Mobile Behavior: an Omnicom Group Company

The Pew Research Center is polling users to answer the question How Millennial Are You? After taking the quiz, users are ranked on a scale placing them within a certain generational group.

A couple mobile related questions that affect "Millennial score" include:

Thinking about your telephone use, do you have...

Only a landline phone in your home

Only a cell phone

Both a landline and cell phone

In the past 24 hours, about how many text messages, if any, did you send or receive on your cell phone?

No text messages on your cell phone in the past 24 hours

1 to 9 text messages

10 to 49 text messages

50 or more text messages

Mobile connected culture is taking off with today's youth. Take the quiz here to find out your place in all of it. Then compare the results with others' here.

Many businesses rely on local marketing and are attempting to direct quantifiable targeted efforts. To bring light to the mobile opportunities in this space, we have decided to take initiative by developing a series of experiments. In collaborating with several local businesses here in New York City, we hope to open ourselves up to new insights around consumer mobile behavior.

When approaching these experiments, several questions come to mind. When making a purchase, how are the decisions of consumers acted upon differently? What types of onsite marketing are most engaging, what offers are most intriguing? How can up-selling and return visits be increased? All of these we hope to answer, and for small businesses everywhere, the results could prove helpful in developing a successful local marketing effort.

Over the next few months, we will be lending out parts of our SMS marketing platform to several local NYC businesses. Restaurants, clothing stores, bars, and entertainment venues will be given the opportunity to test out direct mobile marketing with its consumers.  This will be done through message alerts, mobile ticketing, mobile coupons, and embedded links within text messages. Each location will be given its own set of personalized keywords which will allow consumers to text in and interact directly with product offers and info.

We will be chronicling the experience for each venue so be sure to check back for updates on new locations. Stay tuned!

Do you run a small business or know someone who does? Do you want a trial run of our mobile platform to test how mobile can work in your location? Contact us at 212-453-2017 or at matthew.lerner@mobilebehavior.com to see how you can get involved in this local market discovery program.

We've seen the reports, texting while driving is hazardous to our health. In fact, just yesterday the Iowa House approved a ban on this "distracted driving" behavior. Since there is obviously a need to connect while on-the-go, startups are surfacing to help.

PSFK points us to this:

Palo Alto-based Aha Mobile have created Aha Radio, a free mobile application that transfers a broad range of web-based information into a customizable radio experience. This allows users to listen to everything from real-time traffic reports to Twitter and Facebook updates, without the added stress of fumbling with a device while driving.

Apps like this could help, but in the March 2010 issue of Wired Magazine Clive Thompson suggests an alternative. Since the pinging act of SMS (think: bee dance) is becoming young people's default means of connecting, maybe the focus should switch to the other end of the equation -- fix transportation.

Thompson goes on to ask, what is more important? Communicating or piloting the car? While other countries around the world have well developed public transportation (allowing people to focus on mobile phone use), America "is currently better suited to cars than to communication." Until this can be changed, Aha Mobile is an available compromise that makes it a little easier to multi-task.

Watch it demonstrated here.

Research firm IBS World recently reported that Americans are going to spend $131 million less on cell phone ringtones this year than they did in 2007. This reflects the rise of text messaging as, for several reasons, the synchronous nature of voice calls is no longer as popular.

Today, artist Matthew Inman (AKA "The Oatmeal") presents the 10 reasons to avoid talking on the phone. Many people will relate to "the distracted," "the lecturer," and "the impulsive." Check out all the examples here.

For Chinese New Year, those residing in the Middle Kingdom sent a total of 23 billion text messages over the course of a week. Over half of those being sent in the first two days.

According to Engadget, these were sent by just the 747 million phone users in China.

Imagine what would've happened if all 1.3 billion people in the country had a phone during Chinese New Year. Throughout the same period, China also produced 1.33 billion MMS messages -- a staggering 40 percent increase from last year -- while China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom operated 127.6 percent, 19.5 percent and 15.7 percent more voice calls respectively.

Clearly, by observing the provided numbers, we are able to get a good sense of the level of social activity within a country by way of mobile technology.

To continue Twitter's push as a positive force in Haiti, co-founder Biz Stone announced on the official company blog that they have struck a deal with Digicel Haiti.

Kevin Thau and our mobile team have recently arranged free SMS tweets for Digicel Haiti customers. To activate the service, mobile phone users in Haiti can text follow @oxfam to 40404. Accounts are created on the fly and any account can be followed this way.

This is just a small step to long term restoration in Haiti, which officials say could take ten years at the cost of billions. Twitter's low cost (now free to some) mobile communication channel will help, as it already has.

On the heels of several big announcements from new Foursquare partners, the New York Times says they are launching our first integration with Foursquare this Friday for the Winter Games. According to Jenna Wortham on their Bits Blog:

In conjunction with the Winter Olympics, The Times will be offering recommendations to Foursquare users on restaurants, attractions, shopping and nightlife in Vancouver, Whistler and the nearby town of Squamish. The tips will be pulled from The Times’s travel and entertainment coverage.

Foursquare users who check in at one of the suggested venues will earn a New York Times Olympics badge, said Stacy Green, public relations manager for The New York Times Company.

“Going forward,” Ms. Green said, ”we are looking into other ways we can work with Foursquare in New York and other markets to integrate our strong travel and entertainment content.”

Ms. Green tells us the Times believes this partnership "will be a great way to bring useful Times content about Vancouver and Whistler venues to Foursquare users."

There are several other mobile components to this effort. Times mobile users can sign up for text alerts for medal count per country and medals awarded per sport, according to Ms. Green.

To sign up for all medals awarded for countries of choice:
Text MEDALALERTS [country] to 698698. E.g. MEDALALERTS USA

To sign up for text alerts to receive a message when medals are awarded to the sport of choice:
Text OLYSPORTS [sport] to 698698. E.g. OLYSPORTS Figure Skating to 698698

Alternatively, users can go to mobile.nytimes.com/smsalerts with a mobile phone to signup, though they will need to login with their New York Times ID.

If you just want a single update without signing up continual alerts, they are adding a one-time request option: Text OLY to 698698 to request the latest 3 Olympics headlines from The New York Times.

There is also a BlackBerry shortcut for the Olympics (pictured at top) available for download from mobile.nytimes.com. The shortcut will live on the user's homescreen (like an app) and take them directly to the sports sections of the Times' mobile site.