For this story I’m taking you back to an age long long ago, before the release of the Samsung Omnia, Blackberry Bold, T-Mobile G1 and iPhone 3G, even before the release of the Nokia N95 or the iPod Touch. Let me take you back to August 2006…

Around this time students Egbert Veenstra, Sytse-Jan Kooistra and Sam Baas were philosophizing about a new school project they had to work on. And as they were having a drink and a laugh in the summer sun they came up with the perfect idea for their project. They realized that the phone as we knew it back in 2006 could be so much more and wanted to develop a new revolutionary phone. Well, develop…they obviously did not have the resources to actually build a new phone, but they were armed with a much bigger weapon: their creative minds. And as they put their minds to work they developed a concept of the ultimate new phone. It had a touch screen that didn’t require a stylus, service-side processor power (whatever that is, but sounds really cool) and some ingenious ways for finger-touch text input. So they developed a concept phone by using some 3D designing software they used for their study and by making a picture of a table and a screenshot of their own phone’s screen they pulled together a nice mock-up. Now they only had to come up with a name and given the total switch their phone would make in people’s perception of a mobile phone they decided that it had to be named Switch. But while they were working on their project, they were also thinking of sending their concept phone to some leading tech blogs to see how hard it was to fool those guys. They only needed to associate their concept with a big company. Apple? Google? Microsoft? Continue reading…

Operator portals were doomed to disappear when the walled gardens opened up about two years ago, but after the rise of the smartphone and introduction of unlimited data packages they are doing better than ever. Still, most of the mobile internet use takes place within the borders of these portals. The predicted growth of off portal inventory goes much slower than predicted.

Smart mobile start-ups

However, it must be noted that a couple of smart mobile startups did a great job filling up this new space. Mobile-only communities like Itsmy.com, myGamma, and Flirtomatic are growing rapidly these days. Their big advantage is the painful absence of the bigger brands on mobile Internet, which results in most of the off portal advertising budget ending up in their pockets.

No mobile versions

On the other hand, this is exactly what’s withholding mobile media buyers to spend more budget off portal. Most established websites do simply not offer a mobile version of their successful online product. This is why media buyers who represent big consumer brands don’t want to spend budget off portal. Brands attract brands. Simple as that.

Be ahead of the pack

So why are these online brands still not available on the mobile Internet? I guess they’re simply waiting when the time is right, but they should be ahead of the pack because they are the main drivers behind the availability of premium off portal inventory. Their motivation might be that it’s still hard to drive traffic to a mobile site. While using their phone, people are often too lazy to enter a URL.

So all the traffic derives from really motivated people that are dedicated to find a certain mobile site and Google Mobile (which seldom directs you to a mobile site). Well, what about directing people to your mobile site from your online site? Offering an on-the-go version of your brand? Enhancing your site with an extra service because you like your users so much and want to offer them your content whenever they want to?

Best place to start? What about TheNextWeb? That picture is TheNextWeb on a mobile phone looks like at the moment, as the brand new mobile editor this is definitely the first challenge ahead of me. TheNextWeb is going mobile! Keep you posted.

According to most mobile marketeers the last ten years were all ‘the year of mobile’. Every year again they were telling that ‘mobile is really going to take off this year’. Well, since the end of 2007 I’m working in mobile and I think I’ve stepped in at the perfect moment. Although mobile marketing revenue might not be flying in at the moment, 2008 has until now really been the year of educating agencies and advertisers. Most of the big brands have run a trial campaign by now, and most of these campaigns gave a reason to proceed spending advertising budget on mobile. It makes sense to predict that in 2009 mobile marketing will manifest itself as a frequent part of the media mix.

Last Tuesday I attended a mobile marketing roundtable at the offices of MVNO Blyk. In this two hour discussion among thirty mobile experts it became clear that the mobile marketing industry is still not fully understood by agencies and advertisers. Because of the multiple mobile marketing possibilities, agencies and advertisers tend to get confused and switch off. Continue reading…

Recently I became a Child Sponsor at World Vision, a charity organization that improves children’s lifes all over the world. I’ve always been very sensitive to the argument that we’re very lucky to have grown up in a wealthy countries with all the support and opportunities we could wish for. The tough part is, that this argument is applicable to at least ninety percent of all the NGO’s in the world. So I’m currently managing my charity organization subscriptions on a FIFO basis. Anyway, looking at the picture of my newly sponsored child, Scola Jalale (in Malawi that’s a real common name), a mobile idea popped up.

About a year ago I wrote an article about mobile charity payments on TheNextWeb. In this article I argue that since the mobile payment system is already in use in Africa, we could use it to send money directly to certain African based people we care about. And now I’m Scola’s sponsor I had to think of it again. Scola is eight years old and currently at school, how fantastic would it be if World Vision could somehow provide her with a phone so we could text each other? This project would seemlessly fit in her school program and the money I would send her would benefit her and her community. Continue reading…

I actually wanted to introduce a new section at my blog here, it would have been called ‘mobile ideas’. But sometimes your idea is just too simple and you realize you can’t be the only one thinking about it. My idea was Oyster Mobile. For non-Londoners: an Oyster Card is a card used for payments in public transport, used when entering and exiting the tube stations of London. You pay by touching an ‘oyster’, which is shown in the picture, with your card. The technology behind this is called Near Field Communication, which basically means that there are two chips and a wireless signal which is received when the chips are near each other. This technology can also be used for payments with your mobile phone. You can simply provide a phone with an NFC chip and connect it to an application on your phone to make payments. This was my initial idea, a bad one Continue reading…

Wow, the last couple of weeks were pretty impressive. Working in London can be really tiring and working in mobile can result in absolute exhaustion if you’re not careful. Ok, it’s not that hard, but I need to come up with some kind of excuse for not having posted anything for six weeks. It’s absolutely terrible, I know. But I was too busy getting used to my London life and job, and on top of that I’ve also been two weeks off the job.

But now I’m back, better and stronger than ever before and dedicated to bring you compelling mobile stories. A new one every week (good ones, no boring newsflashes or too personal stories) and maybe some tiny snacks in between. Although I didn’t write anything for a while, I can say that I learned a lot about mobile marketing recently. And I only just started.

Right now I’m working on a story about monetizing mobile services, it is going to be a good one, so stay tuned!

I guess a lot of people are waiting for the big idea that makes them succeed. I can’t say that I’m not. When I visited the Next Web Conference last month that feeling only became stronger. Watching all those start-ups pitching their ideas really got me going. Adeo Ressi, CEO of TheFunded.com and keynote speaker at the conference, emphasized that the business climate for starting internet companies has never been better than today. You can see his keynote speech in the player below. For which I gratefully thank TheNextWeb.org, who got their whole conference recorded and live-streamed by NOS, one of the largest Dutch television production companies. Great work, guys!

Adeo Ressi at The Next Web Conference 2008 from Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Vimeo.

Nevertheless I don’t think you should really search for a great idea. It’s what you do in between that matters. Finding your big idea is like finding true love. You shouldn’t search for it, they just pop up. In the meantime you should gain some experience. Recently I found an idea, I’m not sure if it’s ‘my big idea’, but it’s definitely one that I’m very passionate and enthousiastic about. I’ll briefly explain it: I have this weird passion. I like watching tv-commercials, sometimes I even switch from one commercial break to another. I also like billboards and magazine advertising. I don’t know why, I guess it has something to do with the marketing background of my family. I used to talk about commercials a lot with my father and brother. Anyway, I found a soulmate, his name is Ridzert Beetstra, I know him from Spotlight Effect. Together we will soon start a blog about commercials, in all the forms that they’re made. I’m not sure if it’s going to be a huge success, although I’m pretty sure that there isn’t a comparable weblog in Dutch. The most important motivation behind this idea is sex. Sex? I guess you didn’t read this article.

P.S.: If you could suggest some websites and/or blogs about commercials and advertising that would be great, we can never have enough of those. Thanks!