LOS ANGELES–The CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment show’s final keynote of the week featured “old guy socks,” “rollover minute” double-entendres and a visit by Paris Hilton, as three industry panelists debated how mobile social networking will change the world and declared that the window of opportunity for mobile virtual network operators is closed.
Hilton made a brief appearance to show off her new music video on a mobile device and coyly remarked, “I know a little bit about social networking.”
But the real know-how came from panelists Sky Dayton, chief executive officer of Helio L.L.C.; Trip Hawkins, chairman and CEO of Digital Chocolate; and Dan Schulman, CEO of Virgin Mobile USA L.L.C.
The panelists generally agreed that customers are eager–perhaps verging on desperate–to make contact with other people, and that mobile phones’ ubiquity and ability to provide connectivity can fulfill those desires.
Mobile social networking, according to Dayton, will be the “overall organizing structure providing for how content will be consumed in the mobile world.”
Helio allows its customers to buy content for other users or to request that other users buy them content–called “gifting” and “begging” by the MVNO.
Dayton said that about one-third of the games downloaded by Helio customers are gifted or begged, and that about 25 percent of the MVNO’s revenue is coming from data services.
“It’s an excuse to make contact,” Hawkins pointed out.
“It’s a great pick-up line,” Dayton rejoined.
Location-based services offer the potential for people to be able to connect with virtual friends in real life and satisfy social needs–which Schulman and Dayton said that youth are already doing in a way that substitutes virtual contact for physical.
“Kids interact more than they ever have before today and have more friends,” Schulman said. “To them, they have the same depth of relationship that we have.”
However, the flip side of being able to connect with friends, the panelists noted, is that predators or bullies may be able to connect with people as well.
“Our industry cannot take responsibility for what people do when they’re out in public,” Hawkins said.
The lively discussion included some banter among the panelists, with Dayton in one instance referring to his own tendency to dress down for events and pointing out Schulman’s “old man socks.” The jousting between Dayton and Schulman?who both lead MVNOs which target the youth demographic?led Hawkins, who was seated in the middle, at one point to remark, “Am I a net?”
But the two MVNO CEOs agreed on one point: their business is much harder than most people realized, and the rosy hype has come to an end.
“I think to take a brand and extend it into the mobile environment may look easy, and it is extremely hard to pull off,” Schulman said. “A lot of people that were thinking about it are rethinking that strategy.”
He predicted that between two and four MVNOs will be able to build viable businesses.
“The window is closed, by and large” for MVNO opportunities, Dayton said.
“It’s not just about taking a brand and throwing it on the phones and selling it. I think that idea was seductive, but the reality is far more serious. … The MVNO approach for most content companies and other brands, I don’t think is the right way.”
And, of course, none of the panelists opted to answer the most to-the-point question of the morning, posed by moderator Edward Baig, personal technology columnist for USA Today: “Which of you is going to sign up Paris Hilton first?”
