These days, for every inspiring story that I hear about a mobile independent software vendor (ISV) / developer that’s “raking in loads of cash” through Apples’ App store, I hear a handful of stories from mobile ISVs that are trying to dig themselves out of the red.  While the press is focused on the “iPhone Gold Rush,” I’m hearing of a disturbing number of mobile ISVs that are struggling…badly.  Over the last couple of months, I’ve had conversations with an increased number of mobile start-up execs who by day are attempting to dig their ISV out financial crisis and by night are pinging their social networks, quietly looking for a new job and complaining that the mobile industry is “broken”. (more…)

EnStream LP (a mobile commerce joint venture owned by three of Canada’s three largest mobile operators – Bell Canada, Rogers and TELUS) recently launched Zoompass, Canada’s first wide-reaching mobile payment service.  With it, Canadians can securely request money from friends, solicit money for joint gifts, pay for goods and services and more – all from their mobile phones, using a pre-paid account, which can be linked to a credit card or bank account.  What’s so cool about this service is that it creates a common standard for mobile money transfers and interoperability across all major mobile phones running on Canada’s major mobile networks including Bell, Rogers, Telus, Fido, PC Mobile and Solo Mobile. (more…)

Having trouble convincing your organization to invest in social media?  You’re not the only one.  Many of my prospective clients are in the same boat.  They understand that social media can be used to help their organization grow and manage customer perception, but unable to estimate a realistic return on investment grounded in a real-life case study, they have trouble rationalizing a significant investment in social media.  Unfortunately, there aren’t enough companies that measure AND talk openly about the dollar-value ROI of their social media investment.

One company that is talking openly about their social media ROI is Dell, who today announced that since June of 2007, they’ve earned more than $3 Million in revenue via Twitter alone.  (more…)

Nokia’s new Ovi Store officially launched today.  It represents a step in the right direction for the diversification of the mobile content market in general, but there are substantial kinks to address.  There are enough blogs and tweets out there that rehash the high and low points (highlights for me include: Terence Eden’s post, All About Symbian’s Post, Mobile Industry Review, and TechCrunch).  In this post, I’m going to focus on the lessons Nokia and others can learn from this launch:

#1: Call your first launch a Beta, and give users a chance to contribute to its success.

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Ahhh… It’s a new day, and there’s yet another 3rd party developer jumping on the Twitter train…

TwitPub is a 3rd party developer that is leveraging Twitter’s infrastructure to monetize tweets through subscriptions. TwitPub is run by AdExcel Online Networks Sdn. Bhd., which is based out of Malaysia. TwitPub operates a bit like a premium SMS subscription (though not on your mobile) – users pay to subscribe to the private tweets of content owners/ publishers.  The idea is that content publishers sell access to their private tweets, which can contain information about any number of topics (daily horoscope, finance alerts, music news, etc… anything – you get the idea).  (more…)

If you’re a Facebook user in the US with a pre-paid mobile phone, there’s a new app called “Embee Mobile Minute Wallet” that can help you earn, buy, redeem, share, and manage top-up minutes – all through Facebook.  (more…)

Last week at CTIA in Las Vegas, I met someone from “Billing Revolution“, a company that is trying to make mobile payments easier…a lot easier….and cheaper.  If you’ve ever tried selling something from a mobile phone, you know how much of a hassle it usually is.  Arranging sales through premium SMS or integrated carrier billing is a nightmare, and in the case of premium SMS, the experience for the consumer is equally bad.  Billing Revolution seems to be changing mobile billing for the better. (more…)

Last night, Honda was the first to air a live ad on Channel 4 in the UK.  The ad was nothing short of spectacular – a skydiving feat that no doubt left most of Britain and some of the rest of us talking: Honda Skydiving Video.

I woke up this morning to see links to the YouTube footage of the ad all over the Twitter feeds I follow and in email exchanges between my friends.  Honda’s agency, Widen + Kennedy (which is also an agency for Proctor & Gamble, Coca Cola, Nike, Nokia, Visa, Target, Heineken, and many other large brands) talks about how they executed this socially successful viral campaign on its blog and documented the process of creating the ad in the Difficult is Worth Doing blog.

Jen Grenz, who leads marketing for one of my clients, ShoZu, recently showed ShoZu’s re-vamped mobile application to the BBC.  Check out the video.

ShoZu 4.0, is much more robust than previous versions.  It allows you to update your status on various social networking sites from your phone, reply to comments (and read friend’s comments) from your phone, and download your friends’s Flickr feeds to your phone.  And, it’s easier to use than the last version, which itself is simple (and I’m not just saying that because they’re one of my clients).  It makes social networking from your phone simple and it aggregates social networking interactions so that you don’t have to jump from WAP site to WAP site or from on mobile application to the next. The newest version of the ShoZu app is even better from a useability perspective.

In this major new release, ShoZu started showing ads.  While ads normally annoy me, the ads ShoZu shows are (so far anyway) good.  Unlike ads on websites, I’m seeing ads from a small number of companies that are the type of companies people like me want to learn about… companies that have products/services that actually appeal to advanced mobile users and mobile social networkers.

From a useability perspective, what’s interesting and unique about the way ShoZu displays ads is that those ads are kept entirely within the ShoZu experience.  So, when you click on a banner ad, it doesn’t take you to a WAP site, it takes you to a splash page within the ShoZu application that gives you more information.  And, it’s much easier to navigate away from the splash screen on Shozu than it is to interact with some other mobile ad types like WAP.  With WAP ads, you’re navigated away from the task you’re participating in and loading is slow.  ShoZu’s ads are lightning fast and can be opened and closed in fractions of seconds.

You can download the new version of ShoZu by clicking here.

Check out the post I wrote on SocialMedia Networks’ blog about how social application developers can maximize their advertising revenue returns.