A good Momo event at Skype last night. A mix of demos and presentations themed around Social Networks.
The most interesting was the final demo from Soonr - a service focused around getting the world of PCs and mobiles working together. It is interesting from a technical point of view: a client for the PC that can access the file system, local data and selected apps, a 'cloud' where persistent information is stored and an Opera-based AJAX interface for mobile. I want to look at how many apps it can talk to (Skype was one exiting example). I'm also not so sure about the merits of AJAX:
- The claim is that it gets around device fragmentation, but that's only true if the interface remains pretty basic
- Opera is not everywhere and it will take some time before AJAX is available on the majority of handsets
Stephen Johnston from Nokia gave a more strategic view of Social Networks.
The key of his presentation was the statement that Nokia is going to be an Internet Company. I had heard it before in private, but the public setting makes you think it through a bit more. It will be interesting to track their moves, especially because they have a very mobile-friendly view of the internet: Stephen described web as "Read", web 2.0 as "Read+write+talk" and the future as "+move".
The 1st presentation was about 3's See Me TV.
Some figures:
- they had 500k downloads on the first month of operation
- they now have 16m assets published
It's all moderated, so I'd like to know how big their team is. They are now busy expanding the proposition - having started by adding ringtones and wallpapers to the marketplace.
We had a few interesting inshights from Intercasting - experts behind some of the existing social networks:
- Mobile would be ideal for social networks, but pricing and structure have been a barrier
- Social services are segmenting - focusing on smaller niches
- 8 times more people use SMS then IM - showing the potential of mobile
- He sees existing social networking brands going to mobile on deck, with new agile startups going off-deck.
Other less impressive demos, still worth a look were from Pitch and from Nice-1 Mobile. Worth a look - the former for its scale and the latter for some of the ideas.