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2007 was the year of “social networks”. But wait a second: I joined a fringe “common interest-based” mailing-list in 1997, which became in 2000 a Yahoo!group. There are 950 members, the flow of e-mails is still enormous (give or take 1500 messages per month–without spam), discussions are sometimes fierce… and we are supposed to participate only in our free time. There was a seminal spin-off in 1999, when a e-mail-based RPG was created, which is still active. And discussions are fiercer, because each of us is supposed to be a country leader. Other spin-offs included local versions of the groups. No, we are not transferring it into any of the “hip” Social Network Sites (SNS). But the point is: already 10 years ago there were indeed vibrant communities. Now it is much easier to create them, adding content, and administrate them. What in a way puzzles me is that only in 2007 it became mainstream.

2007 was also the year of “mobile internet”. Someone was mentioning that “we’re finally going to make significant progress on mobile search (…) now we have .mobi domains”, but why use the word “mobile” in this context?
Internet is “mobile” by definition!
In the “good old days”, it was less mobile, because laptops were not widespread. Nor 3G phones. But it could be accessed anywhere at any time already in the 1990’s, provided one had a compliant device and infrastructure.
In short, the same way as today.
So “.mobi” sites will be easier to use in small screens. Great. But HTML and CSS has already features to adapt the webpage to a specific device since at least 2000. The significant progress is going to be done, not on the search by itself, but on the search combined with the user’s communication data records (from the operator perspective) and usage of the phone (from the network perspective). Guess who is doing it already, preparing the “next big thing“! Yes, we are. I might add that another benefit for the advertisers is combining that search with GPS positioning, for instance looking for a restaurant. The answer could be (literally) just around the corner!

2008 will be the year of “community marketing intelligence”.
So finally something new! It was about time!

My son’s in the eighth grade. It is interesting to observe how these school children are influencing each other when it comes to choosing mobile phones and even mobile operators. In Sweden, when Vodafone was sold off to Telenor, they changed their logo colours from Vodafone red to Telenor blue. Telenor ran heavy and expensive campaigns on pretty much all types of media about this colour change. One of the girls in my son’s class said quite loudly in front of a bunch of her friends: “I don’t like blue, I like red better!” And within 3-4 months, most of the kids in that class, including my son, had mobile phones and subscriptions from the operator 3 who happens to have a reddish logo. Is this girl an Alpha User? You bet! And then my son went around saying that Nokia phones are not cool, they are for old people. In the last school event, I asked a few kids in the class what phones they have. They were all, either SonyEricsson, or Samsung. And that considering that Nokia overall has the biggest marketshare. This word of mouth seems to work both ways - for a product or service, as much as against it. Read: Children, School and Mobile Phones.