Aggregating social networks?

Recently I seem to have been asked to join so many social network groups, you start to get a little confused to what is where, which contacts you have through which social groups and so on. What would be really nice is a way of aggregating information between social groups that relates to you. For instance, I am a founder of Mobile Monday London, so there are many aspects of that I want to keep up on, also I have been using LinkedIn for a few years, recently I have got into Upcoming, dragged into adding a profile on MySpace and the list goes on. So ... I have about 5 networks, potentially related that I have no direct way of aggregating. So, surely can we integrate these social sites together? I know the same people who are also on many of these sites and there is no link between them. If social networks are to be truly connected, then we need to remove the disconnect between these sites. Ideas anyone?

Its been one of those months

It has been one of those months, you think it is going to be a quiet run up to Christmas and then a million and one things all come along at the same time. Luckily this month I took a back seat in the organisation of Decembers Mobile Monday London. The theme this month was Mobile Social Networking and there was a good mix of presentations and demos. I still get annoyed by people invited along to show demos at our events and they ignore our pointers and basically talk about the company and their clients. I think some people have really misread what we are trying to do a MoMoLondon, I dont think people come along to our events for product pitches.

Anyway, it appears the social networking is the real buzz at the moment, something I missed out of my last blog entry. So back to MoMoLondon, the picture shows everyone networking once Stuart John (Mobile Product manager at Skype) had wrapped up a packed evening. It made a nice change in the more informal surroundings of Skype's new office on Totenham Court Road, even if the seating arangements were somewhat original :) We had presentations/demos from Nokia, 3 (H3G), Intercasting, PitchTV, SoonR and so on.

An interesting event in more detail by Broadstuff covers the irony of social networking and the BBC Backstage gathering of London social networkers if you see what I mean. Unfortunately I couldnt make it to that event but it sounds like everyone had fun. London is very vibrant at the moment with innovative people, companies and networking groups ... great to be part of it I say!

Areas of mobile being talked about

It seems to be a good time to sum up areas of the mobile arena that are creating some buzz at the moment:

• Mobile web - huge amounts of talk in this area, including events such as Mobile 2.0 organised by my friend and Mobile Monday London co-conspirator Dan. A lot of talk seems to be around mobile AJAX, mobile web best practices and various ways of mobile search.
• Mobile payments - such as purchasing items through means such as SMS or an e-wallet system. I wonder when the credit card companies will get in on this act? It appears regulations are being relaxed across europe and finally the networks may actually start to agree on some mechanism that works across the board, lets not have another SIMPay.
  
• Messaging sticks around as always due to high SMS usage. But Skype's recent joint venture with 3 is worth keeping an eye on to see where mobile IM heads and if/when it will have an affect on text messaging.
• Mobile advertising has been spoken about at MoMoLondon as well as quite a few other events recently. It appears everyone is searching for the best revenue stream when it comes to new services such as Mobile TV and beyond.
• Mobile video is back with Mobile TV being the hot subject of the day. It appears most broadcast companies have this as one of thier strategies. Now the debate seems to be around digital rights and copyright of material. This links in with the popularity of video streaming sites like youtube about who actually owns the rights to the content. I see lawyers rubbing their hands as a trend from all of this.
• Mobile networks still dont seem to have their acts in order, all arent exactly in rude health when it comes to profits or market position. Acquisitions and being acquired seem to capture headlines at the moment. I wonder how many UK operators there will be in 5 years time?
• Mobile gaming is more interesting these days, mainly because the handsets have improved so much in the last couple of years. Remember the Nokia nGage ... thank god the manufacturers have remembered that most people use these devices to make phone calls and text each other.
  

Well its worth keeping an eye on many of the industry bloggers (especially Carnival of the Mobilists) to see how some of these materialise. Anyway, over the coming months I will investigate some of these a little further so remember to pop back.

Mobile Monday London November - Phew!

Well Novembers Mobile Monday London went really well. A full house, great reception from Google and I like to think I did a better job presenting this time ... preparation seems to be the key! The great thing about the meeting was the speakers, we had Helen Keegan, Tom Hume, Paul Goode and Ajit Jaokar, each giving their views about major trends in mobile. Some opinions were personal, most from experience and in Paul's case the statistics are difficult to ignore. The Q&A could have gone on all night, but there were drinks and food waiting so I couldnt let it run on too long. As always it is a great experience getting up in front of 150 people and being podcast ... I just hope it doesnt look that bad when the final edit comes together!

Bowled a Googley

Well we opened registration for the November Mobile Monday London group and it filled up almost during a blink. It is interesting running an interest group where you get some active members that learn all about the tools and get stuck in and make the best of things. On the other hand you get people that dont pay attention (too busy no doubt) and we get loads of complaints from people that they receive too many messages from the group ... without checking how they set up their membership in the first place. Never mind, I guess this comes when the group of people expands rapidly.

Mobile Monday London November

Well, another mobile is on the way and this time it is our 1st birthday and we will be holding it on the 6th of November at Google's UK headquarters.

For some mad reason I took it upon myself to organise this particular event and will host the evening. Luckily my credibility has been given a boost by getting on board 4 great speakers from the blogsphere. We are also going to 'big ourselves up' and cover what we have been doing as a group and how it relates to the whole global setup of Mobile Mondays. Plus we are going to have a vote (a simple SMS one) which I have set up here at Telecom Express.

Well I have a few weeks now to get my presentation together and work out what on earth I am going to say in front of around 150 people with a Camera pointing at me. The last 2 times I tried this I think I scored quite highly on the um-ometer. I plan to do a better job this time :)

Mobile Monday London now has over 1200 members and we have been running some very popular events hosted by many of the most important companies in mobile and IT at the moment. We have had some great complements from people from other groups regarding how well setup we are and how we go about organising the events. This tends to help that the UK is buzzing right now in the mobile arena and that we get a good level of attendence which makes people want to host our events. I will be glad for a rest after Novembers event though :)

Wild mobile apps

Just spotted an article on TelecomAsia, Tom Hume has also spotted this one. Interesting thing is number 3 ... a ghost detector. Now at Telecom Express and before that at Broadsystem I set up the mobile services for shows such as Most Haunted Live and Ghost Towns Live and I must say I wonder how this actually works. On Most Haunted they walk around with various boxes of electronics checking for temperature and so on. So does this mean you have to plug something into your phone? Anyway its a great arcticle.

Its been a while

Its been ages since I posted to my blog I thought I ought to put in an update.

First and foremost a quick update on Mobile Monday London. The most recent event was based on Funding, how do you start up a company, where to get funding from and so on. Now the summer is here, we are going to take a break for August before plunging straight back in with the September event on Mobile Advertising. There are now quite a few MoMoLondon events now available on podcast which I reccomend if you want to see where the industry currently is regarding London.

Also I have been over to Finland recently to visit the cities of Helsinki, Turku and Porvoo ... a nice and relaxing holiday. Also took a trip by Hydrofoil (very bumpy ride) to Tallinn in Estonia for a long day out. We also took in a couple of buildings designed by the famous Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. (see picture of his famous lounge chair from Artek).

Anyway, thats all for now, I will try and keep this more up to date.

MoMoLondon and Podcasting

Well its all really busy regarding Mobile Monday London. The March meeting flashed by so quick, we have been talking with Glue regarding the web redesign and finally we have the podcasts online so people that cant attend can still catch up with the events. This was the first demo night, there were several people/companies demoing and it all went of rather smoothly. Dan was MC for the night and did a great job organising the speakers to come in. Volantis hosted the event at BAFTA ... which was nice.

MoMoLondon ... keeps growing

Its been a while since I last posted, January went so quickly. However, for the february meeting of Mobile Monday London I managed to talk myself into presenting the meeting ... seemed a good idea at the time. In the end, the meeting was our biggest yet, with nearly 200 people attending at Google's London offices. They put on a really nice spread and we also had the event podcast. Anyway, to the left is a piccy taken during the Q&A part after the speakers had finished. I must say it was slightly intimidating stood up there with the bright lights on me ... I think I will put my TV presenting career on hold for a while.

The speakers for february were Shannon Maher who heads up the UK engineering for Google, Margaret Gold from Luup, Jeremy Flynn the UK commercial director and Richard Watney and co from Reporo. The theme was around mobile payments and all the speakers had their own styles of presenting, some more confrontational than others. I will post again when there are more pictures and the podcast is made available on line ... hope it isnt too embarassing watching myself fluff my lines!