On 17 February 2005 NMK held an evening roundtable event looking at the latest trends and social and commercial aspects of mobile communities...

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Report by Deirdre Molloy

Chair - Will Davies, Senior Research Fellow, IPPR - Opening remarks

Introducing the topic, Will looked at local mobile community projects still in the prototype stage, highlighting Murmur, the geo-tagging project in Canada wherein an archival audio project collects and curates stories set in specific Toronto locations. At each of these locations, a [murmur] sign marks the availability of a story with a telephone number and location code. By using a mobile phone, users are able to listen to the story of that place while engaging in the full physical experience of being there. The changing distribution of broadcast technologies will also have impact, reckoned Will, allowing TV stations to be very local, as in the already functioning �community channel� stations. So virtual communities� potential is becoming more like place-based communities, he believes, and new media is enhancing the local public realm, a place for informed debate and political decision making.

Lizzie Jackson � Editor, Communities, BBC New Media & PhD Researcher, University Of Westminster

Recently returned from a research trip to Helsinki where research says that people can take up to 3 minute bites of soaps on mobiles, Lizzie's talk addressed �Communities and Networks.' Whilst her talk focused on digital social environments which are currently live on the �fixed internet�, she stressed it doesn�t actually matter where these communities happen � they can be on mobile, PDA, web or multi-player game platforms. She aimed to point to trends in online communities relevant to mobile and location-based services. The subject of her PhD research is how the BBC � along with many other broadcast media organisations � is changing from being a broadcaster to being a public hoster of content and environments, providing shared space and enabling the public to co-create, upload, and store content within the BBC itself, on BBC servers. This creates both challenges and opportunities for linear broadcast media in particular.

She also drew on the results of a survey of 200 online community practitioners and academics, worldwide, which was undertaken by Jenny Ambrozek and Joe Cotherel for the April 2004 Infonortics Online Communities Conference in The Hague. It was firstly interesting as a record of both past and possible future digital social technologies. Delegates were asked what they thought was happening today, what would be happening a year on and then five years on. They responded that five years from now fixed internet social software and mobile software would be equal. She distinguished networks as all to do with information transfer and speed, while communities are more emotional.

Tackling networks first she flagged-up Plasticbag.org, a blog by Tom Coates with high-quality, considered content; then blogs using conversational interfaces eg. using avatars to illustrate a diary. eBay she defined as a �network of traders� and a very sophisticated reputation system (very important if you don�t have moderated/facilitated debate). Amazon is a �network of consumers� who don�t have direct communication with each other but whose comments, as we know, might contribute to the website. Lastly there are networks of internet chatters - real time chatters using IRC and Instant Messaging, etc. 70% of teenagers IM every day, in fact it�s now one of the main ways they organise their social lives.

Online communities Lizzie defines as permanent social environments � permanent PLACES where people can be co-present. She highlighted Habbo Hotel, the spiritual home of many small girls and boys who create Avatars and homes, buy furniture at 1p a time for their houses. Doll�s Houses for the 21st Century. Cybertown.com is more like doll�s houses for grown-ups with its vista of worlds, homes, entertainments, security forces and club nights. The Sims have now been around so long that they�ve opened The Sims 2 to enable some people�s avatars to go to University in step with the maturing of users. WW2 People�s War is a hybrid community � a BBC public archive with message boards, user articles, etc, where old and new media meet.

Lastly she considered gaming. The power of multi-player gaming is such that a recent survey by the BBC, The Daily Life survey, found that young boys are spending up to nine hours a week gaming. In multi-player gaming you can, of course, be anyone you want to be and that�s part of the attraction. Looking at the example of Everquest, Lizzie noted how girls also like to multi-game. With television consumption declining, there are obvious opportunities here for content creators and for those who wish to create fan communities around these increasingly glossy games. Fixed TV schedules are going out the window in this era of ubiquitous media where time and place doesn�t matter.

Co-presence is what hooks people into these communications, when they feel a real sense of sociability. It�s the sense of someone else being there at the same time as you, or just before/just after you, the feeling you get when you can see someone�s avatar moving about next to yours in a multi-user environment. It�s the same buzz when you are Instant Messaging someone who you know is the other side of the world or across town, for that time you feel like you�re in the same place. Moreover, it�s the same feeling you get of being in a bubble when you�re talking to someone on a mobile phone.

Fixed internet activity is a mix of networks and communities. A higher sense of co-presence and culture is developing in online communities. Information and task-oriented reputation is the focus of networks whereas sociability is the focus of communities. From this different forms and styles of social interaction are emerging, and we are out-growing the term �online community� for many reasons: people who have formed online community groups always begin to meet �in real life� at some point; it�s becoming a catch-all term for a lot of very different things; and digital social communication is increasingly on the move. Social groups are going mobile she emphasised, citing the community on O2�s Community Portal page.

Howard Rheingold predicted in his book Smart Mobs (2002) �It seems clear that the next ten years will see more inanimate objects joining the web, and more people linked through mobile group-forming network technologies.� Thus the emergence of Flash Mobs - alerted by phone, but facilitated via the Subway and a few downtown bars. The virtual is beginning to mix with �the real�. In the next century, we may ask ourselves, perhaps on an hourly basis, �where am I now?� � and many of us, those the right side of the digital divide, will be able to be anywhere.

Peter Larsen � CEO, Enpocket

In his talk on �Mobile Communities � The new Blogosphere� Larsen outlined how moblogging (the ability to contribute pictures to a WAP site or a website from a mobile phone) enhances mobility. Social interaction was the first reason for the mobile phone; personal expression was the second reason, but now the latter is closing in on the former he said, especially with the proliferation of ringtones. Hence what powers the mobile phone today is its role as a nexus of personal expression and social interaction.

Enpocket runs one the larger mobile dating applications in the world, a major client being Match.com. The first thing they did with the service was add location � you can say if you want to search for a person anywhere or in a particular place. Most traffic happens across borders. People in the States tend to use the local option, but people in South East Asia prefer to look for people in other countries in the region. Significantly, there is 60% more interaction regarding people who add their photos. Adding the mblogging function to dating makes it much more likely you will change and expand your profile information.

Moblogging as a social application is very interesting. Are mobloggers the same demographic as the web? Peter's mantra had been that dating on the mobile should match / compliment any activity on the web, but it has emerged that Match.com users are older and more suburban, whereas Match Mobile users are urban, younger, of a lower socio-economic base, and (in the US) more from the immigrant population, with Match Mobile membership growing rapidly each month.

For Larsen, it�s clear why personal expression is such rich territory, as spending $4 on a ring tone is nothing compared to a haircut, a designer jacket, trainers, a mobile phone or a car. The most favoured mobile content applications, according to recent Enpocket research in the UK, are:
Sharing pictures with friends and family � 46%
Making / receiving video calls � 36%
Downloading songs - 23%
Video clip of sports highlights � 20%
Text flirting / dating � 16%
Watching movie trailers � 12%
Help in managing a diet � 11%
Celeb news / gossip � 9%

Todd Tran � CEO, MINICK

Minick work with the Entertainments sector (film, music, TV and radio), mobile operators and with Wireless Marketing. Best known for their Big Brother text voting service, available content they deal with includes games, ringtones, wallpaper, video, screensaver, MMS.

In his talk on 'WAP Portals' Todd asserted that the WAP sites emerging today are highly commercial, and they�re not really community sites but they will become more so. With the fixed internet, the first sites were free and today they still lergely are. What�s driving the growth of WAP sites is that they're charging for everything. All content on the Ministry of Sound website is paid-for. The Harry Potter WAP site has some free content but most items (ringtones, wallpaper, etc) are charged for.

In terms of mobile penetration, there are 52 million handsets and 60 million people in the UK. China has 350 million handsets and 300 million texts a month are sent in Singapore and the Philippines. The social impact of mobile was felt in recent research where people were deprived of their phones � most experienced withdrawal symptoms; some people even felt phantom vibrations in their pockets.

In Todd�s estimation, we�re now seeing the re-emergence of WAP, a URL that you can access via mobile. Lots of companies ask you to send them a text and they send you a link so that you can download content like a ringtone. Often we do this without realising we�re accessing WAP. Early WAP sites were slow, clunky and badly designed. Re-emerging in 2003, 24 million out of 52 million devices were WAP-activated as of 30th June 2003. There were 14.6 billion WAP page impressions in 2004 thanks to higher bandwidth for networks, better overall user experience and the operators� heavy promotion of their product (eg Vodaphone Live!).

Brands need WAP communities

WAP sites don�t look that interesting compared to fixed line websites, but neither do eBay or Amazon because they want you to click through fast and easily to make a purchase. This year, Todd explained, many of the WAP sites are going to add community features � not user generated content (UGC) on a large scale like the Web but brands do want us to come back to their brandspace. Mobile communities are commercially driven by brands, and as brands want repeat visitors, communities become crucial to WAP sites. WAP UGC will, Tran predicted, be different from the web. There�ll be no long discussions, but chat is likely.

Tran noted the following distinctions between mobile and fixed-line internet: Fixed-line internet can be accessed via PCs 2/3 hrs a day while mobile internet access is almost 24/7; fixed-line screen size is large, mobile�s is small; fixed-line usage is characterised by long sessions likely planned while mobile sessions are short and mostly spontaneous; fixed-line internet is costed by monthly fee, whereas mobile internet is charged per KB; and the content business model for fixed-line internet is mostly free whereas mobile internet content is mostly paid.

As for Java Portals, using a branded Java client will allow for the highest level of phone personalisation and serve as a single point of access to the mobile content related to a particular brand. Its content will be available on air and off-air, with no connection costs while browsing the menu, an integrated content ordering and billing system, and updates of the installed clients via GPRS.

Nick Lisher � Senior Producer, Interactive, MTV Networks UK & Ireland

Under the headline �Social Networks � A Brand Perspective� Nick relayed figures from the USA polled in April 2004 which told that 44% of US internet users had created content for the online world, 21% of internet users said they had posted photos to websites, 17% had posted written material on websites, and 13% maintained their own websites.

When MTV set up the MTVEurope.com site and included a chat room, references made to it on the TV show trebled traffic in 3 weeks. Then they started to include a blogging facility. In turn, their partner TMF in Europe validate people by mobile number rather than by email address.

Moving forward, Nick said that MTV are looking at presenter moblogs which are more immediate, individual and candid. Another tack is vanity homepages. People and kids use URLs like business cards; like the ringtone, it reflects their personality. Moreover, text to screen weblogs provide added, deeper interactivity.

But does the world need more social networking sites and applications? No if they emulate; yes if they innovate, focus and collaborate, he reckoned. Collaboration is key and Nick�s favourite site is Flickr, the easy way to get pictures to the internet without a computer. Another favourite is AudioScrobbler which you plug into your WIN player or iPod and are connected with other people who like similar music and similar bands. With moblogging many tools are available: Phonecam, Mail2blog, FoneBlog, KABlog, Manywhere Moblogger, BLOGPOST, NewBay Phoneblog, Wapblogger.

In closing Nick looked at what business can gain from mobile communities. They�re driving the adoption of camera phones, enhancing the stickiness of current services (TV, Web, etc), increasing mobile revenue and increasing the overall amount of digital content.

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In opening the discussion, Will Davies stressed the need to tease out the deeper social shifts arising from mobile technologies and how this affects the nature of online communications. Robert Loch of SoFlow asked what time we�re at in terms of mobile/online community/social software � two minutes past midnight, or further along?

Views and the reasoning upon this varied. Nick Lisher thought that from a brand point of view, we�re late because lot of social network innovations don�t come from big companies but from academia and non-profit groups and individuals. Lizzie said that only now are digital communities becoming an industry and the techniques for managing communities should go a lot deeper. For starters, it would be nice for community members to see each other and not just text. Peter Larsen noted that much mobile chat is driven by adult content and from that perspective it�s still at the very beginning. Todd Tran added that you can�t steal music on a mobile (ringtones is a massive market). The discussion in the industry about DRM is nowhere near resolving that debate but it will come, and he believes 2005 is when the music industry will download full tracks via phone.

Quoting a Microsoft guru, Will Davies explained that if a global network is a million people, you can still find 10 of you in London. But as most people�s lives operate within a 13 mile radius in the UK, how does mobile improve / enrich their interaction? Peter Larsen was sceptical of Location Based Services (LBS) on mobiles saying they were hyped and, in his experience, uninteresting.

Spontaneity rules

A delegate argued that WAP is still such a small percentage of mobile users and traffic because the experience is still so poor. The content is so commercial because unlike the internet, the barriers to access are low, the networks can control the gateway and make charging compulsory. Todd Tran explained that most purchases (over 95% on mobile today) are impulse purchases. There is also very little price-sensitivity when it come to the web, people will pay �4.50 for something even if it�s �1.50 elsewhere. So the power of spontaneity and convenience prevails in this medium.

Jason Kitcat of Swing Digital asked if, due to DRM, we�re going to see social communities still-born in the mobile world. If you pay a lot of money for something that you can�t do much with or transfer between devices people will eventually get bored as you can�t even transfer the content to your new, upgraded phone. Peter Larsen replied that Operators have opened up the networks, for example you can now get out of Vodaphone Live. There are no bandwidth expenses or limits on the web but 3G has now removed scarcity of bandwidth and we�ll see a lot more free content on mobiles.

WAP - a flash in the pan?

The commercial implications of mobile are clear, Nick opined, but behind the scenes the social implications � of people getting into things like Flickr � are little understood. An audience delegate suggested that WAP is a flash in the pan but Tran countered that, rather, WAP is 2005 strategy. Peter suggested that Java is also a flash in the pan and WAP will surpass it as browsers become more sophisticated and Java�s depth and usability is equalled. In the case of bookmarking, operators don�t make it easy as they want to control the commercial drive, but this will change.

Robert Loch asked whether there wasn�t too much talk about applications and too little talk about the problems we are trying to solve. For Will, blogs were a bit like using the world as your therapist. Taking a more developmental tack Lizzie explained that user testing has traditionally been the last stage of the development process; the need is for editorial people to be in on the development from the outset of the process. She regarded some new electronic TV guides as failures in this respect, resembling a stream of figures that mean nothing and are wanting in design.

A member of the audience asserted that people do less texting in the States but Todd explained that overall, Japan and Korea are 2-3 years ahead of the UK, who are in turn about 1-2 years ahead of the US. This is due to three factors: in the US you couldn�t send texts to other mobile networks until recently, free landlines limited the use of mobiles and cheap texting services, and people in the US are charged for receiving as well as making calls.

Robert Dennis of FocusWest wondered if there would be more censorship in mobile communities. Nick Lisher replied that MTV has an opportunity to build communities responsibly, and as the audience is very young, there will be no porn. For Lizzie, there is a science to brand management in online communities. You must have transparency, explaining why a post is taken down. In turn, you need an escalation strategy for different levels of troublesome posts. Marketing and press also has to be open and truthful. Brand managers should realise that if people criticise a brand it doesn�t mean you should silence them but that they have something to say.

User generated content vs. brands in your face

A question arose about location tracking capability, because brands would love to be able to track people�s activity according to their location. Todd Tran reckoned that while there would be much excitement at the idea that McDonalds could send you a voucher if you are close, there are privacy issues such as whether you can send someone a message when they didn�t ask for it. Will Davies flagged-up the peer-to-peer option, such as that prototyped by Urban Tapestries, whereby you leave a message on a virtual map, and you recommend places or things to others, the antithesis of brands popping up and saying �Buy a Big Mac.� Lizzie concurred insofar as she believed recommendation is going to be huge, citing the case of Celebdaq where traffic is driven by recommendations. Nick said MTV have been asking users to do something (buy a download, etc) for a long time but now they are going to listen to them.

A consultant in the audience asked why the panel or their companies weren't all in regular dialogue to create better communities and solve all the problems, Sweden being way ahead in that respect. Nick replied that MTV works with Minick. Initially they developed in-house solutions when it was esoteric; as soon as it became monetised then funding was released for development. Peter Larsen stated that the mobile sector has been waiting for a richer mobile experience. Todd reasoned that as Wap sites don�t link to each other, mobile Wap communities don�t exist at the moment.

Lizzie was asked why (with the exception of CBBC) the BBC is so slow, why isn�t community building happening faster there? She gave three reasons for the current state of affairs at the BBC. Firstly, awareness of the power on online community has reached the higher echelons of the BBC gradually. Secondly, funding for online communities has also grown incrementally. Thirdly, the message board system was built two years ago to last five months � they are currently developing the replacement system. Lastly, not all communities are moderated and hence they are uneqully tended. This is a matter of education. Now senior executives are realising the importance of online chats because they are moving from a broadcasting to a narrowcasting or even micro-casting model.

Communities that work for you

Nick Watt of NMK raised the widespread interest in recommendation and the case of Sony�s StreamMan facility whereby, taking the AudioScrobbler path, you can have real-time chat to other people who are listening to the same thing. This allows people who buy into the brand to create the environments, especially through recommendation or bonding over a brand (eg. a band or artist).

Nick Lisher revealed that MTV are launching a service in Italy that has learnt from the lessons of PVR, TiVo, and the like, whereby subscribers can create a queue of videos from any decade or genre, literally �my MTV�, which lets them have their home life around your brand. The more people create content around a brand the more emotional they feel about it. Nokia is into UGC, and in the future Nokia upgrades will all be offered in software and operated via download.

A final round-up of predictions elicited two distinct visions with differing purchase upon the community realm. Unlike the internet�s 80% penetration, broadband will have 99% accessibility reckoned Lizzie Jackson. Will Davies recommended that we don�t remove the fun of being lost, proclaiming that we must secure serendipity for the future�


About the speakers:

Will Davies - Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Public Policy Research
Will Davies is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research, where he runs the Digital Society programme. He is currently working on a 'Manifesto for a Digital Britain', to be published in Spring 2005. Previously, he worked on The Work Foundation's iSociety project, where his research focused on the relationship between communities and new media. He is the author of two iSociety reports 'You Don't Know Me, But...: Social Capital & Social Software' looking at new uses of the internet in supporting social networks, and 'Proxicommunication: ICT and the Local Public Realm' exploring uses of ICT in sustaining local communities.

Lizzie Jackson � Communities Editor, BBC New Media
Lizzie Jackson trained in the performing arts (including teacher training) before becoming a literary and theatrical agent. She went on to join the BBC World Service before moving to national radio. In 1991 she started her own independent radio production company. She moved into new media in 1997 when bbc.co.uk started, creating WebGuide and starting the BBC's online community. She is now one of the BBC's interactivity/community consultants, currently managing five new interactive presenters for BBCi - the subject of her doctoral research at the University of Westminster. Lizzie also co-runs Emint, the UK Community Managers' Association. In October 2004 e-consultancy.com and NOP World selected Lizzie as one of the top 100 Innovators of the UK Internet over the last 10 years.

Nick Lisher - Senior Producer, Interactive, MTV
Nick Lisher joined MTV Networks Europe in September 2000, focusing initially on MTV UK's web properties. In 2002 he spearheaded the relaunch of mtv2europe.com, a community based website offering viewers the chance to get one step closer to the channel. Nick was responsible for further enhancements made to MTV's award winning community services, including Photochat, a mobile community represented on air by the viewers' profiles and photos. Nick is currently working on enhancing MTV's social networking applications, with a view to offering the viewers a standalone property both online and on mobile media under the MTV brand.

Peter Larsen - CEO, Enpocket
Responsible for leading Enpocket's growth across the the Americas, Europe and Asia, Peter joined Enpocket as VP Sales & Business Development and developed Enpocket�s relationship with carriers such as Orange in addition to bringing Enpocket's mobile CRM product line to market. Prior to joining Enpocket, Peter ran business development and developer relations for Liberate Technologies Europe, a pioneering interactive TV technology provider after running Liberate's product marketing team in the US. Prior to Liberate, Peter was Worldwide Business Manager for the Apple Powerbook division of Apple Computer. He also worked as head of sales for LINC Computer in Japan. Fluent in Japanese, Larsen holds an MBA from Cornell University.

Todd Tran � MD (MINICK UK)
As Managing Director of MINICK UK, Todd leads the team that enables mobile services for companies and brands such as Big Brother, Channel 4, Universal Music, Sony Music, and CNN. Previous to MINICK, Todd was Managing Director of Flytxt�s Content Division, where he led the acquisition of key clients and the development of key products. Todd has also helped launch 10 technology startups as part of his tenure at a technology accelerator company in the Silicon Valley. Todd began his career as a strategy management consultant at internationally renowned Bain & Company. Todd is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley.