Mobile Behavior: an Omnicom Group Company

• What Do All These Phone Apps Do? Mostly Marketing | NYTimes.com
  This article compares apps to websites in the early days of the web. Says one expert: “It’s starting to get to this point that if you don’t have an app, it’s a little silly; you are behind the times.” Advertising apps are now evolving from novelties to utilities, but the biggest challenge for apps as ads for now is that they are best suited to niche markets.
• Muzu.tv Launches | WebTVWire
  Music videos are a big part of the online video sector. They’re hugely popular on YouTube, and there’s a new YouTube-backed music video site called Vevo launching soon. But Muzu.tv has beaten Vevo to the punch and launched while our backs were turned.
• The ‘Twitter Feed, Netflix Faves’ Mating Game | Bits Blog/NYTimes.com
  A new online dating service called Gelato is based on the notion that your lifestream could be the way to find love online. Rather than relying on static profiles that people post, Gelato taps into your Facebook, Twitter, Hulu or Netflix accounts to provide a running list of your interests.
• Two New Apps Superimpose Wikipedia Over Your iPhone Camera View of the World | ReadWriteWeb
  Wikitude and Cyclopedia, now in the iTunes store, let you view Wikipedia entries about physical locations you look at through your iPhone camera.
• Avatar toys go augmented-reality, courtesy of Mattel and Total Immersion | CrunchGear
  Mattel's new toys for James Cameron's Avatar movie includes a little card that is scannable via webcam and creates an on-screen augmented reality robot or character. Check out the demos at AvatarItag.com.
• Zattikka Announces Atomico Ventures as Lead Institutional Investor | Press Release
  The new online and smartphone gaming network announced today that Atomico Ventures, founded by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis of Skype and Joost, participated in its oversubscribed seed round. On September 10th Zattikka announced its first acquisition, the highly regarded flash gaming site, Gimme5games.
• Half of Americans Sleep with Cellphone | Marketing Charts
  More than four in 10 Americans say they “can’t live” without their mobile phone and and nearly half sleep with it nearby, according to a global mobile-phone survey from Synovate, which found that cellphones are increasingly becoming consumers’ “remote controls for life.”
• You Aren’t Alone If You Hate Voicemail; Witness The ‘Rebirth’ Occurring Now | mocoNews
  Voicemails are becoming a dying breed as new technologies transcribe voice to text and email, Twitter and text messages become an easier and more instant way to communicate.
• Women Rule the Social Web | Mashable
  When it comes to sites like Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, MySpace, and Bebo, women outnumber men. There’s only one major holdout for men on the social web: social news site Digg, where 64% of users are male.

Social networking is all the rage. Unless you haven’t walked outside, turned on your TV or been visited by anyone in the past year, I’m not telling you something you don’t already know. Social networking and the act of broadcasting your life – or lifestreaming – to the larger online arena is nothing new, but it is gaining massive momentum and doesn’t show any signs of slowing down.

However, as we continue to come up with more “instant” vehicles of communication, the question I want answered is why? Why do people want to be connected all the time? Why do I want to tell 457 followers that I ate a turkey and mayo sandwich for lunch? There are countless studies dedicated to how social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are changing the evolutionary communication game and affecting everyone from my little sister to my elderly grandmother but few that have satiated my craving for the real reasons people share so much.

I understand the instant gratification of showing everyone how “cool” your life is – vacations to exotic places, your new baby, even how miserable “insert city/school/significant other” is. I get it. But it takes serious dedication to update your status on the regular, comment on your second cousin’s twice removed ex-wife’s videos and post photos of every activity you’ve been participating in – I mean, how else would everyone know that you were really there? Never mind that you probably had a great time documenting the experience instead of say, experiencing it? Why the sudden narcissism and obsession with everyone knowing how great we are?

Working in an industry that requires me to be on top of my social networking game, I learned of Twitter earlier than most of my friends and so I was often asked, “What’s this Twitter thing all about?” I’m sure I confused (and even angered some) people when I remarked that Twitter was essentially marketers talking to marketers. To some extent, I still believe that. At the advent of Twitter, PR professionals, advertising execs and marketers rushed in to flex their intelligence muscles, proving that they really “understood” the space by posting industry relevant links every hour, on the hour. It’s comical to think back because at that time, the creators of Twitter didn’t even understand the space they were creating, so how did anyone else?

The face of Twitter has radically changed and influenced society in ways that were never conceived at the start (Twitter Search: Iranian election conflicts), arguably for the betterment of the global community at large. I’m not at all suggesting that this isn’t a monumental breakthrough in the way that we source and consume information at a very high level – it certainly is – and I don’t think that’s the point of this article. I 100% agree that we should be using these avenues as a way to disseminate information that needs to be given a voice but my question is how do we differentiate between global crises and my friend’s drinking marathon last weekend? And why do we feel the need to share something so seemingly insignificant when so many actual issues are in play?

Clinical psychologist Oliver James recently wrote an article called, “I Tweet, Therefore I Am.” In his piece he states that “Twittering stems from a lack of identity.” Though I think this is a harsh statement, and one that I’m sure those engulfed in the Iranian conflict would strongly disagree with, it does help shed light on why some people feel enamored to share everything. We’ve already learned that the computer is a great barrier wall in which people feel comfortable saying and doing things that they would never actually say or do in real life.

For this same reason, I have a theory that people post photos and update their statuses to reflect a type of self-made image of their perfect selves – in other words, who they wish they could be in real-life. Whereas I may not tell everyone I come across that I went to a music festival, if they see if my Facebook photos or Twitter updates, I am now the type of person that "goes to music festivals.” Social networks allow us to become exactly who we wish we could be all the time with no slip-ups or explanations. This is why documenting the experience becomes just as much – if not more –important than actually being in the moment and experiencing whatever it is you may be experiencing and also why status updates are often times marked by wit, provocative thought, etc. In a global and mobile “always on” atmosphere where everyone is clamoring to define themselves from everyone else, social networks play an important role in creating an everlasting, if not sometimes misleading, identity.

Think about this for a minute and answer honestly: Why do you participate in social networks?

- Andrea Duchon

• TV Everywhere may not be anywhere until 2014 | Blog | Econsultancy - Cable television companies are getting excited about a web push to put all of their content online for subscribers. Called "TV Everywhere," the endeavor will make many television shows available online for free to customers who pay for cable on television. But getting all the major players to cooperate on this project could take quite some time.
• Washington business improvement district goes mobile | Mobile Marketer -Just in time for the area's Restaurant Week, Washington’s Golden Triangle Business Improvement District launched its new mobile Web site to help smartphone users navigate the busy area of the capital including finding places to dine.
• 3banana partakes in mobile giving using social networks | Mobile Marketer 3banana Inc. has launched a “Share to Win” contest to help nonprofit organizations spread their message and have the chance to win $10,000 in donations. The strategy behind the contest is to have nonprofit organizations use 3banana’s notepad application and spread their message virally via Twitter, Facebook and mobile email. The organization with the most votes will have a chance to win one of five prizes totaling $10,000 worth of donations.
• Smartphone Apps Fuel Business - WSJ.com -More firms are turning to apps to enhance the way customers interact with their products and services — and even boost their bottom lines. Said one expert, "People nowadays want everything to be at their fingertips, and if companies are not finding ways to provide these tools [they] will soon see drop-off from their customers."
• Orange, Vodafone Push Mobile Social Networks | mocoNews - Orange just rolled out Social Life in the UK, an aggregator that lets users post to their social networking profiles and send messages via the Orange World mobile site using one login. Meanwhile, Vodafone may soon be rolling “Vodafone People,” which organizes users’ contacts and messages across mobile and PC. And it’s not just for Vodafone users, but people on 247 networks.
• Study: Over 8 Percent Of American Households Use Mobile, E-Mail Coupons | mocoNews - The majority of shoppers still get their coupons from Sunday newspapers, but more than 8.9 million U.S. households—or just over 8 percent of the total population—receive coupons via text or e-mail, according to new stats from Scarborough Research. The typical mobile/e-mail coupon user is young (14 percent more likely to be aged 18-24, than average), educated (51 percent more likely to be a college graduate or have an advanced degree) and decidedly female.
• Discovery iPhone App an Early Hit | Contentinople - Acting on their  strategy " to have as many touch points to our fans as possible," Discovery Channel released a new, free application for iPhone and iPod Touch users. It has fast become a success with more than 180,000 downloads just one day after it hit the app store.
• Jay-Z's Favorite New Rapper: Free Music Is The Future | Techdirt -
  Breakout Rap star Wale was quoted as saying, "Free music is the way for the future. To get your music off the ground you've got to give it away for free at first." Now he's Jay-Z's favorite rapper and doing collaborations with every top name in the industry.

• The Real-time Web: Sifting Required | GigaOm -  With the constant stream of status updates flowing on the web, it can be easy to miss the stuff we care about. Facebook and Twitter have yet to figure out how to help users easily scan the glut of news streamed in real time without missing information from earlier that they need or want to see. This influx of status updates often results in a series of disjointed conversations that lack context, making it hard to piece together and decipher what it all means.

BMO Capital Markets Introduces 2D Barcode Ads [Daily DOOH]
The first advertisements sporting the 2D bar codes have begun running in The Wall Street Journal. Using the camera on their mobile phone, readers can use a special free application to photograph an ad’s barcode which links directly to a customized page.

Can Mobile Preserve Soc Networks As Gen Y’s Virtual Rolodex? [Ypulse]
In spite of the waning interest we've seen in social networking as a virtual hangout, Meredith believes their contact management function will hold up, perhaps in the form of a killer mobile app.

Why Handset Makers and Social Networks Need Each Other, Take Two [GigaOm]
On that note... This article talks about how cell phone makers and social networks need to partner to design devices tailored for social networking, from the camera to the address book.

What Do Cellphone Users Want Most? Cheap Service [NYTimes]
Nielsen reports that call quality and network availability are slipping down in terms of what consumers look for in a carrier. Top 3? Price, family plan, and payment options.

Facebook Takes FriendFeed To Take On Twitter [TechCrunch]
Media analysts are seeing the acquisition of Friendfeed by Facebook as an attempt to silence Twitter's rise. Facebook has also added live status search capabilities and is rolling out its new iPhone app soon.

SMS PhD: 'Pointless' Text Messages Analysed [Telegraph]
Caroline Tagg, awarded a PhD in text messaging, discovered that people text in the same way as if they were talking, using unnecessary words such as 'oh', 'erm' and often use grammatical abbreviations like 'dunno'.

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, To Stage First Twitter Opera Made Up Of Tweets [Sky News]
The Royal Opera House is set to create the first opera entirely created by Twitter fans. Once the fans have created the story line via Twitter, the opera house will compose the music and stage the performance.

Penalties Ordered for Dirty Texting [China Daily]
The Henan province in China is banning erotic, insulting, or threatening messages. The SMS ban carries a fine of $73 and up to five days imprisonment. So much for sexting...

Mobile Marketers Must Look Past The iPhone [Silicon Alley Insider]
Thinking of the iPhone as the end-all be-all of mobile devices is a short-term play for marketers that might hurt their long-term competitiveness.

Will Smartphones Help Crack the Economy's Secrets? [Fast Company]
Flurry suggests that observing the mobile market (e.g., app creations, mobile social networking updates, SMS interactions, data plans) is similar to looking at the real estate market to get a sense of the economy.

Matthew

Celebrities Going Down

For many Americans, perhaps the only thing more fascinating than watching celebrities’ daily actions and clinging to their every move, is watching them fail… miserably. There is some inconceivable desire among many to witness a falling star, often at their lowest moment.

In the final week of July, 2-time NBA all-star, 2004 Olympian and former New York Knick Stephon Marbury decided to do a 24 hour live broadcast of his life on Justin.tv. What ensued was an absolute circus, culminating in Marbury breaking down in tearful hysterics as gospel music played in the background. The video became viral immediately (it currently has over 300,000 views), as people clamored to witness the unraveling of a once prominent man.

Last night at a concert in South Dakota, a video captured rock front man legend Steve Tyler of Aerosmith fall off stage while attempting a dance move. 6,000 people have already viewed the video (which was posted last night) that resulted in Tyler being helicoptered to the hospital for back and neck injuries. Celebrities used to have their fame celebrated because of their accomplishments and talents. Now it appears that any display of humanity, and more specifically failure, can bring just as much attention.

Tristan

SocialSafe and Amamiya Momo

Ever worry that your Facebook profile would crash, disappear, or be deleted? Quelling those fears is SocialSafe, a desktop app that enables backup to your computer of your profile, friends, albums, and any picture you've been tagged in.

After backing up your "social life", you probably need a "girlfriend." Say 'konnichiha' to Amamiya Momo, your virtual iPhone girlfriend. Thanks to GPS she gets made when you are out and it acts cute when you stay in. Of course she has various outfits depending on the time of day, and acts differently on Christmas or Valentine's day.

You can also pet her head, touch her cheek, and... lift her skirt.

Andrea F.

Apple Love

I chose this article as a testament of Apple’s reputation. They are consistently looked at as the company to develop the “next great thing”. With their profits soaring they can invest all the dollars they want into product research ensuring that they will always be at the head of the technology class.

Reming

Fine Art Meets SNS Art

Once reserved for royals and aristocracy, commissioning a painting of yourself is now as easy as sending a message over Facebook. When artist Matt Held decided to fine tune his brush skills by painting Facebook photos of his friends and family, word got out and nearly 4,000 profile pic loving users requested their own portraits. He now has over 50 paintings and if you live in the NYC area, you can check out some of them at Platform Project Space in Manhattan from September 10 - October 3, 2009.

Andrea D.

Rollip

Ahh, Polaroids, the crutch of casting calls and the picture of nostalgia for so many. After Polaroid announced they were discontinuing their film, one of my friends began stocking up on it whenever he came across it, just to make sure he would never be without.

And while rollip.com may not be very comforting to him, I still think it’s pretty cool. You can upload photos to the site and alter them to look Polaroid-esque. OK, it’s not the real thing--or even close, really--but it’s better than nothing, right?

Michael

LG Gd910

I realize the LG GD910 is mostly novelty. I mean, please, how would I get my keys out of my pocket wearing that clunker? The cost would put me on Papaya King hot dog diet for three months, and I require just a tad more interface room. But, we’re getting somewhere. Keep pushing your R&D LG! I’ll be waiting in my skinny jeans.

Allison

Brand Graphs

Trendrr's platform lets you track the popularity and awareness of trends based on web data, charting it as a time series. I just discovered their "brands" section, which shows graphs of online buzz about companies. There are lots of potential applications here--product launches (Palm Pre), campaigns (Cisco), name changes (Sci Fi versus SyFy) and product popularity (eBay auctions of PS3 vs XBox 360 vs Wii) to name a few.

Social Sites Losing Popularity with Young [Financial Times]
According to figures published by UK government agency Ofcom, some social networking websites have lost their “cool” factor with younger users (usage by British 15- to 24-year-olds fell for the first time last year from 55 to 50%), while older internet users are still flocking to the sites (usage among 35- to 54-year-olds rose by 8 percentage points to 35%). Seems like teens are moving onto what's next...

Technology 'Priority for Britons' [BBC News]
More news from the UK: In a poll of 862 people, over 40% said they would cut holidays and meals over their mobile phone (19%).

Sprint and Samsung Launch Biodegradable Phone [NYTimes]
Another eco-friendly phone: The Samsung Reclaim, offered on the Sprint network, is 80% made of corn-based material. The materials are recycled, the packaging is soy-ink based, there is no paper manual, and part of the sale goes to an eco-charity.

Savings.com Makes Coupons More Social [TechCrunch]
Savings.com is integrating social networking into its coupon offerings. Coupons can be rated, commented on, shared via Facebook and Twitter, and some can even be submitted by users.

Meet Sherpa, the Hottest Android App [GigaOm]
The Android-based app Sherpa is a location-based application that helps you find parking or restaurants and actually learns from the user, making a more customized experience.

Livestation Brings Live TV to the iPhone [ReadWriteWeb]
Livestation's new video streaming platform for the iPhone allows any broadcaster to deliver live TV through a dedicated app.

Google’s Android Is Moving Into The Digital Home [mocoNews]
MIPS technology is porting the Android platform to TV, set-top boxes, and home media player, bringing the mobile platform to home electronics. The move promises more integration between mobile and home entertainment.

Why Teens Don’t Tweet [Mashable]
Teens are shying away from Twitter for two simple reasons: It's not centered around friends, like Facebook or MySpace are, and teens have nothing to say to people they don't know.

Young Muslims Turn to Technology to Connect, Challenge Traditions [CNN]
More coverage of how young Muslims in the Middle East are using the Internet and their mobile to discuss, share, and even challenge the traditional power and religious structure of their countries.

The Partnership for a Drug-Free America Launches First Mobile Public Education Campaign [PRNews]
Partnering with Smart Reply, the PDFA is sending out texts to help parents talk about drug and alcohol use. The texts offer advice and a visual/audio link to download material for the teens.

Why Cloud Computing is the Future of Mobile [ReadWriteWeb]
Based on the ABI research paper that inspired our post the other week on "cloud computing" and what it means for mobile, this piece from RWW gives a great overview of why cloud computing will become a disruptive force in the mobile world.

Wireless Solutions for Census 2010 [CScout]
The U.S. Census Bureau is using wireless for the first time -- automating the address canvassing portion of the census--to make the 2010 Census more accurate and efficient.

Metaio's Augmented Reality Trick Lets You Metatag the Real World [Technomix]
Metaio is offering the ultimate metatagging service. Through a dedicated AR browser, users can leave tweets, images, 3D animations and even AR notes for others to see.

Fast Food Goes Mobile With GoMobo [Fast Company]
GoMobo, which partnered with Subway back in January, is now bringing their "Fandango for food" service to  franchises like Starbucks and Burger King. Read The New York magazine interview with founder Noah Glass here.

Despite Banning Twitter, 92% of China Uses Social Media [ReadWriteWeb]
Chinese netizens are twice as likely to use chat and three times more likely to micro-blog, blog and use video conference than American users.

Deaf-Blind Communication Goes Portable [BBC News]
A new portable device for deaf-blind people allows them to have face-to-face conversations, make phone calls using a text relay service, and communicate by SMS.

Stop Calling Young People Tech Addicts! [Ypulse]
Young people use the internet, their mobile, and social networks as a normal means of communication. YPulse argues that calling them "tech savvy" just illustrates how older people are clueless (were you tech savvy for using a landline in 1972?).

Making the Case for a More Open U.S. Wireless Industry [RCR Wireless]
Breaking phone exclusivity is the final step to letting consumers fully take control of their mobile experience. From the iPhone to branded phones, the model is proving archaic.

EA Mobile Holds Lead [Wirelles Week]
The mobile gaming industry is thriving with EA announcing revenue is up 14%, and Gameloft up 20%.