We're recruiting!

January 29, 2007 | Comments

2007 has gotten off to an extremely busy start, which means that Future Platforms are recruiting again.

We're after talented designers and developers; initially to be taken on on a contract basis, but if things work out then there'll be an opportunity to move to a permanent position if that's interesting for you.

As far as designers go, we're interested in enthusiastic folks with excellent pixel design skills, and possibly some sort of formal HCI background. You'll either be working solo on mobile design projects, or in tandem with our in-house team. We'll likely have a mix of work, from originating new service designs through to reinterpreting existing ones across a wide range of handsets and screen sizes.

Developer-wise we're particularly interested in hearing from folks with real-world experience building J2ME applications; in particular we do a lot of work with networked J2ME, so if you have experience there: bonza!

In either case good communications skills are important, and ideally you'll be within travelling distance of Brighton; we're not averse to distance working in principle, but like being able to sit around a table and chat through projects face to face.

CVs etc to recruitment@futureplatforms.com please - and no agencies thankyou, not even really super shiny ones.

To bluespam or not to bluespam, that is the question

January 29, 2007 | Comments

Am I in a rotten mood tonight? I seem to have inadvertently bookmarked a few news stories that get me spitting on the inside...

Helen is being far too kind if you ask me: "The claim impressive results (well if you're in Direct Marketing or Sales Promotion they are). 9,595 active Bluetooth devices were detected and sent messages. Of these, 703 people accepted the offer of the video download – an average of 87 people each day. Seems good on the face of it."

I've seen some quite frankly ridiculous numbers being quoted by providers of Bluetooth marketing recently. One of them claimed take-up in the 80-90% range; the mismatch between this, and the experiences of everyone I've actually met, is quite shocking.

Even in the case of Square Group's 9%, I'm unconvinced. How many of those people actually downloaded the full video (as opposed to "accepting the offer of a video download")? How many knew what they were doing? For how many did the video play properly and look half-decent? How many people had a poor experience; if 9% were chuffed and 70% really pissed off, then I doubt you could consider this campaign a success? And surely if you're going to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns in any worthwhile manner, you should be collecting this sort of data?

This stuff is balls, it's the mobile equivalent of paying a man to stand in the street shouting at passers-by in a strong accent few of them can hope to understand, then putting out a press release claiming that 10% of them heard you. And a kick in the eye goes to the next person to justify it to me because it's "better than direct mail".

I'm sure there is potential in Bluetooth for interesting marketing applications, which make appropriate use of the technology and treat consumers in a respectful and ethical manner. But this nothing but spamming, even if you buy the IMHO shady legal-on-a-technicality argument.

/me takes deep breaths.

Mobile Marketing Magazine: Change - or Die

January 29, 2007 | Comments

I found this article weirdly contradictory... after the usual guff about "operators need to put customers first" (please... does this really count as insightful? Can't we collectively move on as an industry from bleating such bland truisms?), we got the weird two-hit combo of:

"Secondly, it's surely time for the industry to bury the 3G fixation. Far too much money has been thrown already at a service people simply do not want or need. At least not in sufficient numbers to make economic sense."

and

"Thirdly, it's time for the cost of GPRS data bandwidth to be drastically slashed. People want to access content - and will do so in large numbers..."

So err unless real people actually care what radio network their mobile is using at any one time (something I doubt Bruce is arguing here), then which one is it? Do people "not want or need" 3G, or do they "want to access content"?

links for 2007-01-29

January 29, 2007 | Comments

links for 2007-01-28

January 28, 2007 | Comments