IIR Mobile 2.0 Content & Service Conference Berlin overview

It´s all about service!

Hi, I’m Steph Renda a newbie blogger and CEO of a mobile location social networking for the enterprise business called Match2Blue. I met Bena Roberts from GoMo News earlier this year and asked her to do some blogging as my company moved out of stealth mode, received 2 million in funding and I wanted to showcase how lively and exciting the German market is.

So, the first German conference I attended is the Mobile 2.0 Content & Services Conference in Berlin (see www.mobile2zeroconference.com).

Only a few things stuck deeply in my mind – here is an overview.

Learning 1
Are we in the USD 4.4 billion revenue market for mobile social networking that ComScorecalculated? I guess not. But t here are some great new examples of companies trying to find monetization with mobile social networks.

Learning 2

Is it that mobile social networking has grown far beyond attracting just the tech savvy early adopters and that I have meanwhile become the average mobile social networking user? Me? Yes, me: according to Alistair Hill, comScore Mobile, I am the average mobile social networking user! Female, in my Thirties „over connected“, meaning that I have a data plan and integrate email, IM and social networking…and the early adopters are slowly losing interest – because of people like me!

Learning 3

No, I guess, my key learning was that now, as the average person is on, also the MNOs have discovered their passion for mobile social networking: T-Mobile (MyGroups), Vodafone (360) and Telefónica (planning their own facebook app with SMS and MMS functionality) see their role in aggregating, synchronizing and updating profile information from different networks.

Why do they suddenly all engage in an area for which Boaz Silbermann from Fring points out: “Multi social network integration is not trivial“? I guess, Antonio Vince Stabile from itsmy.com, brought it to the point: „The heart is the user profile” or in other words: it´s all about the data.

But don’t we know this? Am I learning something new here or finally are words and phrases actually meaning something?

Key words, key meanings…

Aggregation of all of my profiles means comprehensive knowledge of my likes and dislikes. “Data mining”…”targeted”…”real-time”…we all have heard the key words: we will receive only relevant recommendations, targeted value added messages, not just plain advertizing. And now the operators are ready to jump on the bandwagon.

What we think?

I loved the conference and the communication but two questions kept on bugging me throughout the show day…

1) Do we – the average persons – really want an aggregating service on our mobile device?
2) And do we want it from our operators?

Being a member of the target group myself, my first answer is actually “no” to both of them! First, there is an explicit reason for having different profiles in different networks (e.g., the business profile with Xing, the private with Facebook and maybe several special interest profiles with other networks) – and I want to keep them separate.

Second, if the primary purpose of an offer seems to be getting access to my data and not creating a fancy service my doubts arise whether I will be in control of how my data will be used.

In my eyes only those operators that will be able to innovate far beyond the aggregating idea will successfully collect the various profiles. We average users will share our data only if they offer interesting use cases we don´t get anywhere else, enriching experiences or smart money saving opportunities around all aspects for which we are engaging in social networks already: business, private and special interest. Because in the end, for the average user it´s not about data – it´s all about service!

I will now be attending German conferences for GoMo News and feel free to get in contact: renda@match2blue.com. We will be having regular events and Tweet-ups with GoMo News in the Frankfurt, Mainz area.