The MoPR Blog

There Really is an App for That

Consumers know that their smartphones can do just about anything. Shopping lists, sports scores, weather, videos, Facebook… There are thousands of consumer apps. But weren’t smartphones originally intended to be business devices? The cover story of this week’s “InformationWeek” magazine is all about the business applications of smartphones, and the innovative way corporate IT departments are putting them to use. In “What Goes Mobile” Mary Hayes Weier has written one the most comprehensive looks yet at the potential mobile apps will have in various business environments, from auto sales to health care.

In a companion piece in the same edition, Peter Rysavy writes about using the Mobile Web as an alternative to developing mobile applications. This theme is one that MoPR has hit on before with our own clients, such as Bitstream, the makers of the BOLT Mobile Browser. In “The Mobile Web Imperative” Rysavy speaks directly to IT departments and the developers building tools for businesses.

It’s the Year 2010: Still No Flying Cars

We’ve entered the season where writers and publications prognosticate about the trends of the coming year. You’ll see many articles with titles such as “2010: The Year of the _____.” “PC World” magazine has an interesting article which asks the question “2010: The Year of the Table PC?” Table PCs aren’t new. They just aren’t popular. Yet. But a lot of new features, such as touch screens, are reinvigorating the category. With pictures and videos along the way, writer Ian Paul walks us through the new landscape of tablet computers and makes a compelling case for why 2010 may be for tablet PCs what 2007 was for smartphones.

A Map You Can Step Into

I know, I know, the title of this column is “Weekend Reading” not “Weekend Viewing.” But one of our favorite writers, Jon Fortt at “Fortune” magazine has a video that showcases some of the cooler developments in location based technologies. Not coupons for the coffee shop around the corner from where you’re standing, but interactive maps unlike anything you’ve yet seen. Take a look:

In Case You Missed It: Cell Phones Cause Cancer… or Do They?

Throughout 2009 there were several stories about studies that showed a link between cell phone use and cancer. Not good news for those of us who not only are power users of our mobile phones, but also work in the mobility industry. In “Mobile Enterprise” magazine, Michael D. Cole looks at the results of a study released last week, an exhaustive 30 year study conducted in Scandinavia which concludes that there is no such link between cell phone use and cancer. Wait, don’t breath a sigh of relief just yet. Read “Study Refutes Cancer-Cell Phone Connection — But Rancorous Debate Persists” and judge for yourself.

As always, we invite you to share your comments.

Will Twitter get down to business? Twitter is free for now but will the recent hiring of a Director of Mobile Business Development mean they might start charging or setting up a premium service?

According to Twitter’s blog: “Twitter receives a crushing amount of partnership opportunities on a regular basis—it’s a good problem to have yet until now there has been nobody on staff dedicated solely to business development. Things are changing.”

And, according to Telephony, “Twitter has floated the idea of some pay-per-use, premium services. But it risks losing users to other still-free services such as FriendFeed – not to mention telco-provided SMS.”

It will be interesting to see where this is headed – Twitter needs to eventually start making some cash – just preferably not from us.

The ever changing media landscape. We flinch every time we get a newsfeed about some newspaper or magazine cutting staff, shutting down or scaling back frequency. Though we have no intention of turning Weekend Reading into an obit section for publications, we feel the need to let our readers know about the landscape and how this polar shift affects our industry tremendously.

Newspapers and their current business models are sinking – that’s a given. Some, like The New York Times, are experimenting with alternative ad models, such as putting ads on the cover page. It’s not really that dramatic and has been done, but not with a paper of the Times’ caliber. It gets worse – one pundit claims the Times could no longer exist as a newspaper as early as this spring.

Change is painful but it also brings opportunities. Blogs sprout up everyday. News is getting hyper-localized; information is open and free [which has its advantages and disadvantages] and newer business models are flourishing. News isn’t a commodity anymore with sites like Twitter and its users scooping mainstream media stories. Just this week news about Steve Jobs stepping down and the Hudson plane miracle were both reported on Twitter first – with a dramatic photo directly from the crash scene posted on a Twitter user’s account.

Robert Niles in the Online Journal Review lays out some hard rules on these changes and shifts in media and how the new landscape might look. Here’s one that caught our eye:

The old rule: You can’t cover something in which you are personally involved.
The new rule: Tell your readers how you are involved and how that’s shaped your reporting.

MoPR is a company that works hard to tell its clients’ stories to their audience and this kind of transparency and honesty resonates with us. That’s why we’re increasingly having more open, two-way conversations with reporters and bloggers – and laying all the information on the table so to speak. From there, we let the reporter tell their side.

As the media landscape shrinks – and at the same time expands – we will always be looking for ways to make sure our clients get heard. It’s like a Disneyland ride – we’re cautiously looking at the next turn but we’re also excited about where the industry is headed.

American Idol Text: Fail? Are you on AT&T? Did you get a text on your mobile phone earlier this week promoting the season premiere of American Idol? You weren’t alone.

According to various news sources, the carrier sent the text message to a large portion of its subscriber base – many of whom were not very happy with it.

From The New York Times: “AT&T is defending the text barrage, claiming the messages weren’t spam because they were free, and because customers could opt-out of future ads. The ads were sent to frequent texters and to customers who had voted in the past, AT&T says.”

Social network sites growing on adults. The share of adult internet users who have a profile on an online social network site has more than quadrupled in the past four years — from 8 percent in 2005 to 35 percent now, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project’s December 2008 tracking survey.

While media coverage and policy attention focus heavily on how children and young adults use social network sites, adults still make up the bulk of the users of these websites. Adults make up a larger portion of the US population than teens, which is why the 35 percent number represents a larger number of users than the 65 percent of online teens who also use online social networks.

Most, but not all adult social network users are privacy conscious; 60 percent of adult social network users restrict access to their profiles so that only their friends can see it, and 58 percent restrict access to certain content within their profile.

Writing about the death of blogs is apparently the new black. Many pundits are mourning or celebrating the death of blogs – many of them…wait for it…on their own blogs.

Blogs are not going anywhere. In fact, having a blog is almost tantamount to having an email address.

And many who don’t blog don’t even know they are blogging. Here’s Wikipedia’s definition:

Usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order.

If you post your whereabouts, what you’re feeling or what you did last night on Facebook, then you’re blogging. Posting on Twitter? You’re blogging. Sure, messages and posts are splintering into bite-sized posts on services such as Twitter and FriendFeed. But you’re still blogging.

Here’s the deal. Blogging used to be the playing field of a select, elite few who worked hard, gained readership and even made some money. They challenged the mainstream media with their own content. They become celebrities.

So, what’s the beef? Blogging is mainstream and a bit worn [and writing about blogs is mainstream and a bit tired – our apologies] which apparently doesn’t sit well with some of the blogging pioneers. It’s not an exclusive club anymore. And it reminds me of when I was younger when music snob friends of mine would pooh-pooh a band after their first album. “They were so good on their first tour when no one but myself and a select few knew about them. Now that they’re popular they’re not good anymore.”

Now anyone can “do a blog.” Many, if not most, stink. But like nature the lousy ones won’t get read and will fall to the wayside and only the strong will survive. The phony, spammy blogs will proliferate but won’t last either.

Readers have also gotten more sophisticated and have learned how to quickly filter out the weaker blogs. If you’re using a blog to spread your message or push spam or an agenda, people are sophisticated enough to read between the lines. Have something to say of value to your readers at least.

Most traditional publications have an online presence and employ bloggers, some paid, some non-paid. They finally understand the value. Blogging is no longer revolutionary or edgy – it is now a mere part of the media landscape.

And it’s way too early to be writing an obit for it.