Live Blogging Mobile Monday NY

At Mobile Monday NY at the Samsung Experience in the Time Warner Center, Columbus Circle. Okay, so there are too many panelists on stage (seven white guys) that I can't associate everything said here to the right person. But I'll at least try to cover it.

• Huge factor determining mobile web usage: low-priced unlimited data plans; once people have them, usage skyrockets
• Mobile search accounts for 1% of search volume of major engines even as mobile web users rival web users
• Taptu: How many search queries are for mobile-specific content? Content's different on mobile. Lots of adult searches, reflecting early stages of mobile web, similar to early days of desktop internet. Lots of content search - entertainment. People are using mobile in social situations where the content's relevant.
• Dean's question from Amethon: What are you not getting out of Omniture you want to see from mobile? Dan from ESPN: Omniture will give you a whole lot of empty slots but won't populate them. Our challenge: we want FRM - "fan relationship management." We want to know what people are doing on all platforms. We want 'this is what you did, what you care about, who you are.' He wants to tell advertisers, here's a guy who's this demo, lives here, loves the Yankees.
• White guy #6: Issue: 500-1,000 web browsers - different screen sizes. ESPN can't tell what % of clients are mobile, and if they can, what % support streaming video. ESPN: they actually can track it but had to build it.
• White Guy #5: location-based is huge differentiator from desktop to mobile
• WG #2: Google analytics has heavy pageload, tough for mobile pages
• These chairs... not the most comfortable... tempted to live blog this standing up. it's egalitarian though - the speakers don't have better chairs either
• Dean - Amethon (#7): Now 5% of handsets run javascript. In a few years it'll be 95%.
• WG #6: As Omniture, others can integrate, some just want mobile analytics API, pulled from there into Omniture dashboard.
• WG #1: Uses carrier, device database for mobile-specific analytics. Centralized dashboard important. On ad front, lots of ad players now. For clients, they're an ad aggregator. Based on eCPM, tries to find best ad service.
• WG #6: Google not transparent if you're a publisher. Analytics issues carry over here for publishers, advertisers. Integrating networks and comparing performance is tough. People are blind right now. With ad networks, it's very important.
• 8pm now, one hour in. A number of people took off.
• WG #7 - Amethon: Packet-sniffing technology. Only vendor at the moment. A positive - they see all the traffic. A negative: if you implement it, you need a dedicated server. Greg from Mobilytics uses Amazon (according to Dean).
• WG #6 - Greg: You need actual log files.
• Moderator: Bryson: How does Google's mobile search compared to Taptu? Stephen from taptu: we're only certain searches, content and entertainmentt. We measure # of clicks to get to good result. Our target: good result in 30 seconds or less. Now 35-37 seconds. For competitors, best competitor is 1:07, others approaching 3 minutes. But Taptu's only entertainment, so easier job.
• Taptu: links less relevant on mobile web. They use different algorithm. Cross linking not prominent on mobile. Especially true for social-related searches. Taptu's approach: looks at popularity of pages as measured by social scores. Take MySpace - ton of user-generated content. Popularity of artist page can be measured by artist profile views, popularity of song by measure of song. 10 artists on MySpace call themselves U2 (tribute bands, etc). Only one has the real U2's social scores. That leads to more precise relevance, better performance
• WG #2: Not a big fan of voice driven search. Performance not great.
• Dean from Amethon (WG #7): Download Microsoft Tellme. Great quality. (Figures - doesn't work on my Verizon Samsung, while he plugs it at the Samsung store).
• WG #3 (Adam, Bango): You could only promote via SMS 2 years ago. Now mobile search enabled wider audience.
• WG #3 (Bango): Carriers control most location-based info.   
• ESPN: Instead of targeting location, can, say, target NYers by targeting Yankees box scores.
• WG #5: Wants opt-out mechanism for location based targeting. Amethon: Who cares? Most in this room don't care. WG #6: Would you rather see relevant ad, or would you want a cosmetics ad when you're watching the Yankees game? [Bonus of live-blogging - you capture all the sexism. WTG, Greg. But hey, we get the point.]
• WG #7 - Mobilytics: Percent of browsers supporting cookies: 3% Greg from Mobilytics: MUCH higher - 40%. All over the map. WG #2: 30-40% of browser sessions can take cookies - 3% is ludicrous. Nice, conflict!
• ESPN (WG #4): What % of browsers THAT MATTER support cookies? 90%+. Most of the mobile web apps now do assume some use of cookies.
• WG #2: 80% of browser traffic in 20% of browsers. I think I got that right.
• Where's WG #1? Just happy to be there, I guess.
• My 3 kvetches: the chairs, lack of food (a 7-9 event and no food? what's rationing coming to?), and internet cutting out every 10 minutes (though a big plus that samsung store has free, fast wifi)
• WG #1 must have heard me typing, finally spoke. Said something about the iPhone, which I missed. But also unusual that it's a mobile panel and the iPhone was barely mentioned tonight. Yes, kids, there's more to mobile than the iPhone.

On that note, we'll wrap it up.

• Nevermind. Bryson's asking more questions. Doesn't he know I'm hungry? I hope my text got through to my wife to order dinner for me. I'm going to skip out, so check Bryson's blog tomorrow for coverage to get his take, and to see what I missed when I went to get dinner.
• Okay, not much was missed. I held out for a few minutes and we're finally wrapping to network and then go. Great panel all around. I hope you found the live blog useful.
   

Event Details:

Moderator:

• Bryson Meunier, Resolution Media

Panelists:

• Dean Collins, Amethon
• Joe Cuccinelli, Quattro Wireless
• Dan Mason, ESPN Mobile Web
• Adam Kerr, Bango
• Greg Harris, Mobilytics
• Stephen Ives, taptu
• Stan Wiechers, TigTags

Your Hosts:

• Lubna Dajani, Stratemerge
• David Harper, Winksite

When:
Monday, April 28 2008 at 7:00 PM (until 9:00 PM)

Comments

[Jeff Larche]

Thanks, for the coverage, David.

Signed,

-Yet another white guy