Ramparts have been breached - the end of 3's 'walled garden'

At LONG last, 3 opens up its network to non-3 authorised sites for its mobile users. The deal between Yahoo & 3 allows 3's customers to browse wherever they wish, not the totally restricted on-portal sites specified by 3. According to this CNET report, no launch date has been specified, but it's supposed be across 3's international operation. Pricing hasn't been determined either. Will this precipitate a GPRS / 3G per megabyte price war? Boy, I hope so, but I suspect that we might have to wait until early 2007 for that.....

Marc Canter pulls off the covers of PeopleAggregator

I got an invitation to PeopleAggregator late on Monday evening. The site was so skeleton that I had no idea of its purpose, even though I had worked out that it had come from Marc.

They offically launch today at Gnomedex, but what is it?

• An Identity Hub: the user will control who has access to their personal data, who can use it and how.
• The ability to move data around between different platforms (hmm, I don't have this one as a massive upside)
• A set of common actions which will interconnect social networks and personal publishing systems – together. (Uniformity - I like, but this will be technically tough to do and, of course, will only be able to employ the lowest common denominator approach)
  

Here's a good history + critique + links to more about it of PeopleAggregator from SiliconBeat. I haven't explored it - not even watched the demo vid yet.

Anyway, CONGRATS, Mark - I know you have been banging on about it for ages - so great to see it out there.

Mobile Networks sensitive to VoIP traffic - whatever next!

T-mobile UK apparently its 3G datacard customers from using VoIP apps (& IM apps - which I find plain bizarre), according to cnet article.


"Vodafone does not operate a policy of blocking VoIP on its network, and we have no plans to restrict IM services," said the company spokesman.

Does that mean they aren't able to or strategically see no need - only time will tell!

Mobile Operators' brands are being watered down

Tom Weiss, in the The Decline of the Operator?, suggests that the mobile brand pecking order will change to:

• Distributor/MVNO
  
• Handset manufacturers
  
• Network Operator
  

He's right .... for now.

In the future, I'd like to think that they'll be a Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) play that pops out: most probably it will be a quadruple play that will be fresh and new that attracts the consumers' attention.

Following that, I see 'communication' brands coming in to segment the market eg Disney for Kids, Saga for Retirees, Financial Times for Business etc

Community Site Gold Rush is transitory

Rafe Needleman comments in this interesting Release 1.0 article about why social software sites are 'misguided' - he really means transitory. As he says, "the more powerful a community site, the easier it is for the alpha users on it to get people to switch over to another site".

Churning to a site usually makes churning away just as easy. Admittedly, "The biggest community sites are populated by young people, an audience that is constantly renewing itself", so fashion moves on, so does the clientelle: Friendster to Facebook to MySpace to ???.

In conclusion, segment and don't be all things to many people as possible - do one thing well and hope that you can become recognised for sticking to the knitting.

Send money via Skype

+
According to those at the ebay conference, then you'll be able to send money via Skype (in conjunction with Paypal).

The article indicates that this feature is in the new Skype Version 2.5 - just out of beta - but not in my version.

Soonr (mobile to PC company) raises $4m

Soonr, which allows you to access the functionality on your PC from your mobile (see previous post) has just raised a first round of $4million from Clearstone Venture Partners.

They can raise another $2million as part of this round, but have decided against maxing out, according to Silicon Beat. I always say take all the money that you're offered - you never know when you'll need it.

Update on Bebo.com

• Bebo has just raised $15m from Benchmark Capital (see article)
  
• It has 24 million registered members with 2.5 billion monthly page views - pretty good when it was 'officially' launched in July 2005 (but I first noticed it in Feb '05).
• It has outstripped MySpace in the UK & Ireland.
  
• Picked up a Webby Award for best Social Networking website too (see their blog).

Note this very interesting point also:

Bebo is showing strong growth, and it stems in part from having the same "limiting" features as Facebook, Birch says. Bebo wants to encourage its users to engage with their real-life community, so is shying away from a completely "open" model like MySpace, where people create Web pages independent of a community. While Bebo allows such open behavior, it is doing everything it can to encourage people to network with others they are really associated with, whether high schools friends or other. It is getting 100 million page views per day, up 30 percent in just two months.

See quote from SiliconBeat.

Globalisation of Plaxo

30% of Plaxo members are outside the US. In order of size, the countries with the most members are: United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Brazil, South Africa.

Plaxo are also localising their service - no dates yet though.

Plaxo adds Jajah into PC Application & Online

OK, this IS significant. Our friends at Plaxo have added calling features ('Plaxo Click to Call') via Jajah, by embedding phone icons into your MS Outlook Contact list. Here's their blog entry on it.

Plaxo adds Calendar application to armoury

Plaxo has acquired HipCal - here's their logic on their blog - make sense.

Everyone is signing city-wide Wi-Fi deals

BT has signed deals with 12 city councils (with 'many more' in the pipeline) to provide mass wi-fi access. No surprises though: it won't be free - PAYG + subscription options.

Separately, the Cloud is doing the same for 9 cities, including London, Manchester and Birmingham. See article.

MiCircles lookalike raises $500k

3jam has a group text messaging service that looks like ol' MiCircles. They have raised $500k of a $1m Series A round from New Enterprise Associatess, according to this article.

Skype offers free calls to North American landlines & mobiles

Blimey, what an offer. Can't call INTO to US & Canada, but free to call any landline or mobile if the caller is in the US. Competitors, be frightened....

New Opera Mobile 8.6

Downloaded yesterday - lovin' it!! (Only for Series 60 however)

Soonr - make Skype call from mobile remotely

SoonR (standard version) enables standard mobile phones to use the applications on PCs in an optimized way. Desktop Search, Outlook, Skype, and the files on desktop computer(s) are made available anywhere you are and even when your computer is turned off (require premium service - no surprise!)

New Skype Feature: Users simply click on the buddy they wish to talk with and SoonR Talk tells their PC to call their mobile phone using SkypeOut, then instructs Skype to call the buddy and places the user into a conference.

Nice mashup.

Skype 2.5 (Beta) with SMS + Skypecast

Skype 2.5 Beta is out. They are making a lot of fuss about sending SMSs (but they have done this before, by chatting at a contact called 'SMS Gateway' - this service was free and didn't work). This implementation looks MUCH better.

Some interesting points though:

• You can change the 'FROM' number from your mobile number to your Skype name.
  
• They actually notified the sender when the SMS is actually delivered to the recipient's phone (niiiice!)

Other newbies:
Share Contacts

• when you join a pre-established group of contacts, the group members are added your Skype contacts.

Skypecasts - pre-scheduled group chats.

• What's so special about this? Is it the fact that they are open for anyone to join in?? Consumer webinars??
  
• Update: the picture of whoever is speaking in a conference call lights up - useful in anything larger than a four person conference call.
  
• Nice viral feature, has some podcasting angles (everyone say "oooh, PODcasting"), but doesn't appear to be exploited - perhaps that will come.
• I'm still on the fence on this - guess this is a feature whose use(s) will appear over time.

Jingle Network has free directory service (uses ad revenue from competitor)

Jingle Network (www.free411.com) has a free directory service. The business model relies on competitor bidding - search for one company and the site serves up a competitor's number - if you select that number then the service bills the competitor.

Oh, and it also raised $26 million in a second round of funding (more). Article indicates that the US market is worth $8b.

Directory service for Mobile Subscriber stalls in US

According to Wired report, the two-year implementation of Wireless 411 service in the US isn't going anywhwere. The service is required to have written consumer opt-in, due to consumer privacy concerns.

This is the very reason that this will fail: patchy sign-up leads to patchy results - a chicken 'n' egg problem.

Facebook raises $25m

Greylock Partners, of San Mateo, led the latest round, and is joined by Palo Alto's Meritech and existing investors Accel Partners and Peter Thiel, an investor and former chief executive of PayPal.

That should keep 'em going for a while... and stave off acquisition for a while (honestly, the founders say they never intended to sell - see previous post).