I’ll publish another post when the units arrive… Who knew buying a thermostat could be this much fun?!

First up… Mark Zuckerberg.

• 350,000,000 people monthly are touching Facebook’s mobile apps. Facebook is pushing on mobile and thinks it’s going to be a big opportunity for developers.
• On mobile apps, social infrastructure has been missing. The app store model is a good way to get distribution, but developing your apps so that they’re fundamentally social will also give you better distribution through the social graph.
• The vision for Facebook’s mobile apps. Facebook thinks that all apps will eventually become social. Mark says he wants Facebook to be on every phone and as deeply integrated into many devices as possible.
• Apps need to be able to work everywhere. Facebook is investing in web technologies in HTML5 and Javascript so that your apps can work many places.
• It’s not just about a web platform that works across devices, in any of the places where Facebook can link to native apps – iphone, ipad, android apps, they support native development as well.  Facebook is investing in both web and native.
• Facebook is sending millions of clicks to developers that are working with them on v1 and v2 of these mobile releases.

Luke Shepard, Mobile Platform Engineer, is going to give a technical talk next…

• Mobile users are twice as engaged on Facebook as other users.
• We have a large desktop ecosystem launched 4.5 years ago. We have many multimillion dollar companies built on that from scratch.
• These companies built themselves on the social graph, and this is great, but until now, mobile companies haven’t been able to do this.
• Social apps need to be cross platform, and users need to be able to communicate with friends – regardless of what platform they’re on – iphone, android, etc.
• Luke is going over the three ways you can improve viral growth in mobile development:
•  “Requests” dialog, which has been launched on mobile. It works in any native apps as well as mobile web apps…. This is the social loop. You send a request, a user requests it and ends up in your app.
• They also introduced a “News Feed” dialog. This allows users to add comments, and personal insight into your app: Posting, view on wall, view on newsfeed….Facebook filters this so that this only works if you’ve configured your app to work on mobile.
• “Open Graph” stories from the web will turn up on mobile and mobile will turn up on web. They’ll turn up wherever your app is configured to work.
• Developer’s apps are now integrated into the Facebook experience in the form of “Bookmarks”.  Your apps are now integrated into the experience.
• “Payments” is another pain point for developers. Mobile web payments can happen via Visa and Paypal.
• Facebook is encouraging developers to “build Social from the ground up” Users now authenticate with Facebook before they use your app, so that there’s no install process, no bouncing back and forth to Facebook.
• Social apps should work everywhere…  Today, it’s expensive to make tons of different apps on different platforms. Facebook believes that you can have a unified code base by putting everything on the web – Javascript, CSS, HTML5… Facebook believes that in the future, the biggest businesses will be build on this seamless web technology.

Matt Kelly and Ragu (sp) are going through a code walkthrough. They’re going to build a social app from scratch in 10 minutes…

• Go to developers.facebook.com/apps… Now there’s additional checkbox so that you can add your web apps
• There’s a thing called authenticated referrals that allows the user to be immediately authenticated when they hit your app.
• They’re starting by building a simple HTML5 page… I’ll spare you the details… They’re opening the simulator, and building away…
• And, they built an app that allows you to find people with similar Facebook Likes. Fun app and very easy to build.

After lunch now…

The Senior Partner Manager for Wooga is now up.

• Founded in 2009.
• They’ve got 6 games out there.
• He’s talking about the time line of their launch for their game Magic Land: May 11- October 11, which uses HTML5
• For the first release they use “News Feed” and “Requests” from Facebook inside their app
•  To set up this game, they used Amazon Web Servies and Scalarium. Their back-end stack is HAProxy, nodeJS, and riak
• Performance:
• Canvas: Their bet on the future
• Benchmark for your game’s specific needs – don’t rely on others’ benchmarks
• Buffer, don’t update: optimize drawing operations (dirty rectangles)
• Enforce native scale.
• Loading and Caching
• Save game state in local storage, synce with server for persistent game
• Throttle client-server requests to reduce network and server load
• Combine images into sprites
• Combine and minimize style sheets and scripts
• Use HTTP caching aggressively, but rename files when the content changes, so caching doesn’t get in the way.
• Prioritize list of files inside the Cache Manifest
• No dynamic pages – all files are delivered from the CDN
• Three sets of assets for different resolutions
• Summary of his thoughts:
• HTML5 on mobile is still young and documentation is sparse
• He thinks iOS WebKit is better than Android WebKit in features, tooling and performance
• Interaction design for touch devices is a challenge
• He gives us a glimpse into what’s coming in the future:
• Gameplay connections between Flash and HTML version
• Native Wrapper: getting onto the App Store
• More social features
• Pirates!

A couple of other developers came up to share technical best practice…

Dave Johonson from PhoneGap is now up. They were just acquired by Adobe.  Visit: http://github.com/callback/

• Here’s how PhoneGap works:

• Embed a chromeless browser in a native app
• create a “bridge” between the browser and the antive code
• write a web app
• package the web app with the native code and deploy

• They support iOS, Android, BlackBerry, webOS, Symbian, Windows Phone, and Samsung Bada
• MIT/BSD/APACHE: Originally it was under MIT/BSD license… Now they’re moving to APACHE 2.0 license
• They have a large community – “better than a technicolor wolf with Eagle’s wings” (he’s showing a great graphic here)
• PhoneGap is doing very well with mindshare – largely because of the open sourced nature of the project
• Thousands of apps have been build with PhoneGap… 15-20,000 apps in the Apple App store made with PhoneGap
• Contributors to PhoneGap include: Adobe, Microsoft, IBM, RIM, HP/Palm
• Users of PhoneGap include: Alcatel-Lucent, Zynga, Microsoft, Travelocity, Vodafone, Wikipedia and others
• When you’re designing your app, think about mobile first… Look at use cases for mobile and don’t just tack on a mobile strategy at the end of your web strategy
• HTML(5) can be wrapped in PhoneGap to yield native apps
• He’s going over a lot of technical demos..
• @davejohnson @phonegap

And, we’re back from the break… If you’re interested in the hack day, you can join this group on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/groups/249308791784214/

Now up… Jonathan Matus, Manager Mobile Platform Product Marketing  and Christine Abernathy, Partner Engineer to talk about the Mobile Open Graph…

• Jonathan is talking about Nike Plus… He tried running once, and he is recalling how several years ago, he hit the 100 mile marker using Nike Plus, and he wanted to share this achievement through Facebook. At the time, he had to cut and paste an icon from Nike’s website, save it and then upload it to Facebook. These days, if Nike were to enable Open Graph, he could have just added the picture automagically to Facebook.
• Jonathan is also describing how music is shared… It’s not seamless. The Open Graph can help with this.
• There’s a focus on actions and objects in Open Graph… Developers should think through which objects users need on the go.
• He’s going through some examples of different apps that are using the Open Graph…
• There’s a book recommending app… Kobo (iOS). You can list your favorite books, and highlight your favorite quotes from a book and share those with your friends using Open Graph
• Another example app is Color – the way that they’re sharing pictures and videos  leverages Open Graph.

• When you use color, you log in with Facebook, so all of your Facebook pictures are shown to you in a compelling way
• You can take a picture, and because it’s connected to Open Graph, your pictures show in your Facebook Ticker.
• Open Graph also allows you to share common experiences more easily
• You can also Host… The Facebook Ticker will show your friends where you are, and allow you to broadcast live video streams of events to your friends.

• How should you use Open Graph?
• Christine is demoing a gifting app…

We’re moving towards the very technical part of the agenda, so I’m jumping out…

Telesocial’s new platform enables developers to add mobile voice calls, messages, and conferencing features into applications enables users can communicate with each other over mobile voice networks, without exchanging phone numbers:

“Telesocial’s API, combined with an inter-operator cloud directory, allows web users to click-to-call directly to a mobile phone from within a social game or app, without having to know the receivers’ phone number.  Telesocial’s API is transforming the social web into an integrated directory and perhaps the ultimate phone book.”

Imagine playing social games online and interacting with your in-game friends voice to voice, without the pressure of sharing your mobile phone number… Imagine screening potential dates on a dating site voice to voice without giving up your phone number… Imagine being able to initiate a mobile to mobile group phone call with  all of your Fantasy Football friends during the game, by just clicking a web link in your SMS or email…  Imagine seamless mobile-to-mobile calling between Facebook Friends and Fans and Twitter Followers, all without exchanging numbers…  All this and more can be made possible through Telesocial’s platform.

Telesocial makes it possible to initiate mobile-to-mobile calls inside of an app, without sharing your phone number, so you can communicate safely and securely.  Developers have the option to notify users of a phone conversation by ringing their mobile, sending them a link via sms or email, or by providing an in-app notification.  Additionally, Telesocial provides data on the API usage, giving developers the ability to directly measure the impact, click by click.

“The Telesocial API allows developers to add innovative voice functionalities to their games and applications,” says Eric Stone, CTO and co-founder of Telesocial. “Our API translates user IDs into phone numbers, creating a phone-numberless voice service that connects people anytime, anywhere on their favorite device, the mobile phone.”

Unlike existing VoIP solutions, with Telesocial, users don’t need to download a separate voice client to participate in a call or be logged into a particular social platform, game or app to receive a call or voice message.  Telesocial’s service is enabled by strategic relationships with telecoms providers.  Telesocial calls leverage the existing mobile-phone infrastructure, without exposing users’ phone numbers or compromising voice quality as VoIP often does.  Plus, it’s much easier to keep track of mobile voice minutes used with Telesocial than it is to keep track of how many megabites are consumed in a mobile VoIP conversation.

One of the coolest features of Telesocial’s platform is the ability to set-up Talkspaces™, which are always-on mobile to mobile conference lines centered around a specific topic or clique.  With Telesocial’s new Click-Me-In functionality, users can click a link to be connected to a mobile Talkspace™ anytime, anywhere–without knowing other participants’ mobile telephone numbers – as long as they’re connected via a supported social network. When a new Talkspace is created, participants are invited to join via a web link that can be embedded in email or SMS.  When you create a Talkspace™ you’ll be alerted as soon as somebody joins that space, making it easy to join a group phone conversation.  You could, for example, set up a Talkspace that allows anyone in your family to initiate a group call instantly, no phone numbers required – perfect for making big announcements, sending birthday best wishes, or talking during a family emergency… You could also set-up a Team Talkspace for your closest colleagues, or use a Talkspace to initiate a focus group for a subset of your customers.

“President Obama has hosted several town hall meetings on various social networks,” says Bill Waytena, CEO and co-founder of Telesocial. “While his town hall meetings have reached tens of thousands of people via micro-blogging and fan page posts, we are confident that voice remains the most expressive and compelling way to connect with others.  Imagine at the next online town hall meeting the President gets on the phone …what would you ask him then?”

I am currently at GDC Online in Austin, Texas talking with games developers about how they can benefit from Telesocial’s new API.  Recalling my recent post on the Gamification of apps, one of the more interesting things I’ve realized about Telesocial is how easily the API can be used to drive gaming mechanics inside apps… Take, for example, the “Appointment” dynamic…. Developers can use Telesocial’s API to send voice mail messages with special instructions or secret missions to users, incenting/reminding users to come back into a game at a particular time. Games developers can offer benefits to active users to pull inactive players back into games.  Likewise, communal discovery and shared experiences can be made more intimate through the use of voice to voice communication in game as well as asynchronously.  Additionally, voice to voice interaction can be used to re-enforce social status in apps by giving users special status/benefits for making calls.

If you’d like to use the free Telesocial API, check it out here: http://dev.telesocial.com.  For more information on Telesocial, visit: http://www.telesocial.com.
I’d love to know what you think about Telesocial’s platform, and/or if you use it to make cool apps.  Ping me if you’d like to learn more or if you would like to meet the Telesocial team.

For starters, it it ingests your communication logs, address book, emails, etc. and builds a screen of tiles featuring the top 30 people that you contact most, a feature they call your “pop faves”.  To create your pop faves, Poptuit leaves your data on the phone but it uses an algorithm to look at recency, frequency of conversations. This algorithm also processes the duration of your call, conversational reciprocity, and more.  You can re-order the tiles as you see fit.  The app also lets you know which of your friends are also on Poptuit (green star = on Poptuit and available to talk, red star= on Poptuit but not free to talk).

It does a similar thing with the merchants you contact most. Apptera has a background in mobile yellow pages, so they’re able to seamlessly match the phone numbers you call with the merchant information in their database to assemble a list of the top 30 merchants you contact most.  They have partnerships with AT&T Interactive, CityGrid, Yelp to pull in information about companies: pictures, store hours, etc.  Today, phone calls and emails connect you to companies through Poptuit. Vogel tells me in the future, they’ll likely help you connect to Merchants through “Likes” and check-ins on social networks as well.

Another cool Poptuit feature is location sharing.  Much like Glympse and the new “Family and Friends” app Apple announced today for the iPhone, with Poptuit, you can share your location with friends/family for a specific period of time.  If your friend is not on Poptuit, (s)he’ll get a text message that you’re trying to share your location. These features are all opt in, and you can control how long you want to share your location for with a particular contact.

As you can see below, Poptuit also threads conversations, which makes it easier to track your conversations with friends, regardless of whether on phone, email, or text.

It does a similar thing with your favorite merchants:

I asked Vogel about how Poptuit plans to make money with this app.  He comes from an advertising background and feels that personal/ smarter yellow pages will be valuable real estate. Though Poptuit doesn’t want to be a conventional deals app. It aims to be a personal network app connecting users’s favorite people and places. Their plan is to allow merchants to target users. They want to catch people at the golden moment when they’re interested in getting something.  As opposed to spamming people with irrelevant coupons (what man doesn’t love getting all of those Brazilian waxing coupons from Groupon?!), Poptuit wants to connect users with merchants in a more meaningful, helpful, non spammy way.  Ultimately, Vogel says they’ll monetize in several ways:

• A featured merchant slot (though they don’t just yet).
• Ingesting 3^rd party ads from companies like Groupon, Living Social, Att Interactive, Citysearch, Valpack, etc. and targeting those ads towards a user’s favorite places
• Enabeling merchants to use Poptuit as a platform – i.e. CRM in a box.

The only way Poptuit will be able to make this business model work is by attracting a ton of users, and ensuring that ads and targeting enhance, rather than detract from the user experience. Vogel is aware of this, and he’s confident that Poptuit will do just that.  Poptuit is currently in private beta with several hundred users, and Vogel says that beta customers are using it to replace sevearal other apps, on average using it 10 times a day. They hope to be out of beta and launch live to the public in Q4.  In the meantime, if you’d like to try it, you can sign up for a free beta account using the word “pop” here.

In 2009 I wrote an article on how virality is broken in mobile and what to do to fix it.  A lot has changed since then including that creating virality in mobile is getting easier. As more people adopt iOS, Android, and HTML5, fragmentation appears to be less of a problem (although it still is one).  It’s getting easier to find ways to create virality in apps, and developers are getting more and more creative in the ways that they engage users – particularly through the introduction of gaming mechanics.

There are many dynamics that drive game play, but these four appear to me to be the most effective in non-gaming settings, like mobile:

1. Appointment: This is enticing someone to be at a specific place at a specific time.  All of the “ville” games by Zynga do this… Farmville, Cityville, etc.  They require users to complete a certain task at a specific time or risk losing something (i.e. water your plants now, or they’ll wilt).  Groupon Now is also a good example of this… Users must act quickly, or they’ll lose out on an opportunity. Scarcity is a great motivator. This works not only with games and offers, but also with things like medical apps. I’ve heard of several apps that are either out there or coming soon that remind users to take their medicine on time, or test their blood sugar on time (for diabetics), using this mechanic.

2. Influence and status: As much I wish we weren’t, people are inherently status driven. This gaming mechanic works by giving users some level of status to aspire to. FourSquare’s badging concept is a good example of this dynamic… If you visit a specific venue more than anyone else, you become “The Mayor,” which encourages repeat check-ins, and users are encouraged to participate in quests that can earn them other status badges.  Retailers do this too… Sephora, for example, offers VIB (Very Important Beauty Insider) status to shoppers that spend more than $350 in a calendar year, which entitles those users to perks like product discounts, early access to new products, invitations to exclusive shopping events, and more.  Users should be able to earn status by buying it, or investing enough time in a game that they earn it (while the developer earns user loyalty and revenue from advertising).

3. Progression: People are motivated by the desire to move ahead. This gaming mechanic seeks to motivate to get through a certain number of steps.  Companies like LinkedIn use this mechanic to encourage people to complete their online profile by showing an incomplete status bar.  The concept of “leveling up” in a game is standard practice… From the early days of Super Mario Brothers to the more modern MMPOGs like World of Warcraft, giving people the feeling that they’ve progressed/ achieved something gives them a reason to come back. These “epic” or “achievement” moments encourage users to keep coming back

4. Communal discovery/ shared experience: Most people are generally motivated by shared social experiences. Giving people a common goal and asking them to work together to achieve it often brings that group closer together.  Similarly when users see their friends doing something that looks like fun, they want to try it.  #4 can be used really effectively with #2 (Influence and Status) to drive users in social groups towards a desired action like regular visits, buying virtual goods, etc.

Seth Priebatsch did a great presentation touching on all of these mechanics at TED last year, but there are a ton of others out there that can successfully be incorporated into mobile.  Companies like OpenFeint (Gree), Beintoo, Kiip, and others are trying to drive these and other gaming mechanics into mobile experiences. So, while “gaming mechanics” and “gamification” have become THE buzzword bingo words of 2011, in talking to many of the mobile app developers i know, it appears to be for good reason. These techniques are working to successfully drive repeat and increased usage of mobile apps for many developers.

Today Movile, the leading mobile services company, announces Zeewe 2.0 (go.zeewe.com), the new version of the pioneering HTML5 app store and directory for smartphones and tablets. Zeewe has more than 1.5 million users worldwide, and these users typically use at least 5 web apps that they discover on Zeewe.  Movile also announces the launch of several exciting new features for Zeewe including off-line mode which enables users to use the Zeewe store and select apps without an internet connection on iOS devices. Beside this, Zeewe also now offers developers a payment API that enables them to charge for Apps and transact in-app purchases.

In the ten months since Zeewe launched, a robust community of users and developers has embraced it as the best place to discover, share and recommend cross-platform, HTML5-based mobile apps including games, music and videos, books, entertainment, business and more.

Eduardo Lins Henrique, Head of Innovations at Movile and Zeewe Product Lead describes Zeewe’s viral growth:
Since Zeewe’s launch last December, many well-respected companies have developed cross-platform HTML5 web apps including: The Financial Times (ft.com), Google (plus.google.com and Chrome Store), Pandora (Pandora.com), and others. Many more companies, including Facebook, are rumored to be next. Movile is accelerating its leadership position in Smartphone, Tablet and converged web applications by investing in Zeewe and other products that leverage HTML5.

Zeewe 2.0 uses HTML5 offline resources based on cache features to enable a seamless offline HTML5 app browsing experience, initially for iOS Safari users with support for Android users coming soon. Zeewe also now supports HTML5 apps designed to work offline like Block Dream, Blast Effect, Checklist, Card Flip. Movile expects this enhancement will significantly improve the Zeewe experience. Henrique continues:

Zeewe users will interact more with our application because the time to load each page in the system is 10 times faster than before. In user tests, this dramatically improved the Zeewe navigation experience and click through rates.

Dario Sciacca, DS Effect´s CEO says,

This announcement is very important for the HTML5 market. We tried Zeewe 2.0 and we agreed that the user experience is much better than the first iteration. About billing, all developers are interested in monetizing their business. At DS Effect, this is not different and we will certainly use Zeewe payments APIs soon.

Zeewe 2.0’s new billing APIs, which launched today using Movile´s own connections and Zong, a PayPal service and a leading provider of payments through mobile carrier billing. It is initially available in the United States of America and Brazil and will roll out to additional countries including the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, India, and Mexico in the coming months.

According to PayPal’s Senior Director of Mobile Stephane Kasriel, “It´s fantastic to have an App Store based on HTML5 technology in Zong´s portfolio. HTML5 web apps are a growing trend amongst mobile developers and they are being widely adopted in the market. We’re excited to to be Zeewe’s exclusive in-app payments solution.”

Movile believes that the future of mobile apps is based on the open web standards of HTML5 and driving cross-platform mobile experiences that leverage the social graph. Zeewe is boosting the discovery and usage of HTML5 apps and enabling mobile users to share and pay for experiences seamlessly across OSes.

Zeewe by Movile is a cross-platform mobile app store based on the open web standards of HTML5. Zeewe is the best place to discover and share cross-platform mobile apps for smartphones and tablets. Any mobile user with an HTML5-enabled browser can visit: http://zeewe.com and start using free apps in seconds, without registration or credit cards.
Zeewe’s “FriendZee” feature provides push notifications and social discovery through Facebook and Twitter, so users can easily see which apps their friends are using and try them out.
Zeewe launched in late December, 2010 and just achieved 1.5 million users worldwide, with most users in the US, UK, Mexico, China, and Brazil. Zeewe was developed by Movile, the leading mobile services company based in Latin America.
Zeewe is simple to use:

• Visit Zeewe.com from an iOS or Android device, and discover tons of free apps.
• Click on an app that sounds interesting and see ratings and comments from other users.
• Download apps in seconds.
• Share apps with friends, and invite them to play games with you.

For those who read this blog, you know that I’m a big proponent of HTML5.  It is fast becoming one of the most important development technologies, not just for web sites and applications, but across every screen – mobiles, tablets, TVs and more. The games industry is far from untouched, with casual and social games from the likes of Disney and Zynga, and right across the spectrum being developed with these technologies.

Web Directions Unplugged will focus specifically on designing and developing games and apps using HTML5 and related web technologies.  The fun will continue in Seattle with Amped a great free hack event, Amped, May 14th.  Here’s more about these events from the organizers:

WHO SHOULD ATTEND:

A three track, in depth, fluff free conference, Unplugged is for

* Game developers and designers, looking to investigate how to best use a new generation of web technologies to target a wide array of platforms
* Web designers and developers looking to bring their skills to app development
* Mobile developers looking to widen the range of platforms they can target
* Decision makers looking to make strategic decisions about platforms to target, and the tools and solutions to help best get their apps and games to market

WHAT’S COVERED:

Among the many topic covered are

• Developing with HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript
• Touch based interaction design
• Geolocation
• Graphics and game programming with HTML5
• Realistic UI design
• Quality Assurance and testing techniques for web apps
• Mobile content strategy
• JavaScript libraries like SenchaTouch, Sproutcore, JQuery Mobile
• Bridging technologies like phoneGap, AIR, and Rhomobile
• Platforms such as iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7, Blackberry, webOS and Playbook
• and much more. All in depth sessions, from leading experts around the world.

GREAT DISCOUNTS FOR THE SOCIALIZE MOBILIZE COMMUNITY:

We’re excited to have SocializeMobilize as a media partner for this first-of-its-kind event, and to be coming to Seattle with Unplugged, long an important hub for mobile, web and game development.

Members of the IGDA community can receive a further $100 off the discounted price for the conference, using the code “socialize”
That makes this 2 day, three track, fully catered conference just $695!

And don’t forget Amped – a free, “lean forward” day for you to showcase your skills, try something new, and win great prizes, on Saturday May 14th

At Web Directions we aim to have:

• The best, most engaging content
• A great, campus like atmosphere
• fantastic social events
• to create events quite unlike your usual conference – educational, inspirational, and fun.

We look forward to seeing you at Unplugged and Amped in May in Seattle.

Here are the details of each summit:

Mobile Marketing Strategies Summit – San Francisco April 26-28th 2011

GSMI has diligently worked to find the best, brightest and most distinct speakers in the Mobile Marketing industry. Our 2011 Mobile Marketing Summit will provide valuable information, through case studies, presentations and hands on workshops. Attendee’s will leave the conference with the tools and knowledge needed to keep their brands competitive in the Mobile Marketing industry. Use discount code MikeSM to get 10% off ticket price.

The Social Media Strategies Summit – Boston September 20-22nd 2011

GSMI is bringing the 2011 Social Media Strategies Summit to the East Coast. We have gathered more of the best and brightest speakers in the social media marketing arena to present emerging strategies, tactics and case studies in the successful use of social media. Unlike traditional conferences, Social Media Marketing Strategies and Tactics – 2011 Summit reveals how leading brands use social media to consolidate and expand their market share, as well as, gain valuable market data.

During this 3 day summit attendee’s will learn how to best utilize and integrate the myriad social media platforms to engage customers directly at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing. Through the intelligent use of social media marketing you can, in house, have continuous direct contact with your customers.

Use discount code MikeSM to get 10% off ticket price.

The Social Media Strategies Summit – London October 25-27th 2011 SAVE-THE-DATE!

Mark your calendars! Oct 25th The Social Media Strategies Summit comes to London! Please check back often as we will be updating the website with agenda and speaker information soon.

Use discount code MikeSM to get 10% off ticket price.

The Points of Control map is a fun idea- particularly for arm-chair corporate development and business development types.  It’s the kind of thing that could suck hours of a social media and mobile geek’s free time.  The latest feature on the map is “acquisition mode,” which lets users suggest and rate the potential of web and mobile acquisitions.  So far the conversations are limited, but I can see it taking off as more companies are added to the map.

As I looked at the landscape, I noticed a few things that are missing… For starters, Photobucket (my current consulting client) should be on the map in:

• Plains of Content
• Land of Search
• Cliffs of Media Access
• Subcontinent of Advertising
• Location Basin
• Union of Social Networks

Here’s why:

Plains of Content and Land of Search

Photobucket is the largest independent photo sharing site on the web, with more than twice as many photos as Flickr and nearly 26,683,225 monthly unique visitors – that’s more than Flickr, Shutterfly, Kodak Gallery, and Snapfish (as seen in the chart from Compete.com, below).

As far as I’m aware, it is the largest repository of clean, findable images on the web (outside of search engines), and it is one of the most significant single sources of images for search engines like Google and Bing.  Photobucket Corp has:

• 100+ million total registered users
• 26.5 million total uniques/mo, US*
• 7.8 billion digital assets uploaded
• 4.3 million images and videos uploaded daily
• 3.2 billion images and videos served daily

Cliffs of Media Access and Union of Social Networks

Photobucket was once part of Fox Interactive Media (NewsCorp) (same company that owns MySpace, etc.), but it now an independent company (merging with Ontela in December 2009).  Photobucket Corp owns three media sites (as seen in the below Compete.com graph):

• Photobucket.com, which as seen in the chart above has the most monthly visitors
• TinyPic.com, which, though not plotted on the above chart, has X monthly unique visitors – more than Shutterfly, Snapfish and Kodakgallery.com
• Twitgoo, which, is a media sharing service for Twitter, not unlike TwitPic and YFrog.  It was recently incorporated into the “New Twitter” (i.e. the re-vamped Twitter.com site)

Photobucket.com is more than just a massive image repository for clean, findable images and video, it also hosts and serves billions of images to millions of websites all over the web it is at the intersection of the “Union of Social Media”.  Photobucket enables users to keep their photos and videos in one place and easily syndicate that media content to their favorite social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace.  One of the most interesting piece of I.P. that Photobucket owns is a patented, zero-click uploader that allows users to automatically back up their photos from a mobile device to any site requiring authentication.  This brings me to mobile…

The Photobucket service is also available in the form of a mobile app for iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, and mobile internet. It is  pre-loaded and/or natively integrated with a variety of mobile phones including all phones with Motorola’s MOTOTBLUR service,  T-Mobile’s new G2 (2nd generation Android device), and many more devices.  Photobucket is integrated beyond just mobile phones and is include with many consumer electronics products including the Sony Dash, many of Sony’s TVs, Sony Cameras, many HP printers, and more.

Cliffs of Media Access and Subcontinent of Advertising

Photobucket generates revenue in two primary ways – advertising and subscriptions.  Users can sign up for a free Photobucket.com account in exchange for seeing advertisements (typically branded campaigns from big advertisers) and get 500MB of media storage a month, or they can pay $24.95 a year (or $39.90 for two years) for a Photobucket Pro Subscription, which offers unlimited storage and bandwidth to users.  Photobucket has its own, dedicated as sales team, and its advertisers include major brands doing homepage and other branded advertising campaigns.

Aside from Photobucket, I propose two additional areas and corresponding companies be added to the map including:

• Facial Detection and Recognition:  Apple (which recently acquired Polar Rose, Face.com (one of my former clients), Viewdle, etc.: Watch this space… It’s going to be huge.  For example… I think it’s really interesting that Facebook, for example doesn’t prohibit 3rd party developers like those above from identifying people and photos and storing maps of their faces so that those faces can be recognized on other sites/areas of the web.
• Interactive, Connected TV: From GoogleTV to Samsung Apps, major players in the world of consumer electronics are making a play for an internect connected living room.  As I’ve said in a previous post, I think TV apps could just be the next big thing in convergence.

What do you think of the Points of Control Map, and what would you like to see added?

As you might guess, this show is all about apps and monetization – mobile apps, social apps, TV apps – you name it.  The speaker list reads like a ‘who’s who’ of mobile, web, media and agencies – well worth checking out.  SocializeMobilize.com readers will get 25% off the full conference pass by using the code MHFC25 during registration.

There’s also great opportunity for developers to show off their skills, gain some cross-industry exposure, and potentially win cash through the “Pimp My App Contest”.  Here’s the scoop:

One Great Contest — Two Cool Partners. We are calling on all developers to show off your skills by Pimping The App for Fox’s television show “Fringe”, The City of San Francisco’s Convention and Visitor’s Bureau or both. Enter as many individual apps as you like for either or both of our partners. There are separate grand prizes so, who knows, maybe you’ll hack your way to victory for both contests. Sort of like winning both showcases on the Price is Right!. So, start hacking as you have until September 3rd to submit your entries.