I attended the panel this morning at Mobile Web Europe – Mobile Social Networking day with:
Chair: Adrian Velthuis- Millennial Media
Mark Bole CEO Shozu
Priya Prakash – Head of Product Flirtomatic
Romi Parmar, CEO The 3G Dating Agency (and yes he did mention Dragons Den!)
Frank Schuil, Founder & CEO IRL Netherlands
What was the main message?
Basically everyone agreed that mobile is a new media. There was some confusion about operating system, Open API’s and the iPhone but the argument between online web and mobile web is still ripe.
As a believer that the mobile web is a new media on its own – I was happy to hear social networks saying that online was not the competitor. New niche or branded mobile users were taking social networks from mobile to online. This is a great cross over and change from the market.
The general operator bashing also took place – which is getting boring. With the amount of start-ups at the moment I think it is just too much to expect operators to deploy or put every start-up on the home page. The off-portal strategy needs to have momentum before putting it in front of the operator.
