I quote:

“Possibly the oldest human worldview is fear of strangers. And right next to that is anger as a byproduct of fear.

If a candidate wants to gain attention and possibly votes, then, it makes short-term sense to stir up fear of strangers and turn it into anger. It might even work (once). But it makes it virtually impossible to govern. It’s a short-term strategy that eats itself, because sooner or later, everyone is a stranger, and fear is no foundation for work that matters.

It seems as though we’re entering a season in which it’s easy to ostracize or become righteously indignant over someone’s national origin, skin color, religion or sexual orientation.

If this is the best a politician can do to organize and lead, then we all lose.”

It seems there has been a lot of debate in the past over Mobile Internet stats in S.A… and now we have a framework for understanding them. Critical, if you think about it… as the usage patterns are very different.

I’m mostly a Tier-3 user…

The Mobile Internet is no longer a mystery in South Africa, after the announcement of a formal framework for defining the use of the Internet on cellphones.

For several years, the question of how many South Africans use the Internet from their cellphones has been veiled in confusion, with claimed numbers ranging from half a million to 15-million.

During the past year, representatives of two of the key players in the debate, World Wide Worx and the South African Mobile Marketing Association, agreed to a formal framework within which they would report the key statistics for Internet usage and access on cellphones.

The framework consist of three tiers, namely:

Tier 1: The WAP Internet (access to WAP gateways, which includes mobile versions of brand sites, mobile versions of traditional and new media publisher sites, downloads of ringtones, games and other content, which may only involve a single link from the phone; the typical user of the WAP Internet is not always aware of using the Internet).

Tier 2: The Mobile Application Internet (usage of “stand-alone” applications on the phone that rely on data feeds, such as Mxit, Gmail, and Maps; the typical user is aware of using data, but not of fully accessing the Internet)

Tier 3: Mobile Web Browsing (usage of a web browser to access the World Wide Web from the phone – understood by most users to represent full Internet access)

The framework was developed by World Wide Worx managing director Arthur Goldstuck and Mobile Marketing Association founding chairman Rick Joubert. It is intended to accommodate the main perspectives that usually emerge in debates around the makeup of the mobile Internet.

“It resolves the dilemma that some appear to hype up the mobile Internet while others appear to underplay it, when in fact everyone is talking about different elements of the mobile Internet,” says Goldstuck.

“Defining the mobile Internet is important,” says Joubert. “Neither one of the mobile Internet usage tiers is any more important than the other, but decision-makers and marketers should understand the nature of the end user experience as clearly as possible.”

According to the Mobile Internet in South Africa 2010 study, released today by World Wide Worx, almost all urban cellular users have WAP-capable phones, and a high proportion have used that WAP capability to access a variety of internet based content on a regular basis, but many without realising they were doing so.

Mobile web browsing is measured directly in the new study, and accounts for 3.36-million users at the end of 2009. The Mobile Application Internet is measured across several applications, including instant messaging, downloadable applications, Internet applications, and e-mail. The Mobile Application Internet user base is estimated at about 9-million.

“This does not mean marketers can target 9-million Internet users via their cellphones,” warns Goldstuck. “They would have to target the individual applications that make up that total, which means that the Mobile Application Internet is not a readily addressable market.”

“The media opportunity represented by the three tiers of the mobile web is quite fragmented and not easy to exploit, but that barrier in itself has presented a fantastic opportunity for early adopter brands who have embraced the medium,” says Joubert. “It has also offered opportunities for aggregators of the medium, such as application stores and advertising networks like AdMob and Buzz City, and for the very large publishers like Mxit, all of whom are able to offer marketers very significant reach.”

The Mobile Internet in SA 2010 study, backed by First National Bank, was conducted face to face among urban cellphone users aged 16 and older, representing 16-million South Africans.

Bottom line is, in mobile marketing terms, we now looking at being able to market products and services based on mood. Fascinating stuff – and a thought that breeds a whole family of related thoughts, spidering out rapidly and in various directions.

My primary concern here is that of relevancy to the receiver – if the message is relevant, it is awesome. If not, it is nothing short of invasion of privacy. Note that relevant in mobile advertising lingo must mean both requested and relevant.

Campaigns that are targeted at age, sex, location and mood will be a built on planned spontaneity - and fairly easily handled by an I.T system.

Overall - I would say genius.

It’s awesome - giving a Team a tricky problem and waking up the next morning to a bunch of solutions!

From my side, I can think of using this internally for feedback from staff on how to improve a product / process flow or literally anything. Giving it a time limit is also very clever, as it creates a happening and immediate vibe around an issue.

More info on Crowdsourcing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowd_sourcing.

Will the potential applications for Twitter never end?

So, I put SportGator together. What it does is aggregate sports news from 2 of the biggest providers, into various categories. (You can filter by clicking on the top or bottom category menus.)

This means I can get updated in under a minute - remembering that this is from my phone. When I want to read full articles, I’ll do so in front of my PC.

The site is still new, so if anyone has any suggestions - like adding another news feed - please let me know!

The lesson here is that in it’s essence on-line social media is brilliant, but as with all things in life it can take a few to ruin it for many.

Also, consider visiting sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Zoopy and booking your brand name.

The answer:

Write a song about it, get over 4 million people to watch it, and when United Airlines agree to do something, tell them to donate to charity.

Very cool.

Song can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo.

It seems the key point is over the nature of public and private data, and Twitter has really turned this on its head with its public and fresh data stream, as opposed to Facebook’s traditionally private data stream.

The trend now seems to be moving towards data that is public – this increases it’s eyeball count, which effects sign up, publicity, advertising, marketing etc.

Now what really interested me was security – how safe is it to publically broadcast your teeth brushing or your enjoyment of a movie on Twitter? Pretty safe. And status updates and pictures on Facebook? Fairly safe.

But on The Grid, where their model revolves around geographically placing your position and your media, making this data public is going to be a hard sell. It has legal and ethical issues, so this will be a challenge for them in the light of the “public data” trend of social media websites.

See: ITWeb and IOL.

The key points of these services are that they are SMS based, and thus compatible with even the most basic cell phone, and that they are information and utility based.

Clever… Google cannot deliver their content over the internet to the majority of rural Africans, so they make use of the most popular and easy to use technology: the SMS.

The application of the technology itself is not new, but it promises to differentiate as it mines Google’s vast information and application reserves. The short codes that you need to SMS in to are also standard rate – and I must say this is great news as I feel premium short codes, especially those in the R5 and above bands, have been way over exploited.

All in all it seems to be a great service, ploughing the benefits of previously inaccessible internet information and facilities into rural communities, who are sure to reap the rewards.

This is a wakeup call to all… the future is mobile. No longer do you need a P.C or even internet access to participate.

and:

””The grid uses your cellphone’s position to locate you on a map to show you content that is relevant to that area. The grid can also show you where your friends are, if they choose to share their location with you. Once you are located, you can chat with friends who are on the map as well, and even share pictures and videos [called BLIPS] with each other.””

(See a cool video ad for it here.)

The website is very cool - definitely targeted at the Facebook and MXit generations. It allows you to firstly plot your location on a map, and to then have access to all the cool features:

- Add friends and chat to them and view their Blips
- Add your own Blips - Pictures, Videos and Text - onto the map. (Like a marker)
- View Blips in and around your live geographical location

(Definition of Blip - a way to share content - image, text and video - that is related to a geographical location.)

The Mobi site - it’s not that visually great to be honest. I know Mobi sites are restrictive, but you can only use that as an excuse so far. It does use LBS (Location Based Services - based on cellular tower triangulation) to do a location look up on you - although this is briefly mentioned in the T&C, there are no obvious warnings about this. Now this is where, in my opinion, the Grid is awesome - you can search for Blips in your area, while on your phone… and these Blips are not just personal, but include “points of interest” such as restaurants, night clubs etc. Very nice, and geographically relevant. I’m not sure about how pleased WASPS will be though, as WASPS are charged by the Networks to do LBS look-ups, while essentially in the Grids Model, the end user is not charged. So WASPS either have cause for complaint, or they need to be really clever with their billing models.

They do have a Facebook plugin, but it’s called “YouAreHere” and says it uses Google Maps (Not AfriGIS?) to plot your Facebook friends location. Pretty simply as well… a map with your contacts layered!

Their interface is great. Really clean, Web 2.0 feel with lots of space and nice colour shading. Perhaps even a nicer layout than Facebook, although they have less features so maybe not fair to compare. Fairly easy to navigate around.
The only things I did not enjoy are the small “page 1,2,3,4″ paging links, and the way it takes you to a new page and ONLY shows a confirmation of what you have done… so you have to navigate away from the confirmation to get back into things.

They use a lot of advertising - appended to the free SMS, banners at the top of the mobi site and web site, banner at the bottom. It’s different to how Google and Facebook approached advertising - they established a huge user base before.

I think it’s pretty cool that you can share your life, through personal media - photo’s, videos, twitter like updates - on a geographic level. It gives it a new kind of relevancy.

Although the maps are great - speed and detail are good - I felt they should be displayed bigger when integrated into the website. Possibly an option to make the map bigger with a grayout layer opening up on top, without the page refreshing. In general I felt the visual “friends on map” / “Blip on map” element was not prominent enough…

I would also make the “Buzz” page (where you are updated as to your friends recent activites) the default page. It worked for Facebook…

I also do not personally know a single person who uses The Grid… but I personally know around 150 people who use Facebook, from ages 12 up to 90. I think this will be The Grid’s biggest challenge going forward, and I’d re-look at getting some up to date Facebook plugins, and definitely look at integrating Facebook Connect, with the aim of bringing existing communities into it. That said, I’m sure they must have thought of this already…

All in all it’s an extremely cool application and one that can grow big time if they get it’s positioning right.