This session covered really innovative strategies for mobile marketing that effectively convert mobile traffic using mobile SEO, PPC and apps. Discussing everything from how to best develop, launch and track an integrated mobile marketing strategy, speakers Helene Rosenblum, VP of Media for Leapfrog Online, and Michael Martin, Senior SEO Strategist for Covario, led us eager attendees folk through a maze of mobile marketing tips. Keep on reading for the meat and potatoes of this session!

Helene took the podium first to discuss how to keep PPC in the mobile space simple yet effective. She asked the crowd, “How do you launch a mobile PPC campaign?” And once you’ve launched it, what do you do to get the most out of it? Statistics are being released left and right from a variety of sources that all say the same thing: NOW is the time to get into mobile marketing. While most stats show that adoption of mobile is at about 50% right now, Helene has found the number to be actually closer to 60%.

People are searching, alright…25% of smart phone users say they use their smart phone as their primary method for searching. Gone is the desktop to these phone-loving types. Hello, touch-screen!

Stressing urgency, Helene said that the number of smart phone searches is almost equal to that of desktop searches—people are searching and shopping across a broad range of categories and  they are completing orders online. The industry possibilities are endless: sales are being completed in everything from home services to cable to the automobile world. The phone is becoming the action of choice. If you’re not on mobile effectively, you may be losing sales to your competitors.

How to be Effective
In order to make a mobile site produce the highest results and ROI, you need to understand why your target consumer is looking for you in mobile. How does their behavior differ from their desktop usage? When you’re on your phone, you’re looking for a location or the latest coupon. The desktop is for searching for reviews and researching, etc. Mobile is more dire and the sale is more imminent.

Helene has a few ideas for maximized effectiveness:

1. Build dedicated mobile campaigns vs. just checking the box. A few things to keep in mind are quality score, optimization, and tracking. If you’re considering a tablet, separate campaigns also needed.
2. Create mobile landing pages. Google added new ad quality factors which include mobile site optimization. They also added a new tool – Google sites. A mighty 50% of our initial actions are clicks and then comes the call. This is why you need a good mobile landing page.
3. Develop a call tracking strategy. Track the keywords that are driving activity. Who is converting? Who is calling? This can provide you with relevant info such as call volume by group as well as call duration, which tells you the quality of the calls you’re receiving.

Okay, I know WHAT to do. But HOW do I do it?
Helene recommends to…

• Build a tight keyword list. Capture the intent in the mobile space, create a geo- specific value, and consider the negatives. What’s not working and how can you fix it?
• Focus on CTR=QSR. Use both click-to-call and a landing page. Be sure you’re utilizing sitelinks, and lastly but certainly not least, launch aggressively. Your competitors are out there. If you’re not in the second ad spot, you’re not going to get a good quality score and you’re not going to see what’s out there, you need to find the opportunities!
• Capture consumer intent that drives your objectives and  discourage behaviors that do not. What are you trying to achieve? Sales? Increased traffic? Better customer care? Showcase new customer deals? If you’re pushing a new deal, make sure your ads talk about them—make sure they know that’s what this ad is about or your costs can and will go through the roof. Do you want sales or traffic? Are you trying to drive a specific action? You need to have a clear objective first before you can design.

As you’re building your mobile campaign, its VITAL that you continue to test. You need to prioritize calls versus landing pages. Which is more worth your while? Location based campaigns are not as effective in mobile as in desktop. Helene suggests building a full mobile buy-flow. How does it fit into your mix? The more effective you are at this, the more consumers are willing to complete a mobile buy-flow online.

Another tip is to develop a call handling strategy. You are going to drive a lot of calls. Do you have an IVR in the front of your campaign? You want users to feel good about the brand, but you can’t handle all those calls without driving up your costs. If you have a customer care center that will be surprised by the number of calls you’re driving to them, you need to manage that within your organization first. Though mobile campaigns can be time-consuming, its so easy to get a basic campaign in the market – do not wait, get to it now if you haven’t already!

Michael Martin took the stage next to discuss the organic side of search. He asks:

Is it really happening?

As far as browsing behavior goes, search is the most frequent. Search engines are being used. Google approached mobile search with Android and is pushing that forward by making search very easy:

• Mobile search is growing faster than desktop search did in the 90’s.
• Androids are over 50% of all smart phones purchased.
• Google is dominant in desktop search with over 50%, but its over 90% on smart phones. Those are quite the percentages.
• In overall search, mobile is 15% of all searches, but its expected to be 25% by next year.

Bottom line: we need to think about catering to the mobile users. Mobile users are all about immediacy and location. Desktop users are checking recipes and reading news. Mobile is all about now—what can I get quickly and nearby?

But how do I get the money?
The money is there. Over 53% of mobile searches lead to click-to-calls or to a user coming into your shop. You need to track where people are coming from. How do search engines perceive mobile devices? Google delineates mobile search into 3 sectors:

1. Features phones
2. Smart phones
3. Tablets

Search engines differentiate feature phones as having a non-web kit browser. Any BlackBerry device before OS6 is considered a feature phone.

Among mobile searches, there are definite differentiations:

• Tablets use user agent detection, mobile activist/tablet CSS rendering and can be touch friendly.
• Smart phones use click touch to call, improved location data, and further page load reduction. Smart phone and tablet rendering should be on the same URL as your desktop.
• Feature phones are 50% of all users in US, and you need to consider mobile doctype, mobile XML sitemaps, and be scroll friendly.

If there is traffic and people are buying, how do we audit? A few tools Michael suggests include:

• Firefox user agent switcher extension
• Google is really pushing people to go mobile. Gomo is a simple site that gives you a simple assessment of your mobile.
• Mobilize gives us visual rendering to see exactly what it looks like on a certain device as if it were on a particular screen.
• Mobiready is for feature phones, it goes into the details of what you should do for mobile phones
• Ipadpeek also lets you see it real life on a tablet.

Michael’s top takeaways:

• Submit physical business locations to Google Places and Bing Business portals
• Feature phone pages should be coded with an XHTML or cHTML doctype
• Feature phone results should be user agent redirected to a mobile subdomain
• Smart phone and tablet pages generally should use the same URL as the desktop but via user agent detection. Trigger a mobile CSS and jquery to provide a properly formatted app like user experience.

Thanks to the speakers for plentiful tips on how to start or optimize your mobile campaigns! That about does it for now, but be sure to come on back for more coverage, and follow along with @ericasendros @meganlichty and @merrymorud. We’re in full tweet-and-blog mode here at #SESCHI.

photo credit: ribbitvoice

Welcome back to aimClear’s coverage of #SMX Advanced!

As well it should be! The term was only recently coined by Kleiner Perkins internet visionary, Mary Meeker. She’s already begun referring to the next five years as the era of “SoLoMo,” or Social, Mobile, and Local for you n00bz out there (present company included…), and she’s not alone. This powerful intersection represents a serious market revolution to some, a natural evolution of the industry to others. Regardless of the perceived degree of influence, it is noteworthy statistic that for the first time ever, smartphones and tablets are outselling personal computers, emphasizing the fact that people want to be online now, instantly, without lugging themselves over to the other side of the room to boot up the ole’ family PC.

A stacked panel consisting of Kelly Gillease, VP Marketing, Viator, Jennifer Grappone, Partner, Gravity Search Marketing, Daniel Lemin, Founder & Principal, Social Studio, Mac Ling, Director, Mobile, iCrossing, and Nicola Smith, VP, Business Development, Performics, not to mention moderators Greg Sterling, Founding Principal, Sterling Market Intelligence and Michael Martin, Senior SEO Strategist, Covario, Inc. were ready to examine this behemoth trend as well as the opportunities and impact it carries for marketers.  Read on for an in-depth look.

Nicola, up first, began by discussing the evolution of purchases from purely transactional to transactional and greatly conversational:

Purchases Have Become Conversations | Statistics

• 42% of 18-34 year olds connect or enjoy sharing their purchases via social media
• Services are popping up, like Blippy & Swipely, that sync up bank accounts with social profiles, and allow users to share records of their purchases online
• 400% increase in the number of searches via mobile in the last year
• 74% of people use their mobile phones to search while running errands
• 63% of people use mobile search before purchasing offline
• 59% of people use content to share content with a family member or friend while shopping

Local, mobile, and social as a combined entity offer a really amazing benefit to brands: hyper-targeting of your potential customers, i.e.: you can reach the right person, in the right place, at the right time. This is different from any other medium we‘ve ever used. An additional benefit of using SoMoLo – it’s changing the face of marketing metrics and brand currency.

Traditionally, marketers have paid mind to awareness- offline media and attention; with the advent of social media, we started looking at participation and engagement – the number of tweets, blogs, comments, etc. Now we’re looking at proximity, and ways to track it. Being able to track and measure loyalty is the holy grail for marketers.

How can you start to build loyalty around a brand using SoLoMo?

1) Expand the Check-In! Consider the variety of check-in services:

• Location based check-ins, such as Foursquare and Gowalla
• Content focused check-ins, such as Miso and Filo (you can “check in” to a song… whoa)
• Brand / Product Conversation, such as “Chicken” (a German-based service), allows users to check into a conversation about a brand or product

Takeaway: The check-in phenomenon is evolving and expanding well beyond location-specific check-ins.

2) Combat Fragmentation. There are tons upon tons of social channels out there. Consider leveraging Local Response, which aggregates check-ins across services and allows the brand to respond via Twitter.

3) Simplify the Process. Sometimes, even logging into a service to manually check-in is too time-consuming. Consider leveraging ShopKick, a service that offers a reader which registers when users enter a store – when you know a person is physically in their store, grant them points (Kick Bucks) at the register. Kick Bucks can be redeemed for discounts, or even transferred for Facebook credits. Whoa. Different forms of digital currency transferred across digital platforms.

4) Instigate Repeat Purchases. Groupon is hot, right? Sure, but their model is geared towards getting people in the store for one purchase. After that, they’re rarely seen again. Level Up, brought to you by the same folks who developed Scavenger, is like Groupon on steroids.

• Level 1 – Same deal as Groupon, pay $10 for $20 worth of goods. But with Level Up, as soon as you achieve level 1, you… level up… to…
• Level 2 – $10 for $30 worth of goods. Then, level up… to…
• Level 3 – $10 for $40 worth of goods. Neat!

The value in a model like this is you get someone in your store multiple times –hopefully by the third time, they’re a brand advocate, i.e.: repeat customer. Another perk – you don’t pay for level 1, so if people don’t level up, i.e. don’t show signs of becoming a repeat customers, it’s no harm on your wallet.

5) Make it Fun! Location is about more than just place. Consider this case study: eBay teamed up with Shazam, and now, every time a user searches Shazam for a song, for example, eBay will make product suggestions that align with that song, artist, mood, etc. They call is Inspiration Shopping.

Takeaways:

• Loyalty + Proximity = Currency. The value of currency is currently undefined.
• Purchases have become conversations
• Think beyond the location based check-in
• Combat fragmentation – helps in regards to investment dollars
• Simplify the process; the easier you can make it for a user, the more likely they are to engage
• Instigate repeat purchases
• Make it fun!
• Explore content other than offers and deals!

Next up was Kelly, set to tackle the paid side of social media & mobile marketing .

A Look At Facebook

• Targeted paid ads, not just for external sites, but to grow fans on Facebook.
• Amazing targeting: interests, affinities, demographics, associations and more.

BUT…

• On the social side, growing fans and likes via paid marketing is a massive, largely untapped opportunity.
• “Like” building is a contact list for email, building fans on FB grows an audience for important launches, offers, messages, etc.

Social necessitates a shift in content delivery behavior – companies need to provide content where their audience wants to be; don’t rely on them to visit your site.

• Ads for external sites have mixed results, but ads to grow fans, or sponsored story ads involving fans, are largely positive.

• • Sponsored Stories – an ad endorsed by a friend. Pick a page like or a page post or a post like to promote, will target friends of connections
  • Page Like – when people like your page, their friends see a story about it
  • Page Post – when you post an update on your page, your fans sees a story about it
  • Page Post Like – when people like your page post their friends see a story
  • Great for contests, sales, but also growing fans
• Facebook sweepstakes with Wildfire
  • For example, an iPad 2 giveaway – you can grow fan base (“Like us to win!).
  • Several advertisers have tripled fans with a sweepstakes such as this

A Look At Twitter

• Promoted accounts & promoted tweets
  • Promoted Accounts – paid placements to promote a twitter account with the goal of gaining followers
  • Promoted Tweets- select a tweet to promote to drive engagement, retweets, followers
  • Promoted Trends – promote a trending topic. When clicked, shows a promoted tweet from advertiser. Very expensive.
• Don’t forget the opportunity to include a video.
  • This is something Kelly doesn’t see too often, but it’s really great. In the new Twitter UI, you can view the video in-screen, don’t hve to navigate away to YouTube, etc.

How to Value a Follower or a Fan?

• Track direct revenue from FB & Twitter for both paid and unpaid placements
• Track paid placements with campaign codes, then subtract from overall Facebook or Twitter as referral source for unpaid
• Track followers and fan totals – then, calculate per follower and fan values based on total sales and total followers or fans
• Example: Twitter follower value / Total twitter revenue / # of Twitter followers
• Very basic, but valuations are higher than you might suspect
• Can skew with campaigns to quickly scale fans or followers (like a wildfire contest)
• Valuation aids in allocating appropriate spend for paid media in these channels
• Click to call ads – if you’re not participating in mobile search, you should be!

Paid Ads for Mobile Apps

• Support mobile app launched with paid campaigns on mobile networks
• iAd – Apple only, mainly iPhone, iPad in beta
• AdMob
• JumpTap
• m.youtube Takeover – must schedule far in advance

Facebook and Twitter Takeaway: A coordinated effort with unpaid channels is key for success to achieve higher rankings at initial launch, coordinate email, PR and site side promotion.

Next up was Daniel Lemin, who introduced his 3 SoLoMo concepts:

• Point of engagement – brand awareness, affinity
• Point of sales – local and mobile
• Convergent metrics

The SoLoMo Purchase / Conversion funnel:

• Awareness / familiarity / opinion = social
• Consideration / one make model intention = mobile
• Shopping / purchase = local

Point of Engagement

• The dinner party analogy
• WOM rules the air
• People are just casually talking about products, not driving sales
• Infiltrate these conversations by way of social technologies, get in there, might help lead people into a more serious look at your product leveraging mobile and local
• Driving awareness, testimonials, recommendations, interactions

Local and mobile have a beautiful link to POE!

• Direct line to purchase
• Drive loyalty, incremental sales
• Improve margins

Consider this M&Ms case study. M&Ms hosted a Find Red campaign in Canada. The objective was to help the M&Ms find the Red M&M, who was lost somewhere in cyberspace. This campaign leveraged a trifecta of SoLoMo technologies, mostly offline.  Interesting. Leveraged Google Maps API, QR codes, and other offline technologies that helped give users clues to where Red was. KPI was engagement, not purchases.

Point of Sales
Many companies struggle with social and struggle to understand why they’re putting money into it. This grey area can become black & white when you leverage SoLoMo, and help create a direct line to purchase.

What are some metrics to consider?

• Business metrics – margin, COGS, acquisition cost, lifetime value
• Convergent analytics – engagement rate, sentiment, conversion funnel analysis, events / conversions
• Platform metrics – Twitter influence, page views, check-ins, interactions
• By its nature, SoLoMo is convergent. Therefore, so must the analytics.

What are some advocacy metrics?

• Loyal customers spend more
• Better connections with core customers
• SEO implications
• Intangibles, press and awards

Jennifer was up next. She spent a fair amount of time on a Justin Beiber case study, which I morally could not capture. So. Onto the case study about ice cream.

Coolhaus started very small, one ice cream truck, one city. Cool factor they had/have going from them, no pun intended, was they offered/offer a fantastic product… ice cream. Yum! Also, they were/are rocking a pretty righteous SoLoMo marketing effort.

SEO sidenotes: The Coolhaus site isn’t/wasn’t very usable, not well optimized in a traditional sense. But that’s okay, because the life of the brand’s marketing activities take place in social channels, not on their site.

Photo Share = Success

Jennifer shares an example of one customer sharing a photo of his/her yummy ice cream experience. You’d think Coolhaus would spend a lot of money encouraging people to continue to share photos – but mostly, people just do it on their own. Coolhaus is of limited resources, so they decide to spend their funds trying to get things to happen that might not happen automatically, such as customer loyalty, getting on front of new customers, etc.

Typical day in the life of Coolhaus

• Share location information
• Share coupon codes
• Localized strategies

Geotargeted Flattery
Coolhaus doesn’t have swagger everywhere. So they turn to the people who do. A few days before they pull up in a city, they do research of who’s there, and reach out to the social influencer in the local area. “Hey, @LocalInfluencer, your name is our coupon code for today! Please spread the word!” (Author’s note: Incredibly smart. Vanity baiting IRL.)

Co-Marketing with Competitors
Coolhaus doesn’t have a problem with tweeting at @BigGayIceCream. Lesson: don’t be afraid to tweet with your direct competitors to build a sense of commodity

Takeaways:

• SoLoMo is not magic
• Make it easy to share
• Cross-sell with your competitors
• Open your mind to breaking SEO rules
• Know your audience

Next up, Mac Ling. Topic of discussion: SoLoMo Business – Today and Tomorrow. So… we know there is an intersection between social, mobile & local… now, what do we do with it?

The Spectrum of Online Communication
From group messaging to Twitter to invite-only discussions to photo sharing and location sharing—the technology of online communication is nothing new. For the younger generation, though, privacy has become a ticket to the experience. If you walk into Facebook, your willingness to share info about yourself is the ticket into the doorway of this community. As you give more information about yourself, you’re able to participate more in these communities. This is where the shift is.

What we’re doing now is creating groups that have social aspects to them. Smartphones are the cornerstones of what make this possible. It’s a freakin’ PC in your pocket. Longevity and engagement provide deeper insight into customers and these groups.  Parse info from the streams, connect the dots between what you’re trying to sell and what someone else is in need of.

This connection is the Holy Grail (apparently another one) we all search for – we all have more information than ever before to be able to make that connection happen

However – relevance has a shelf-life, so we have to be nimble enough to communicate to consumers in the decision stage of the purchase funnel.

What do we have?

• Group with shared interests
• Location info
• Contextual info
• Immediacy of fulfilling a need
• AKA: A qualified lead!

How do we use this?

• Provide targeting offer to pod
• Future group buying deals
• Merchants can bid for this groups patronage

Is this the SoLoMo revolution?
Not as much of a revolution as an evolution of the tools. We’re now starting to see, as with the Internet we have a new medium, a new way of talking to customers. We’re using the same fundamental marketing concepts with new tools to achieve similar goals. It’s simply the next iteration of the marketer’s toolbox.

Top Takeaways from the Panelists:

• Mac just spoke, so he passed.
• “Have a mobile website. Make sure it’s optimized.”  - Kelly
• “Know who your audience is, what they’re using, what they like.”  -Jennifer
• “Experiment – this is a constantly evolving space, if you’re not prepared to take a little bit of a chance, you’ll be behind the curve. Always.” –Nicole
• “Don’t look at SoLoMo as a massive thing – just try it. There’s very little incremental cost with tools, if it doesn’t work, at least you know.” – Daniel

That wraps up the SoLoMo session, which, all the while, I’ve wanted to call “Slow-Mo.” But that’s probably because my brains have practically turned to mush. Yes, this truly is an… advanced conference. More coverage coming at you right here in aimClear blog & via my tired fingers @beebow. Until then, cheers!

photo credit: ianwedlock

Mobile and Local are tied at the hip, but up until recently the tools weren’t up to the task. But with advent of the iPhone however, all that is changing.

Besides making iPhone a great productivity tool (not to mention GORGEOUS eye candy), Apple has opened up third party application development.

This SES San Jose session demo-ed a few of the existing and up-and-coming applications taking advantage not only of local search, but also of the iPhone’s unique capabilities.

The panel was moderated by Michael Boland, Senior Analyst of the The Kelsey Group and the speakers were: Ethan Lowry, Co-founder, UrbanSpoon, Scott Dunlap, CEO, NearbyNow, Ryan Sarver, Director of Consumer Products, Skyhook Wireless, Siva V. Kumar, Founder & CEO, TheFind.com, Sonia McFarland & Head of Business Development, Yelp.

The iPhone is awesome.
I have been a Mac girl from way back in the 80s in high school and I’ve been an iPhone convert from the beginning.

The iPhone [in author's opinion] is THE best smart phone that exists, for several reasons – one of which is “true web browsing.” There’s no browser emulator – like Blazer on my old Sprint Treo. I’m a chronic Googler and after a few desperate attempts I never touched Blazer again. Now, with my iPhone there are days when I don’t even open my computer. I make constant use of Google maps to orient myself in my new home of New York.

I should note to users who may not be familiar with iPhone that there is a difference between using the iPhone to view a website that has been “optimized” for the iPhone, and downloading and using an iPhone app. For example, urbanspoon.com has an iPhone-optimized website if you view it using your iPhone. However, it lacks the cool iPhone-specific functionality I’ll talk about later if you don’t use the iPhone APPLICATION (which is free!)

The big plus of the iPhone is: it knows where it is. Once you know where you are, you have a reference point to find other things. Local stores want to tell your iPhone where they are. New applications are allowing them to do that.

But first, what is Geo-Location?
Geo-location is a fancy word for locating where you are on the planet.

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you know that the new iPhone 3G came out in July. The big deal about it is that it is running on the 3G network, and has GPS functionality. Global Satellite Positioning = GPS. The iPhone talks to satellites to find out where it is. Now, other phones had had GPS before (Nokia), but the rest of the hardware wasn’t…well, it wasn’t the iPhone.

GPS is great, but unfortunately, it can be slow (can take a minute or more to “boot up”) and it doesn’t work everywhere (if you are in a dense urban location tall buildings make it hard to get a lock on you). Happily, the iPhone has dual mode functionality – where GPS doesn’t work, it uses wi-fi positioning, based on SkyHook technology. Ryan Sarver from SkyHook talked about the technology behind SkyHook.

SkyHook technology, around since 2005 does one thing: produces location latitude and longitude from wi-fi positioning.

Wi-fi positioning is analogous to GPS. Wi-fi positioning makes use of wireless access points for reference. You know when you turn on your computer and you now see all those wireless networks that are locked so you can’t hop onto them? SkyHook doesn’t need to get “on” to the wi-fit network – it just uses their presence to help triangulate your position. It’s faster than GPS (can locate in a quarter of a second) and it’s pretty darn accurate too (within 20-30 meters).

SkyHook employees are out in their cars finding wi-fi access points in the US, Europe, and Asia. There are about 56 million of them at present (and increasing all the time). Trouble is, SkyHook still needs density for the wi-fi positioning to work (how dense?) It works best in urban areas.  He then showed a map of Manhattan, with red dots showing every wi-fi access point they’d mapped. I swear it looked like a swarm of ants.

So wi-fi positioning works great for iPhone in urban areas, what about rural? Well, that’s where GPS comes in. GPS is great at finding you in wide-open areas. So, iPhone has you covered no matter where you are (and you don’t to know anything about this underlying technology either, iPhone uses whatever technology is the fastest to find itself). What do you do with all this power?

iPhone is first phone to offer true location-based services. Ryan went through the iPhone App Store and found that of the 1000 apps currently there, 30 of them are location-based.

____________________________________________

UrbanSpoon with Ethan Lowry

Urban Spoon – THE hot iPhone App of the Search Engine Strategies Conference!

It seems that someone at every SES session I went to was all foaming at the mouth about UrbanSpoon, so it was nice to see a proper demo of it! Ethan Lowry of Urban Spoon called Urban Spoon “the great discovery engine for local search.” Now, I’d of course narrow that to “discovery engine for food,” but who’s splitting hairs?

Urbanspoon is focused on helping people find a place to eat. They are have been around for a year and a half, they cover 70 cities, and they have a million unique visitors. They combine:

• location
• price
• city/neighborhood
• food type
• reviews (from bloggers, and restaurant critics!)

Take a Gamble On Your Meal

Here’s how it looks, and how it works.

1. You download the app to your iPhone.
2. You either let iPhone find the city you’re in, or you tell it where you are.
3. On the “slot machine” you can use three spinners to input info: neighborhood, food type, and price. You can lock any/all of those spinners to narrow your results.
4. Once you’ve set the sliders, SHAKE the iPhone (it uses the accelerometer). The spinners go just like a slot machine, and CLINK there’s your results!

Now, the result isn’t completely random. It skews to better-reviewed restaurants. Also, there’s’ only one result. If it’s not what you wanted, shake it again to get another suggestion. Obviously, if you want to be presented by a bunch of choices, this app is not for you (try YELP!) but if you like a little kinesthetic interaction when picking your meal (and cool sound effects too!), Urban Spoon is great fun.

When you get your result, all the info you need is there: phone number, map, hours, reviews.

There’s also a social networking component – you invite friends and compare recommendations.

I used it to find lunch today!

__________

NearbyNow Mall Navigation App/Is It Me? with Scott Dunlap

Ok, now we’re getting into the killer shopping app. There are sites on the web that will tell you where you can buy a product. There are sites that can tell you where you can buy it, and whether that product is in stock at the moment.

NearbyNow’s Mall Navigation application sucks down some steroids gives you an application that shows you a mall map, sales in every store in the mall, and a product search – what stores carry that product.

If you want that product, you can click “CHECK STORE INVENTORY and a CONCIERGE (!) will call that store to not only verify that it’s ACTUALLY in stock, but tell them to hold it for you! And then sends you a cute little email or text message that tells you he’s done so. Guess who pays for this service? If you answered, “me” you would be WRONG. You get to use this service for free. Merchants pay a nice chunk of change to get iPhone-addicted people like you to get led directly to their store/merchandise – because people who own iPhones on average have 40 to 50 times more disposable income!

(see this YouTube video to see the Mall Application in action).

This application will be killer come Christmas (it is slated to be released in September/October 2008).

Is It Me?

Oh dear. Now we’re getting into a seriously addictive application. Is It Me? is an iPhone application that lets you take full advantage of the iPhone time-wasting capabilities. Let’s say you’re in a mall, and you see an awesome dress. You want feedback from a friend as to how much they like it for you. Trouble is, you are all alone. What do you do? The 2006 answer would have been, “call them on the phone and describe it to them in a futile attempt to convey its essence.” In 2007, you would send a cell phone pic to them and wait for feedback. It’s 2008, and what you can do now is, using Is It Me?, take a picture with your iPhone, send it to a group of friends, and let them VOTE ON IT.  You can also enter information on where you saw the item (store list is supplied through geo-location). That way, your friend who is envious of your style sense, can go to her local mall and get the exact same thing!! Or, even order it online! Genius.

Note, this functionality isn’t just for clothes, I’m sure lots of folks are going to be using it for, “is this guy hot??”

Note that people you send these things to do not have to have iPhones (although there is more fun functionality to use on the iPhone – as seen in this screenshot.

Is it Me? Is another branded app from the NearByNow folks, available in the September/October 2008 timeframe.

_______________________

Thefind.com with Siva Kumar

Thefind.com is a shopping comparison site that also has customize content, much of it in the “lifestyle” category (i.e. fashion, etc.).

TheFind: Where to Shop is a “location aware” application that enables users to search for products they want to buy and then simply view relevant stores on interactive maps pinpointing local retail locations (identified by “store icons”) near their current physical locations (identified by a “location icon”). The location information is determined using GPS or other positioning methods of the iPhone platform.

Thefind.com is location-based shopping, showing users not only where a retailer is in the customer’s area, but also product availability price, and also cross-checking online pricing for items (!!). Then again, just because ebay has your item for a dollar cheaper isn’t likely to override your desire to have the item NOW. You can also reserve an item for in-store pickup.

Thefind.com has over 250 million products, and works with “big-box” retailers as well as small boutiques.

Thefind.com is live on the web now, and their iPhone app has been submitted to Apple for approval and will hopefully be available in September for download.

__________________________________________

YELP

YELP is another site I use myself. It’s a local review site with local content, provided by local users. It has a huge and loyal community network. I have friends who have their entire social calendar filled by YELP activities. Yelp is not just food (in fact, only 1/3 of their content is food-related).

Yelp already had an extremely strong website chock full of user-generated content, it was just a matter of figuring out which functions were the most important for users of the iPhone app.

The features that made it:

• Find: enter search terms (food, service, neighborhood)
• Near: Current location  (or enter it in)
• Filter criteria: distance from me, price, whether open now
• Map
• Restaurant/Service info (phone, address, hours)
• User Reviews

In the future, you will be able to write reviews on the iPhone, add pictures, and use more social info.

_____________________

IPHONE DEVELOPMENT INFO

• How many people are using location-based services for iPhone? The Metrics are exploding since app store opened – but out of 1000 apps there are about 140 location-based apps.
• How easy is it to get iPhone app developed? The iPhone app approval process is rigorous. You HAVE TO adhere to their UI requirements or you will be rejected outright. For example, if you add an extra icon in a plae not usual for iPhone. And it will be harder next time to get something approved. But, if you follow all their rules and you get extremely lucky, approval process can be as short as 48 hours. Apple also prefers apps that take advantage of iPhone’s unique capabilities – for example, the accelerometer.
• How do you get things developed? Who are the famous iPhone developers? Answer: we don’t know, everyone wants to know. We do know: Objective C is the developer’s language iPhone uses, and it’s not the greatest.  (Charlene note: As someone shopping for an iPhone developer for some apps I have in my head, there are lots of rogue app developers, and from what I’ve heard – at least in New York – many of them are willing to work on projects where they take a cut of profits, and dont’ require being paid up front. Good news if that’s a model you’re comfortable with.)
• Where are your revenues coming from?
  • Skyhook: made a deal with Apple in Jan 2008
  • UrbanSpoon is an ad model, but iPhone app has no monetization right now
  • Nearbynow is 90% lead generation money – stores pay them to send customers to their stores – it’s the offline equivalent of Google clicks.
  • Find.com – CPC, CPA, CPM
  • YELP: ad-supported model, so no monetization on iPhone yet

And now the important stuff: the panel’s favorite iPhone apps:

• Michael Boland: COWBELL (I downloaded this – AWESOME!!)
• Ryan Seaver: URBANSPOON (and NOT from the UrbanSpoon guy!)
• Ethan Lowry: LABYRINTH
• Scott Dunlap: TEXAS HOLDEM
• Siva Kumar: MAPS
• Sonia McFarland: SHAZAM

_____________________________________

Charlene Jaszewski is head honcho over at Smartypants Group, and helps small business and technology play nicely together when she’s not writing articles like this one. She is also addicted to her iPhone and needs a support group pls thx.

Ironically, the most appropriate “takeaway” is that very little is static in this arena. The revolution is still in its infancy, however it is clear that a marketing explosion of nuclear magnitude is imminent.

There is SO much money on the table. There are SO many fragmented channels, many of which are critically important to understand and master. Will your marketing campaign be left in the dust as the world changes?

The Internet itself loomed in the early 90’s and we marketers were told by pundits and sages to adapt or die. Then along came PPC which turned out to be just as radically important. Down came the user-generated hammer which cranked out changes of biblical proportions. YOU are Time Magazine’s person of the year. Here comes the giant global mashup of handsets, carriers, platforms, and the Internet itself. Hang on and giddy up Batman!

Here’s What We Do Know.
According to ABI Research (April 2007) mobile search marketers will spend $3 Billion this year and $11.35 billion by 2011. Worldwide there will be 3.3 billion mobile phone users, whereas there were only 2 billion in 2005. Currently there are 2.8 billion mobile phone subscribers. In the United States, there were 233 million mobile users which is over 76% of the population. Meanwhile it is estimated that 8% of the top 1000 US Brands offer mobile site versions.

Farewell from SMX Local & Mobile Denver 2007. We’ll be back in the office tomorrow with lots of client work on our plate. We look forward to SMX Social Media NYC 2007 in a couple of weeks. Thanks to our readers and subscribers.

Other Coverage We’re Aware Of from This Conference.
David Dalka

Mike The Internet Guy

SearchMarketingExpoBlog

RealitySEO

Search Marketing Standard

Greg Sterling

Marketing Pilgrim

Scott Clark

Flickr

This session, “Meet the Mobile Search Engines”, provided attendees with an above the treetop-overview of major mobile search players. Of particular note are the behind-the-scenes “white-label” providers who sell search to various wireless carriers.

The session was moderated by Gary Price, Director of Online Information Resources, Ask.com. He is also the editor of resourceShelf.com. The speakers were Omar Tawakol, Chief Advertising Officer, Medio, Brendan Benzing, Vice President Mobile Search and Marketing, InfoSpace, and Matthew Snyder, Head of Business Development, Nokia, Matt Tengler, Senior Product Manager, JumpTap.

What Are People Mobile-Searching For?
Based on a study of 6064 young European regular net users owning a mobile phone (Forrester’s Tech Graphics 2006 Benchmark Study), 96% of users tapped SMS, 21% accessed email, 43% went for ringtones (20% paid-for SMS with information), 19% purchased a picture or wallpaper, 18% purchased or downloaded games, 13% purchased a full music track (3% of those went for the video), 25% regularly browsed the mobile internet, 27% took advantage of SMS for voting or participation in a TV show, 67% sought downloads on the go (3% information, 8% portal navigation, 9% adult content, and 4% generic content query). The most telling statistic is how the breadth of queries widens significantly when off deck search (including Internet searches) is introduced thereby opening the garden wall.

Gary price quipped “there are a lot of ways of screwing it up, but mobile search can save people a lot of time, effort, and communication.” The challenge as always is having quality content that’s ready to go and ready to fit on the page.”Everyone is not like us as they have no idea that these advanced services even exist.” With mobile search marketing everyone wins: Advertisers’ get focused users, hyper-local advertising using GPS and Wi-Fi and branding can be an important component of any marketing plan. “If they [advertisers] can brand on the radio, the can brand mobile services.”

He believes that Podcasting will soon evolve into PhoneCasting” or “CellCasting.” Broadcasting audio and video is easy, fast for consumers, provides additional channels to serve up advertising, there’s little or no learning curve, and even grandma can do it! NPR is now PhoneCasting, and you can listen to the DailySearchCast @ 1+512-696-0729.

Room for Innovation
Omar Tawakol made the point that TV and print media leaders are not the leaders on the Internet. Existing major Internet players may not fully translate their current iconic presence to mobile. “Mobile is an entirely new medium replete for innovation. Don’t just roll over and play dead when top Internet leaders walk into the room. There is plenty of room at the table.”

Matthew Snyder, Header of Business Development, Nokia evangelized “The fragmentation of media consumption is becoming worse.” New destinations are gaining over established players and “communitainment” is becoming prevalent, especially among youths.

Mobile is a cross-media, local, interactive medium merging TV, radio, print, and online. Think about it, you always have your phone with you. There is a shift underway to multimedia computers where all of my connected applications are always with you. According to Nokia’s Forecast 2006, by 2010 there will be more mobile devices with full browsers in the market place than PCs.

Mobile is the ultimate advertising platform.
It’s personal, always on, always with you, immediately trackable in order to justify expenditures to advertisers, billing and payment transactions are easily a possibility, and the concept of mobile plays on human nature to be “entertained by the serendipity of finding things.”

What should we do first? Who are the players? This session explored the “tactical demands of running a successful local/mobile search marketing campaign.”

Chris Sherman, Executive Editor, Search Engine Land , moderated and led off the discussion. Chris gave us the good news first, that “local and mobile campaigns have a lot in common with traditional search marketing. However, local mobile is much more fragmented with dozens or hundreds of factors to keep track of.”

Jenny Halasz, SEO Manager, Acronym Media was the next speaker to take the podium. First, she invited the audience to visit their corporate offices in the Empire State building, an offer I’m likely to take her up on.

Acronym Media’s concept gets back to tried and true keyword driven marketing to “harvest the power of user searches and provide relevant results.” She views planning for a local/mobile campaign as projecting possible progressions of a customer’s physical activity and gets granular. For instance, “Greg“ arrives in NYC with his iPhone, searches for luxury hotels, tourist attractions, the best pizza, gets drunk and lost which leads to map searches (to get directions to back to the hotel). The next day he Googles airport limousines, etc…

Here are Jenny’s recommended steps in planning the campaign and be realistic:

Determine available financial resources and use simulators to better understand how the site currently renders via mobile.

Always include links back to the main HTML website.

Determine Your Resources.
If the budget is low, implement high impact low cost changes which can be made to existing campaigns. Submit to local networks, create an RSS feed, put business address in a single line text (the maps index single lines better), and apply for Google News inclusion to “build on the hyper-local web.” Also submit to Goog411.

If you have a bigger budget, consider creating a mobile specific site (m.site.com), create local- specific content about cities, regions, metro areas, etc… Consider paid ads in local engines and networks.

Best Practices
Jenny stressed that our visitors ARE mobile users! Offer basic mobile interaction aids, use tel-tags on phone numbers, add the area code or tool free prefix on phone numbers, be XHTM compliant, provide clear navigation, all pages should be no more than 3 clicks away from homepage, minimize the use of flash and images, minimize file sizes, use CSS and JS in external files. She recommends always using CSS and DIV tags to put navigation below content in the code and use mobile site maps.

Local search providers Acronym calls on include InfoSpace, Switchboard, Yahoo! Local, Google Maps, LiveSearch YellowPages.com AT&T SuperPages, and AOL Local. Jenny stressed that we should remember to check out smaller local niche’ players. International is also a tremendous opportunity including Baidu, Voila, Yahoo! Singapore, and Google France.

Chris Silver Smith, Lead Strategist, Netconcepts was up next. Chris suggested www.localsearchguide.org be the first stop for a guide of the top players in the local search field. The Local Search Guide is updated frequently to add new companies and reflect changes in the industry.

Status of the MarketPlace
Local and IYP are still strong. Their usage has been growing to some degree because they’ve expanded their utilities to include social media tools. Yahoo! Mobile search is growing, and we’re right on the cusp of matching Europe’s high usage. Local I.E. Yahoo Search now accounts for 24% of mobile Internet use. IYP users are closer to conversion in the buying process, 38% go on to make a purchase, are more targeted for the businesses they seek, and are more likely to have good income than users of general web media (100K+).

You Never Know Where Your Ad Might Show Up.
An idiosyncrasy of mobile search is that ads are often shared between platforms. Though mobile companies resist open platforms, tending to create “walled off gardens”, there is still some sharing as different providers feed into different mobile search providers. The trend is away from special mobile only display format to full webpage displays as a result of the iPhone. Usage and promotional potential is still lower than the regular internet but rapidly trending upward.

For small local businesses, getting a grip on this fragmentation is a consuming nightmare. For these businesses the key is to outsource the work to an agency or local search marketing firm to manage. For medium sized business with limited locations, moving some local search responsibilities in-house becomes possible, but he still recommends considering an agency. For large businesses with many locations it’s probably desirable to have full time employee(s) to manage the program, using various degrees of external agency involvement.

Chris reminds us to optimize for local search with traditional keyword research. Always make sure the “free-listing” level of placement is handled before staking out paid expenditures. Login and update/enhance your businesses listing with all of the local players like YellowPages.com, take ownership of your content and enhance it with as much extra as you can prior to paying.

Finally, he says to “approach mobile carefully” and “try to spread your promo efforts to as many places that have human eyes as possible without overwhelming your budget or ability to execute.”

Paul Bruemmer, Director Search Marketing Red Door Interactive, gave a presentation that was so deep in fast moving (and amazing statistics) that we’ll reserve a more detailed summary for later writings. Here are a few of the points he made:

Mobile ad spending Worldwide is 3 billion now (Source ABI research April 2007).
Mobile is the coming Web3.0
Projections are $11.35 billion by 2011

Some pros of mobile search marketing include:
Twice as many cell phones as PC’s
Web searches on mobile devices will someday exceed PCs
Access to international consumers who cannot afford PCs
Location specific
High click-through rates
The telephone number is still the best unique identifier ever invented.
Build the BEST customer db, loyalty marketing and customer retention is great.
Generate buzz for products and services
Reach consumers while actively shopping socializing and making buying decisions.
Behavioral targeting
Personal device people take with them wherever they go
Marketers can develop relationships
Carriers have customer data and location

Possible Cons of Mobile Search Marketing:
WAP general intolerance of advertising
Inadequate bandwidth which discourages searching
Still walled garden
Scarcity of mobile websites

SMX Speakers Resources:
Interviews with Chris Sherman
TopRank Interview with Chris Sherman of Search Engine Land and SMX
SearchNewz Interview with Chris Sherman of Third Door Media
btobOnline, Spotlight on Search: Interview with Chris Sherman of Third Door

Blog posts:
Search Marketing Now webcasts combine the most authoritative and actionable education about search engine marketing issues with the convenience of attending online.
Search Engine Land
—————————————————
Chris Silver Smith, Lead Strategist, Netconcepts
W. Chris Silver Smith, Artist, Writer & Technologist
Natural Search Blog
Local SEO For Retail Store Locators
Comparing Mobile Ads In Google & Yahoo
—————————————————
Jenny Halasz, SEO Manager, Acronym Media
LinkedIn Profile
—————————————————
Paul Bruemmer, Director Search Marketing, Red Door Interactive
LinkedIn Profile
Red Door Interactive
SEO Providers – Selecting a Reputable SEO Provider (Historical)
Selecting a Reputable SEO Provider

Michael discussed “The Future of Local Search, Google’s Strategic Vision”, which is all about the “broad for context” and the “minute for relevance”. He shared incredible Google-mapped big-screen examples including statistics and stories from the Darfur genocide (literally house to house and village to village). Other animated screen shots included regional, subway information, election results, restaurants, flood damage, and many other applications where geo-perspective provides context for information.

Google believes that most of human knowledge is “afforded perspective and clarity by providing geographic context.” “There’s information that belongs on the page. There’s other information that belongs on a map. Some data belongs in either place. Most of the world’s information can go on either one.”

Understand the Parallels: Hotel Concierge Services
He does not think that Google is best in the world at local search. With a wry smile he credits his inspiration to professional concierges in hotels, who must possess the following attributes for effectiveness. He sees these qualities as good examples of what search engines have to master for intuitive mobile and local search:

Discretion (information privacy)
Courteous (ask clarifying questions)
Empathic to unique needs (where he thinks Google “strikes out completely”)
Multi-lingual (translation)
Quick spirited (transactional-make the reservation!)
Must know their regions ranging from hyper-local to regional.
Have colleagues to reach out to for other answer-sources (universal search).

“In a world where the present is everything, concierges must get a feel for clients and their needs without fail and in a very short lapse of time.”

Potential Interaction Modalities
He referred to methods of interaction most users engage in when seeking local results along with the corresponding Google services. Users might type a question and receive a webpage of local results (Google), ask a question and receive a sequence of spoken local results (800-GOOG-411), SMS a question and receive an SMS stream of local results (SMS: GOOGL), or users might browse a location and receive a visual display of local results (Google Maps).

Michael explained that every place with a physical location is “local” data, and Google’s geo-mission is to geographically organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful to people and businesses. He looks to indexed books, photos, news, videos, blogs, weather, local transit, and many other verticals as emerging frontiers. All of these types of information can be “better communicated” when placed in geographical perspective on a map.

A Sense of Place
Jones made it clear that:

“It’s not about the map itself. It’s about the map as context for the word’s information. Sometimes you can accomplish this with an application like Google Earth. Sometimes it’s better on a webpage. Most of the time the information is viable in both places. Blending them into a hybrid display is the future when everything will be like the iPhone.”

Michael Jones is nearly evangelistic when he explains, “The context for our planet is very important. It’s all about giving you a sense of place. “

Speaker Resource
Interviews:
Geospatial Democracy GCN interview with Michael Jones, Google Earth Chief Technologist

Google Earth Blog Interview With Michael Jones – Google Earth Chief Technology Officer

SlashGeo Google Earth CTO Michael Jones on Place Search

MeFedia: My interview with Michael Jones, head of Google Earth

Google Earth Blog SERP querying “Michael Jones”

Michael Jones LinkedIn Profile

Local & Mobile are Huge.
Local and Mobile search encompass an immense search marketing frontier. Pundits forecast that ad-spends will skyrocket to $8 billion by 2010. Home on the range, it’s still the Wild West with platforms springing up practically every week. Leading edge technologies are evolving at scorching speeds, and it’s vital not to be buried in the ongoing avalanche of advancements.

These Folks Know What They’re Doing.
Sequenced by Chris Sherman and Greg Sterling, this small conference features a veritable who’s-who of local/mobile search marketing rock stars. Today’s program is made up of 2 tracks: “Industry Issues” and “Search Marketing.” After breakfast the show kicks off with the keynote address from Michael Jones, Chief Technologist for Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google Local Search.

Hold on to your cowboy hats amigos (yes, the promotions for this event were western-themed). We’re going to kick up a little dust here. As a side note, we’ll be highlighting interviews with/blog posts from and about the speakers here at SMX. Look for the “Speakers Resources” at the bottom of each sessions coverage.

Shootout At the O.K. Corral
The major search engines and online directories all have guns drawn are they’re taking aim at heaps of glittering gold. Other niche-contenders are circling the wagons. They too are bent on staking out product and service segments. Factor in the ambitions of mobile carriers and you’ve got the makings of an epic hoedown.

SMX Local Mobile Denver 2007 will focus on enhancing “ad-spending ROI by identifying customers poised to buy when using location-aware technologies”, new techniques for “achieving optimal organic results”, utilizing location specific data to “ facilitate in-store purchases”, and “fostering an entire ecosystem aimed at simplifying online marketing and making it more accessible for local and vertically-focused businesses”.

Mastering local and mobile advertising is essential for agencies and in-house search-marketers alike to better serve clients and stay ahead of the competition. We’re looking forward to sharing information gained with our clients.

SMX Local & Mobile Denver 2007 will be chaired by search marketing experts Chris Sherman and Greg Sterling. These industry veterans are well worth the trip to Denver. Drop us a note if you’re planning on attending SMX Local & Mobile Denver 2007 so we can connect.

I’m certain our company will own future iPhone models and frankly I can’t wait. The iPhone raises the bar in a way that will fuel competition between convergence device manufacturers to the benefit of search and civilization. For now Apple has seen fit not to offer the iPhone in our home-market (like may others) which is a double edged sword discussed later in this post.

Still, Many are Waiting.
Most of our friends and associates are waiting for version 2.0. Their hesitation is born out as prescient in early reviews. The New York Times reports that “much of the hype and some of the criticisms are justified. The iPhone is revolutionary; it’s flawed. It’s substance; it’s style. It does things no phone has ever done before; it lacks features found even on the most basic phones. ”

PC Magazine writes “It’s the best portable media player ever. It’s possibly the most fun we’ve ever had with a handheld device. It browses the Web like a champ. Yet as a voice phone and a messaging device, it’s a loser. The iPhone is full of contradictions.”

AT&T is a Consensus Low Band Wireless Provider.
Why on earth did Apple pick AT&T? In survey after survey, AT&T/Cingular ranks at or near the bottom of the barrel for mobile service. New York Times writer David Pogue wrote “If Verizon’s slogan is, ‘Can you hear me now?’ AT&T’s should be, ‘I’m losing you.’” Early indications bear AT&T’s reputation out as true including nightmarish anecdotes about long activation times.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple first negotiated with Verizon to offer the iPhone exclusively but Verizon refused to cede Apple complete control. Apple then cut a deal with AT&T, a company which so desperately needs to bolster it’s flagging market share that they were amenable to giving Apple CEO Steve Jobs whatever control he wanted. At least from our perspective AT&T’s slow network makes the iPhone impracticable even in it’s revolutionary beauty.

Slow Data and Insecure Connections
Apple tooled this build of the iPhone to only function with AT&T/Cingular’s turtle-speed EDGE data network. It’s only slightly faster than your old 56K modem. Considering that smartphone Internet on Verizon and Sprint’s “fast” EVDO networks is still relatively slow and unreliable, AT&T’s network is downright untenable. It seems kind of ironic that the first mobile device truly savvy to multi-media accesses such a slow mobile network.

Who care about the iPhone’s fancy web capabilities if you have to wait forever for downloads? Though the integrated WiFi does make the iPhone an Internet rocket ship when in range, most of us buy convergence devices for when we’re not in range of WiFi. We need to be able to run our servers or download email attachments when we’re stuck in traffic. Security vulnerabilities are still unclear but IT administrators are concerned that the iPhone won’t be as safe for corporate networks as the BlackBerry.

Users Can’t Change the Battery.
Anyone who actually depends on a convergence device for email, web, calendar, messaging, pictures, video, or document editing knows that having extra batteries on hand is important-no matter how advanced the power management on the device is. I’m totally screwed when my smartphone runs out of juice. Though the battery life is impressive at 8 hours, the iPhone does not allow for users to swap out the battery. After an estimated 400 charges (3200 hours or 3 months for me) the battery is expected to begin failing at which time the only option is to send it back to Apple to replace it for a yet-to-be determined cost. Did I mention that AT&T is unwilling to sell it’s usual cell phone insurance for iPhones? How’s that for a corporate vote of confidence in the hardware.

Stupid Phones
All in all we’ve been living through a terrible generation of smart phones. Marketing spin outpaces actual increased value of new mobile handset tools. With smartphones these days it seems like we have to sacrifice important features to get next-gen tools and hype outpaces reality.

The Treo 650 was the best convergence device of the day but it’s famous flop-replacements (700W and 700P) were major disappointments because Bluetooth didn’t work. Windows Mobile OS is so “smart” these days that it’s nearly impossible to get anything done with wacky combinations of multiple buttons to accomplish simple things.

The Motorola Q is like Google analytics-less expensive, idiosyncratic, and deep in limited ways. I hate my Q but at least I can get basic things done like pull down large attachments, stream The Daily Searchcast, read the news, run my analytics server, or AIM with my kids. These tasks require bandwidth and stability, features the AT&T network lack.

<rant>Apple Hates Duluth (and other markets too).
What is this AT&T only crap? Even if it made any sense at all for our company to switch from Sprint and Verizon to AT&T right now, we couldn’t because there is no AT&T provider in Duluth. AT&T just purchased Cellular One who has a local presence and that will bring AT&T products to Duluth sometime in the future but forget it for the near-term. Hey we’re not that small a city for Minnesota. We have roughly 85,000 folks that live here, a vital web-commerce community, decent size universities, and lots of IT professionals.

Duluth apparently does not rate as important to Apple and wasn’t even on the business- model-radar for the iPhone launch. I know at least 7 Duluth businesses that are chapped at Apple’s snub. The good news (if you can call it that) is that we wouldn’t switch to AT&T wireless even if the iPhone was available here because the AT&T data network is notoriously inferior for any sort of professional use.

Fine, if Apple hates Duluth Minnesota than at least we can skip the silly lines around the block to order the latest greatest thing and call it what it is-premature hype for an imperfect solution. We’ll give our mobile dollars to Sprint and Verizon and use phones that work already on networks that are respected and robust. Though I look forward to replacing all of our Treos and Q’s with iPhones we can’t consider it until the iPhone is available on other networks. </rant>

Resources:
Walt Mossberg – The Wall Street Journal

David Pogue – The New York Times

Steven Levy – Newsweek

Edward Baig – USA Today

Apple iPhone (4GB) Reviews. Smart phones Reviews by CNET.

Apple iPhone Review by PC Magazine – Review by PC Magazine

The iPhone: Two reviews, one conclusion

Digg – Roundup: Apple iPhone Reviews

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/06/my-iphone-revie.html

http://wapreview.com/blog/

http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/06/early_iphone_re.html

http://bmannconsulting.com/blog/bmann/mossberg-iphone-review-no-sim-card-cdma-only