Mobile Web 2.0: Two Tribes or One World?

Panel discussion on "sharing content between web 2.0 and the Mobile Web 2.0 experience" with

Professor Ed Candy, Chief Technology Officer, 3 Group

Kai-Joachim Boyd, Senior Manager Strategy and Development, Telefonica O2 Europe

Anil Malhotra, SVP Marketing & Alliances, Bango

Josep Aliagas, CEO, Arena Mobile
Mathieu Saccharin, Head of Web 2.0 & UGC services, Bouygues Telecom

Bena (moderator) talks about Taptu encouraging sharing of web sites between friends.

EC: the opportunity is to go beyond Web 2.0 and improve on what we get on the fixed web. Scrap the type of UI we have today and go analogue. The digital watch face failed and now we use analogue watches: it'll be the same for mobile UI. Mouse-and-cursor is a very analogue experience. Scrap open source: everyone claims to be open, but they're all different and the term is becoming meaningless. OMTP is doing some good stuff to work towards "sameness" - OSs don't need to be identical, they just need to agree on common points.

MS: You can't even share content between mobile and mobile today, never mind mobile and PC.

KB: We need to offer converged services. We're preparing our customers for a seamless experience.

AM: Sharing has always been a driver for internet usage; look at early content-free web pages which were sets of links. Mobile will define how web content is produced eventually (as in Korea/Japan).

Bena: How would you promote social sharing? O2 have partner tariffs, Wii have online play.

Bena: Is sharing going to be the key for social networking?

AM: Some similar things to fixed internet. We've let individuals create personal WAP pages on wap.com, to let users open up their own content to each other.

Audience: Is content important? Isn't 2.0 more about communication?

AM: The 2.0 services which work well on mobile have content at their core (do they?).

EC: When we started 3, we built a service-independent network to let us distribute content. Initially we created menus of content for customers - and no-one came. When we started to do X-Series products, which encouraged users to do what they wanted to do, we saw an explosion in traffic. The ones which worked best were the ones which established a level of communication first, then encouraged content sharing: these are my friends, my family, and now I'd like to share my photos with them.

Comments

[*aj*]

It's a shame and surprise that Ed Candy is still at 3 Group. The "service-independent network" with menus of content for customers was the biggest waste of money at 3. Unfortunately, Ed and his management colleagues were big proponents of this walled garden approach until it was quickly realized post launch that no one is going to use these ridiculous old school services where hundreds of millions of pounds per year (seriously) was being thrown away. Glad to see X-Series was launched 3 1/2 years too late and they finally got the explosion that they were expecting when they launched in 2003. Nonetheless, all of the middle management (apart from the Hutchison loyalist - Candy) who insisted on the walled garden are now at Orange. Who's sucking now?