This morning I am speaking at the first ever Social Media Breakfast in Washington, DC. The featured topic is, “What trends or predictions do you believe will prevail? How can we be visionaries in a space as dynamic as social media?” The answer? Get mobile now.
From the incredible outpouring of donations for Haiti to the ongoing Android/Apple wars, this is the year of mobile. Fifty-five percent of Americans connect to the Internet wirelessly, says the Pew Internet & American Life Project. If you want to be a visionary, a leader in this space, then own mobile media.
In my mind, we’re at a similar place of adoption as social media in 2006 or 2007. Rather than trying to establish visionary leadership in an overcrowded market, it makes sense to become a master of this next generation of portable Internet media. It’s much easier to lead in a greenfield space than to overcome very strong leaders in the existing social media marketplace.
This means more than the iPhone, too. Intelligence in this market requires understanding the market dynamics between Android (see my review here), Apple and Blackberry, as well as the four major carriers in the United States and their network technology. If you are outside of the United States, you’d better understand Symbian, too.
It means understanding what makes a great application from the end user’s point of view (as opposed to publishing junk for the sake of appearing cool). Owning this space necessitates understanding which platforms to build applications on, too, and why (See our post on the topic last summer). You have to be up to date on the latest, and be willing to experiment on your own — without paying clients.
Start this week with the anticipated Apple tabloid and iPhone announcements and don’t look back. Keep abreast of the latest mobile news, own it, lead in it, then share what you learned. That’s how to become an Internet visionary in 2010.
Thanks for your thoughts, Geoff. As a diehard T-Mobile customer I’ve been rather dragging my feet about getting a smartphone. I have very specific requirements but several TMob models are basically there, so I’m ready, and I’ve been studying the space like crazy….while forcing my ancient flip phone through unnatural acts like playing Foursquare and TwitPic-ing.
My biz partner Becky and I are constantly beating the mobile drum with clients; one of our favorite lines is, “Grandma’s on Facebook, and pretty soon she’s also going to figure out that she has the Internet in her purse.” :)
And Gartner is saying that Apple will make $6.2 billion on the iPhone app store in 2010 — but this is just the beginning — the Mobile Internet boom which has already started will be bigger than any tech boom we have ever seen – touches more people in more places faster and in a way that completely integrates with everything we do in our lives because the phone is always with us, always connected…
Good article on app store revenue from read write web:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/app_stores_are_big_business_7_billion_in_2010.php
Isn’t this the same message that we’ve been hearing for 10 years though? How many major publications called 200x “the year of mobile”?
David:
I’ve been covering wireless for 15 years as a reporter, in PR and now as a blogger. Never have we seen the kind of revenue being generated before in applications or wireless Internet usage in history. You can say nay, I’m putting the bets down now.
gre8