG and communities were big, but I thought it was still very much early adopter stuff and set to explode maybe two years down the road.
I think I’ll finish this post with a paraphrased point Mark made though. This market is set to be huge and it’s certainly not too late for start-ups thinking about jumping in. While the battle lines are being drawn up, it’s still very early days and the winners may not even have been thought up yet.
Better get your skates on though.
[tags] user generated content, vodafone, robert wiedemann, communities, atlas ventures, itsmy.com, fon, gazecki, gofresh, jumbuck, anina [/tags]
Here’s a speculative comment, but I don’t think I’m that far from the truth.
As your header suggests the ideal is to create a service where you as a service provider only has to deal with the service as such, and the actual information is generated by the users:
* Less work and cost on the part of the service provider (compare this with news and review sites with own personnel for that; very expensive).
* The service provider is freed to focus on adding more and more functionality (some will fly, some won’t; doesn’t matter) to keep the users from leaving to competing services.
* By the info being user-created and for exchange with other users of that service, it’s harder to move it somewhere else, again decreasing churn.
* Pure revenue-driven services (inhouse or licensed) can be introduced, thriving on the large user base. E.g. a music shop with the possibility for the users to write reviews is a very good combination. Same with “home videos” etc.
* Third-party content and (sub) service providers will stand on your doorstep every day to get access to your user community. Read: negotiation power.
* When getting a critical user mass the revenues from advertising can in itself drive all further development and also enable the founders to buy one or two Porsches … and yachts…
Unfortunately there’s not room for many services of one type. Even the second in popularity gets much less attention than the leader (even more so than for e.g. pure blogging services, search services etc). The one with the biggest community wins over almost all of the newcomers as well (at least in a given demographic), so the leadership is self-maintained to a certain degree.
Even if you make a service that does exactly what e.g. MySpace does and more the success is unlikely, so you need to find new aspects of social networking, or special user groups or regions untapped by MySpace. E.g. Lunarstorm is extremely popular in Sweden among young people, despite MySpace. Lunarstorm existed well before MySpace and everything’s in Swedish (critical for children), so there are incentives for continuing using Lunarstorm. Then there’s BuzzCity in Singapore etc.
I agree there’s a big opportunity right now to provide new social networking services, and it doesn’t have to be a huge investment to get going.
Investors have a lot of money to spend these days, so if the idea sounds right and can be done, and contains “social” in the business idea :), then there are people that are prepared to hand out cash. Just be prepared that if you just provide more of the same to a demographic that’s already satisified with an existing service, the chance to succeed is small.
Hi Russell,
it`s Vince from itsmy.com (GOFRESH)
My comment to Anina:
-> You don`t have to go home anymore to join in the itsmy.com/munity! // itsmy.com = MOBILE ONLY
Best, Vince
Thanks Vince - all ist klar.
Leo - I’ve taken your comment down as I don’t think it’s very gentlemanly and I’m sure on refection, that’s not quite what you meant to say. At least, if you did mean to say it, I’d be forced to challenge you to a duel.
No worries. You are right. wasn’t meant to be taken wrong way. cheers!