Cheaper 3G Calls & Surfing Coming Next Year

(Europe) - We must admit that the much criticized 3G operator Three has made a clever move - we are lifting our hats off.

Last week Three announced its X-Series, a flat rate subscription model that is much like your broadband subscription. You do not pay per click. You can surf as much as you want (according to Three there will be a certain limit so abuse will be avoided). The X-Series will be offered with preinstalled software from Skype, Google, eBay, Orb, MSN and others. This means that you can actually make Skype calls anywhere in the world without having to pay the high mobile cost due to the fact that it goes through the Internet.

This payment model is actually a much user appreciated one and we are confident the consumers will embrace it quicker that anyone thinks. It is also shaking up the whole telecom market.

Established operators have dreaded this day which they expected would come the earliest in two years or so. If Three grabs a large share of the market they will force the other operators to respond quickly. This is a nightmare scenario for carriers such as Vodafone that has built its business model around pay-per-click use. Right now intense discussions are under way in the telecom boardrooms to see how and when to respond to Three´s threat.

So why are Three introducing this model? Why are they willing to change a proven income model that has made other operators rich? Well, if you look at Three´s customer base you will see that they have mainly focused on the youth market rather successfully. But to grow they now have to attack other segments where they are weak. So something drastically has to be done. The long term loss has to be turned into revenue and only a real shakeup of the market can do this. Three is trying to turn the tides and force the other operators play a game that Three is leading. How successful they will be depends on how the rest of the operators will respond.

The Next Web Experience

We have interviewed a few people about the next Web experience and the picture is getting clearer by the day. Today’s Web experience is far from ultimate. It seems like many people express the notion that something is missing. As they become more and more experienced surfers they tend to demand more and more. The success of the Web 2.0 is a proof of peoples craving for a two way communication but the experience itself of surfing has not evolved much. As Microsoft soon will introduce their new program building tool, which integrates Photoshop and Flash, it will give breed to a new type of Webpages.

Microsoft says that the interaction will be more of a TV-like experience with a three dimensional feature. No more just a flat Webpage but a Webpage with deepness and even more interaction. Even though we are a few years away from 3D screens and “Minority Report” (The movie) features it is an interesting development that will go faster than anyone predicts. We think that next big thing, especially in the community sector will be built around these features. Even though Microsoft has been wrong in the past we think that this prediction is fairly accurate if you look at peoples underlying wishes. What do you think?

You Don’t have to Be a Geek to Invent the Next YouTube

The Geeks are becoming rich on the Web 2.0 development, but you don’t have to be a Geek to be able to reach success. Your biggest weapon is creativity. Everything else is up for buy. But how do you create the next YouTube? Well, if you follow theses guidelines you will soon find yourself in a very favourable position.

First of all you have to look at peoples behaviour in everyday life. You have to answer questions like, what do people like to do? What do they do on a daily basis? Would they like to do something better, easier and time saving? Can technology solve this? The YouTube idea started by a need of sending large video files to friends. At the moment e-mailing was restricted to just a few Megabytes. The YouTube technology solved many peoples wishes. You should keep in mind that many people can not express their wish but it is there underneath the surface.

Second, if the value is so high to the user the word of mouth will be created by itself, but it is always nice to give it a kick-start. There are different methods doing this but the keywords are fun and sex. YouTube and Google never did any traditional marketing, it was all word of mouth!

Third you should not ignore the cool factor. People want to feel and be cool. By using your service they should feel like attractive. This is why many traditional brands try to recruit know faces (eg. Pepsi-Michel Jacksson; Omega – James Bond). As a startup you probably do not have that of a large budget, but you might use social networks to identify people with high number of friends and persuade them to use your service.

The final factor is to create positive PR. Send press releases to newspapers and bribe journalist. Try to create stories around your brand and service so media will find it very attractive.

New Innovation & Large Corporations are a No No

We have the past week discussed back and forth with different people about the innovation on the Internet. New services keep poping up daily and only a fraction becomes truly successful in terms of making money. Recently we have seen how sites like YouTube and Facebook have been developed by a one or two man show. Since we work closely with larger corporations and we know how much they spend in marketing research we keep wondering, how come large companies like Microsoft, Yahoo and Google miss the development so fatally? With all that research shouldn’t they be able to see what the next big thing is? Is there something wrong in their methods? Is the organisational structure a hinder in these fast changing times?

Well, everybody we have talked to has their own opinion, but no one has given this any deeper thoughts. Of course there are new successful innovations coming from large companies but it is not like the next big thing. We strongly believe that large companies could make the next big thing, but since times have changed so do they – not so easy when you are a dinosaur. Are those two-man-YouTube-like-services just a lucky shot or do they understand consumer needs better than the giants that spend millions and millions in consumer research? What do you think?

3 Reason Why MySpace Will Loose its No. 1 Position

Yesterday there were two articles about how people are starting to migrate from MySpace and looking for new communities. Of course any service reaches its peak and makes a downhill usually until the technology is updated again. This is how Microsoft has hold its position as the number one operating system. But of course there are many examples of how communities have been red hot to become blue cold within a year. As we look at the development of the Internet we see some trends emerging, therefore we think that the MySpace community will loose its number one position within a year or two. The reasons are as follows:

1. Old technology. Newer cooler sites attack MySpace on a daily basis. New technology is very important when it comes to web services since we still have a long way to go until e-services are tailored to peoples needs.
2. Lately there has been some evidence that the people at NewsCorp are starting to become more and more distant from their users by adapting an “superior-we-know-better” attitude. This usually is the symptom of going from a small, fast reacting, company to a large corporation. This attitude has worked for centuries on many markets but not on consumer e-services. It has the opposite effect since these services do not compete with other corporations but with the 17-teen year old sitting and programming the next service. By adapting such an attitude communities fail to grasp the next big thing, growing from beneath.
3. MySpace becomes more and more general day by day. The community market is becoming also more and more scattered by the day. We see more and more specialized communities with a clear focus eg. travelling, sports, hobbies. If you look back at MySpace success you can see that a big part of the reason for the success was the focus around music. Music is a large interest in most peoples lives and therefore it is an favourable base to build e-services around but as music becomes more and more common it will become harder and harder to gain revenues from such focus.

These three reasons should be enough for Rupert Murdoch to realize that he has to make as much money from his aqcusition as soon as possible, and we think he has. The Google deal for a 3 year contract worth $900 is an evidence of that.