David Erasmus

I sent my first text from my Dads Startac when I was in year 7 at school to the girl I fancied on her Dads phone.

It took me about 10 minutes to get about 12 words out, it was really fun though and more importantly I looked very cool.

The Penetration of SMS is bonkers with almost every single person in the UK using it on a regular basis and have been for many years.

Everyday I talk to people about mobile payments and mobile marketing and the only words I hear are ‘NFC, Carriers, Google and Apps’

The same old Rich Vs Reach argument comes up – very boring.

It seems to me that the one under utilized medium of communication and payment is the intimate SMS channel that we are all so comfortable, familiar with and in many cases have a strong affection for.

Once businesses figure out how to use SMS marketing effectively with STRICTLY opt in only messages that dove tail nicely into seemless mobile web experiences integrated with video content and 1 click payments we will see the demand for SMS go up dramatically from consumers.

It is a user experience that gives both REACH and RICH experiences engaging both Smart and Non-Smart phone users.

I HATE it when dominoes sent me flipping 2 for 1 Texts on Fridays, it is invasive and an abuse of data I gave them for a completely different reason. They have in my opinion missed the boat on SMS and I dislike them more every time they do it.

On the other hand though Imagine U2 are playing a secret gig at Ronny Scotts in London and there will be 100 tickets on sale, you will WANT to hand over your mobile number to be interrupted just once in whatever you are doing to take action and purchase. There is no better platform than SMS to do this.

At the moment I don’t trust people with my mobile number but there is trust based gap to be filled and the winner will probably be rich.

SMS is a dark under utilised horse. My guess, it won’t stay that way for long.

I love this presentation.

What Ben is saying here is going to mess with my head all night.

I think we all agree that the change is to Mobile and Cloud.

The question for me is what is the RESULT of the change of the Mobile and Cloud world.

horowitz

First off Props to the Magento Man, Alan Cole for talking me through this stuff and having a bit of fun dreaming with me about what might be in a few years time.

Whilst my Kindle seems partially ridiculous like I have traded my iPhone in for a Nokia 3210 it also has the beginnings of extraordinary technology in it, E Ink.
E Ink is a bit like an Etch-a-Sketch, once you make the image it takes no energy to leave it on the screen, exponentially increasing the life span of device battery life making greenys happy.

Follow me on this journey, the end is fun………………

So next will come crap colour and crap motion Eink

Then brilliant full colour, full video Eink

Then it should  get thinner and more flexible.

Then the value of it will fall to almost nothing so we can use it everywhere.

If you then mix that with cloud computing where our “digital selves” is all in one place with a Near Field chip or a Finger print swipe access we can do some crazy stuff making our digital experiences truly ubiquitous.

I am not sure the following will happen but will be fun if it can.

Imagine putting some clear E paper film over your mirror and skyping someone whilst brushing your teeth.

Or lining all your walls with it and whenever you feel like it changing the style and colour of your wallpaper and then watching a film on the whole wall.

How about every restaurant table top being your menu, Facebook, live kitchen video feed and doodle kit all in one.

Let’s see what happens.

My team are already bored of hearing it.

“The future is Social and Mobile”

We want to do….

Whatever we want

With whoever we want

Whenever we want

———————–

Is it good?

Probably not

Is there any way to stop it?

Probably not

Will you win commercially if you fight it?

Probably not

In any market segment, any country any socio-economic grouping sooner or later I think you will be hearing these words.

Mobile & Social

Since the web began there has been a huge divide between our digital selves and our ‘real selves’.

I remember being a 17 year old talking to girl friends too much on MSN sharing all sorts of deep and meaningful stuff and then feeling weird seeing them and not even wanting to hug them as the two lives were so seperate.

Skype Video Chat has been a big contributor in narrowing the gap, I now speak to and train my South African staff form London over Skype and feel like I genuinely know them when I finally meet them face to face.

With the mobile device market raging and Apple leading the charge I think we are going to see that Gap completely Disappear. 4G will make our mobile web interactions as good if not better than our desk based ADSL connections.

I hope by the time 2011 is through I will be scanning my Tesco shopping on my iPhone through barcode recognition and paying for it PayPal on my mobile.

I hope I can walk round IKEA and scan all the items I want on my iPhone and get them delivered to my preloaded delivery address.

I think we will see shops becoming more about show rooms for touch and feel rather than commerce based as that can all be done more easily on our mobile.

I hope I can print from my iPad by purely making a gesture towards the physical location of the printer rather than clicking buttons or icons.

Gestures are far more intuitive, just look at kids trying to touch the screen of your dell PC the whole time. Finally they will be allowed. I maintain that the iPad will be amazing for kids especially with learning difficulties and Grannies who can’t work out dells.

I think its going to be fun to ride this wave.