Mobile Fix: SXSW – the future isn’t what it used to be
Simon Andrews, founder of the full service mobile agency addictive!, on SXSW: This year all the buzz was on location apps that tell you who is around and EverythingMe...
Just like Mobile World Congress, it seems SXSW isn’t what is was. Evolving from a music festival, SXSW grew on the back of stories that Twitter and FourSquare took off in Austin. So more and more people think you need to be there to read the runes of the future.
Last year it seemed the big thing was going to be group texting. Remember GroupMe and Beluga? What’s cool to a few thousand people exploring an unfamiliar city doesn’t always travel back home that well. To be fair GroupMe did get absorbed into Skype, which makes lots of sense and Beluga is now part of Facebook.
This year all the buzz was on location apps that tell you who is around. Highlight and Glancee are the favourites and in London we’ve seen more and more people joining up on both of these. Balancing the usefulness of this with the stalking potential means it will be a while before we know whether this concept has real legs. Berlin start up AkiAki launched a similar service a couple of years ago but have struggled to gain traction.
The other big thing to come out of SXSW looks like it could have real legs… EverythingMe is a interesting new approach to search – coming just days after mega VC Paul Graham suggested that Google could be vulnerable to an insanely ambitious start up.
Focused on mobile search, EverythingMe presents its results as a series of icons with social results very prominent. Built in HTML5, it is well worth playing with.
Mobile Money
As Square goes from strength to strength, we are still seeing innovation from old and new players. PayPal have announced their own version of Square, which is a triangle designed by JawBone designers Fuseproject.
Designed so anyone with a smartphone can accept card payments, the PayPal service will be slightly cheaper that Square but its unclear whether they will offer the additional services like CardCase that make Square so compelling.
And new boy Boku, who we mentioned here a few weeks ago has raised $35 million and snared Telefonica as a strategic investor. Given the Boku business model is all about partnering with operators, they have to be hoping that this will be their entry point into Project Oscar, where the operators plan to collaborate on a mobile wallet.
But these investments don’t always lead to operational partnerships. Both Telefonica and Vodafone invested in mobile advertising firm Amobee a few years back but never really implemented their technology at scale. Still the purchase of Amobee by Singtel last week for $320 million means it was a good investment for both operators – although we understand Telefonica did bid to buy the whole business.
Internet of Things
The internet of things – when objects like cars and white goods are connected to the internet – is getting closer. Mary Meeker talks of 10 billion mobile devices and many of these will be the internet enabled fridge that recognises when you are out of milk and orders more from Ocado.
Already a number of insurance companies use telematics to monitor how people drive cars and base their insurance premium on real behaviour.
Now chips are becoming available that are small enough and cheap enough to be fitted to virtually anything and they use very little power so the batteries can be really small and cheap too.
Finally… if you want to read even more about mobile, the Carnival of Moblists regularly collects some of the best thinking about mobile – and this time our thinking around MWC and operator innovation is included.
And next week we’re taking part in a panel at a MediaTel event focused on mobile; Mobile 2012 – The year of reckoning. A few tickets are still available – if you are there, come and say hello.
Click here for your full Mobile Fix (complete with links to background articles).