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Mobile VOIP: Is voice as the killer app making a comeback?

Two of the sharpest minds in the wireless industry, Ajit Jaokar of Oxford University and Chetan Sharma of the consulting firm that bears his name, have written an excellent report on mobile VOIP and argues convincingly that mobile VOIP is near the tipping point, i.e. the point of adoption which makes it take off in rocket speed.  Recent acquisitions by Telefonica of mobile VOIP company JahJah for $206m may indicate that they are not alone in thinking this, and they make a strong case against GigaOm’s earlier gloomy predictions.

Since their report was sponsored by Skype, it therefore deserves some scrutiny. The report makes a very good case on several levels.  Some of the argument presented agains mobile VOIP is that it will cannibalize operator voice revenue, thus is facing an uphill battle.  Well, there has been resistance for sure, but the premises are changing:

• Telefonica’s recent purchase of JahJah and British Telecom of Ribbit in 2008 proves attitudes are changing among operators. Verizon just opened up to have Skype clients on their phones in case there was any doubt about this.
• Numbers from H3G in the UK show that mobile Skype users generated almost 60% more voice revenue than non-users, Skype users spent 33% more on SMS than non-users, Skype users were 100% as likely to hold on to data add-on, and regular Skype users churned 14% less compared to non-users.
• Flat rate data plans are growing rapidly, operators are becoming smarter at structuring them, and realizing that the bitpipe portion of what they do is not so bad.

Another argument against mobile VOIP is that the networks are not good enough to support it. This is simply not true. Sharma/Jaokar shows that mobile VOIP actually uses less data than browsing:

This is where Sharma/Jaokar neglect one issue though: networks are already congested.  Uptake is driven by video watching (which is the hightest bandwidth hog) and general growth in smartphone uptake and data plans.  This could be a major hindrance for mobile VOIP, as this usage steals bandwidth and callers may experience delay, poor quality or dropped calls. While you may accept this because you are saving money while talking to grandma, it will certainly rule it out for business calls, unless you happen to be in a city with a vast density of cell towers and you are prepared to not move around too much when you have your call (which does make it slightly less “mobile”).

However, investments into higher speed (4G, LTE, Wimax) networks are being made, and technology that allows seemless switch between wifi, mobile, wimax etc, but this will take some time before it is universal.

Then there is the question of whether voice is a killer app?  Or will it fade away as the research in Ireland mentioned in the report which showed that teenagers resort to voice as a last resort, after Facebook messages, tweets, sms or IM is exhausted (notice that email has been purposely left out here). Personally I am going the other way as I found that electronic communications simply fails to capture the context which is so important in a business setting. Then again, it has been a while since I’ve been a teenager…

Voice may definitely be making a come back as a communications channel, but also as an interaction tool. Services like GetFugu (see left) and I suspect very soon Google Voice Search uses voice as the trigger for search and for brand interaction.  Do not be surprised to see voice search integrated into Google Voice as well  (no, I do not have insight into Google’s development plans, but this would be what they say an educated guess about what Google Voice is really about…).

The real opportunity here definitely lies within the aspect of multichannel communication. Google Wave can perhaps be construed as a half hearted attempt (yes, I am not a convert — yet), but since they acquired Gizmo5 and launched Google Voice you know they are serious about it.  Other players, like Orbit are trying to create app centric multi communication/feed experiences. The service is still crude, but getting there.

If I can merge my phone book with my facebook list and LinkedIn contacts (honestly do not need Twitter followers, I’ll leave that for online marketers and social media “experts”), with VOIP, SMS and their respective messaging facilities – all in a user friendly interface, which can run in the background on my phone and my PC – then we have something. Interested VCs, please just get in touch .

iReport vs uReport: Understanding the ‘U’ in UGC

Traditional media sites are beginning to feel the pressure of users spending more and more time on social networks. The answer for many, like Australia’s ABC, has been to make sure to have their content available where users are. The problem of course, can be that you then may forego a lot of online advertising revenue (which for ABC, being publicly funded, is not an issue).  The answer to many lies in figuring out how to engage users, and make them involved in your brand and in your content.

Two news organizations have tried this out:  CNN with their iReport and Fox News with their uReport. The contrast between the two are so extreme – one being extremely well designed and engaging – the other a complete flop and so poorly made it is a miracle it has not simply been pulled.  Let’s take a look at the obvious first, the level of engagement by their users:

Take a look at the screen shots from uReport and iReport taken last Friday, you will see that in the previous 24 hours, there were 2 new stories on uReport and 268 on iReport.  Given that Fox News has about 3 times the number of regular viewers than CNN has, it is spectacular how badly uReport is performing.

So what are some of the things that iReport is getting right, besides some of the obvious ones like web design?

Incentives

The number one reason any brand has to think of that are considering involving their users in social media activities is to give the user a reason to engage.  In both services cases, the main reason is fame:  create something, and we may use your submission online or on TV, and give you a little mark on the material we use so that everyone can see it.

uReport seems to have been out of commission for a while, so the latest used image as of today was from July 2008, so you may argue that there is not even a basis for comparison.  However, look at the implementation, and you will see Fox simply has a “Seen on FNC” tab that lists the stories they’ve used. That’s it. That is all Fox News offers.

Check out iReport, and you will see a special section for reporters, appropriately named Superstars if their submissions are used a lot.  There is an assignment tab, so you can see what CNN will prioritize in terms of material to use on air, and CNN produces a half hour show every week compiling various submissions. Check out the iReports, and you will see that CNN is active in using submissions (on their site today, when I clicked iReports and ‘On CNN’, there were 8 stories that they had used).  CNN provides a reason for people to participate, Fox News does not.

Good user experience

Besides from the obvious reasons that the iReport web site is a lot more interesting and dynamic than uReport, you will notice in a comparison some key elements completely absent from uReport.  On CNN, you will see aspects such as most shared and most commented, key aspect of any social media service. They’ve even thrown in a category called ‘Newsiest’, which is a combination of ratings, views, comments and editorial opinion.

But where uReport is really put to shame is in the mobile experience. Although sadly both services are limited to iPhone users only, the uReport app basically allows you to do only one thing: take a picture and then you have to manually fill in your name, email, phone number and description. Every time! Funny enough, when a colleague of mine tried to send in a report, he got this message: “ureport@foxnews.com. The recipient’s mailbox is full and can’t accept messages now.” Wow.

Take a look at the CNN app, and you see a nice integrated app for viewing regular news, and reporting on it:

My favorite quote relating mobile to social is from mobile guru Tomi Ahonen: “ [Mobile] is the only media device always available at the point of inspiration, and only mobile captures the social context of media consumption.” Something that CNN gets and Fox does not.

Missing pieces

So is iReport the perfect service?  Well, they come close, but do miss one of the issues addressed at the start: How do you make revenue when users don’t necessarily want to hang out at your site? Without making this article into too much of a plug, that is an issue we have tried to address at Storyz. Storyz LiVE essentially enables any media organization to build an iReport type of service. However, there are a few key differences highlighted in this table:

(I give uReport no check on incentives, simply because it is poorly implemented and not taken seriously by Fox News).

Storyz LiVE enabled services allow users to not only invite users to participate on their social network on choice (i.e. invite a user on Facebook, and they can comment on Facebook. Invite them on email, and they can reply on email), but also allows brands to run advertising campaigns that extend to those platforms too, which can possibly stem some of the lost online ad revenue currently experienced by many brands. To learn more about Storyz LiVE, please do get in touch.

Disconnect among marketers on social media marketing significance

There is one thing certain about social media marketing: There are too many “experts” and “strategists” out there, and too many research firms trying to cash in on senior executives uneasy feeling about not understanding a new trend. Which numbers are you too believe? How does this impact your brand?

According to Agency group Creston in the UK, their research shows that even though 88% of respondents believed that social media activity will impact brand reputation at some point, only 14% of respondents agree that this is a current issue.  Really?  Contrast this with Coca-Cola’s recent announcement that nearly all their online marketing efforts will be concentrated in the social media space, and you have to wonder whether this research is wildly inaccurate or whether there are simply enormous differences among marketing departments in large corporations about the importance of social. And other research agencies, like Alterian, seems to come up with the opposite result of Creston.

Although Forrester is probably among the research agencies guilty of publishing the most research with the lowest amount of data sources per report, they recently came out with an interesting study (which also presumably had a larger research base):

This of course shows that the majority of the online population join a social network, and as many as one third update their status weekly.  This is easy to believe, when your 77 old aunt is on Facebook posting daily messages.  And I would venture to say that the marketers asked by Creston are probably 99% certain to have a Facebook account, and given their profession, perhaps also quite likely to use Twitter, I find it stunning that Creston can come up with these conclusions.

Of course, you need to be careful about believing numbers. Mobile marketing is very closely tied to social media marketing, and Ars Technica recently predicted that Apple had a 99.4% market share of application downloads on mobile in 2009, with 2.5 billion apps downloaded.  According to Gartner who said 2,5 billion apps were downloaded in 2009, it leaves only 16 million for the rest of the market.  Quite ridiculous, when you consider that Nokia announced Ovi downloads of 1 million per day in December, and for instance the Facebook J2ME applications has been downloaded 33m times on GetJar alone since it’s early 2009 launch…

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