Category Archives: Events

Some love to talk about the future and promise of the mobile web—and that may well be the case, longer term—but today the mobile world is still strongly under the influence of apps.

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Some of the stories people are talking about this morning:

»  Our paidContent Mobile Conference: Here’s What Happened (paidContent)

»  Here’s an interesting debate: “This Is Your Brain on Twitter,” a defense of the micro-blog from New York Times’ Nick Bilton, was written in response to his boss Bill Keller’s The Twitter Trap,  an expression of anguish over whether it was a good idea for the NYT editor’s 13-year-old to join Facebook. (NYT Bits Blog, NYT Magazine)

»  Comcast’s Cohen on former FCC Baker hiring: Nothing inappropriate (B&C)

»  The Celebrity 100: Social Media Over- and Under-Achievers (Forbes Mixed Media)

»  Condé Nast’s Glamour may be looking for new publisher (Adweek)

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Some media companies, like Disney (NYSE: DIS) and News Corp.‘s Fox, have invested a lot of time and money into mobile as standalone businesses, expected to drive their own revenue streams and sometimes even their own brands. Others, like MTV, have largely focussed on it as a way of driving more brand loyalty and engagement around their core TV offerings.

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New research released at Wednesday’s paidContent Mobile from the app analytics company Flurry spells out the force of apps in the mobile world today pretty clearly: there are 500 million of them and counting—a number that will only continue to grow as Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and Android devices continue to add users, and platforms from the likes of Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) and HP (NYSE: HPQ) continue to try to compete on the winners’ terms, rather than try marching to a beat of a different, mobile web, drum.

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Here’s a safe bet: is Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) going to launch a music subscription service within the next year? Two of the three music industry panelists discussing the business of music at the pcMobile 2011 conference, readily said “yes.” The third, Michael Paull, EVP, Global Digital Business, Sony (NYSE: SNE) Music Entertainment, turned a little red in the face when he said he “didn’t know.”

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There’s been a good deal of worry over geo-location services embedded in iPhone and Android phones, after it was revealed that Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) could track users—but only for the sake of aggregating information on wifi hotspots and cell phone towers. Tom Krazit, Mobile Editor, paidContent and mocoNews, began the panel discussion at paidContent Mobile with a talk about the value proposition of these services, even with the threat of greater regulation.

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What are venture capital firms looking for in mobile startups? Think emotional value and rethink the economics of content, Albert Wenger, a partner in Union Square Ventures, told Ernie Sander, executive editor of paidContent.

Mobile Phone as Personal Identity: “The only thing more stable than most people’s phone number is their social security number,” said Wenger, identifying mobile phones as “the first true single-user device.” Laptops were designed around the idea that multiple people might be using them, but “your phone knows it’s you.” While USV’s thinking on this issue is early, Wenger is looking ahead to a time when somebody figures out “how to create identity in a distributed fashion around someone’s mobile experience.”

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“Globalization is now not just for Foreign Affairs magazine,” said Chrystia Freeland, editor of Thomson Reuters (NYSE: TRI) Digital, in this afternoon’s Going Global panel. She and fellow panelists Ben Jones, VP Mobile at Zynga, and Andrew Stalbow, SVP Fox Digital Entertainment, said that companies expanding their platforms into other countries don’t just have to worry about language and cultural barriers—it’s key to partner with local companies and react immediately to user concerns and needs. “Otherwise you’ll be copied by smart locals,” Stalbow said.

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Research and development is challenged when media companies try to protect their existing businesses instead of moving forward. And Sara Ohrvall, Director of Global R & D at Bonnier, said technology doesn’t always initiate development at media companies the way it does in other industries. She, Turner Sports’ Michael Adamson, and the NYT’s Nick Bilson discussed the ways they’ve found to work around institutional restrictions in paidContent Mobile’s final panel of the day, “R&D: The Road (Map) Ahead.”

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It does to TV rights holders, but for consumers—it depends what they’re watching, panelists at the pcMobile 2011 conference. Jon Dube, past president of the Online News Association and formerly an ABC News digital exec, noted that in the U.S., networks use 30 percent of the bandwidth. So is there a bandwidth crisis coming? Or is it already here and just getting worse?

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