Will Nokia be Connecting People with Facebook?

A nice piece of rumour was brought out by the fine folks at MoCoNews: allegedly Nokia is in talks with Facebook to cooperate on mobile. And if this was not enough, there is also talk about the mighty Finns taking an investment in Facebook, and this would arguably be somewhat more significant (in cash terms at least) than the $10m stake the Samwer brothers of Jamba-fame acquired last week.

MoCoNews speculates that this could involve something as prominent as the YouTube button on the iPhone. This of course would appear to be a challenge given that most carriers will determine themselves what is and what is not on the handsets that are being sold through their retail outlets. But then Nokia has recently made strides on that front recently (as will be shown below).
A move with Facebook would fit in seamlessly with Nokia's evolving strategy towards providing entertainment services rather than only being a hardware vendor (albeit the world's largest by far with a whopping 38% market share globally): 2007 marked a year were Nokia acquired a number of companies and announced a number of initiatives and products that push the company way further down the service provision end than ever before: it acquired digital map specialist Navteq (Finland's largest acquisition ever), bought the mobile marketing and advertising folks from Enpocket, it struck a content deal with Telefonica and another one with Vodafone, all gearing towards its comprehensive content offering Ovi (see here).

Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia's multimedia guru, went on record in saying that the Internet will be the tool that will tear down the carriers' walled gardens. He continues to preach his ongoing theme (I heard about this the first time 2 years or so ago) that carriers are no entertainment companies and should therefore not fiddle with content. That might well be true, I guess. Now, if it comes to the Internet opening those walls, well, Facebook ranks #7 on the Alexa traffic charts. And, distinct to the (few) higher-ranked sites, Facebook's clean set-up and approach would seemingly make a conversion to (higher-end) mobile handsets easier than with, say, MySpace (#6).

Finally, Nokia tried to coin the phrase of "circular entertainment" (I blogged about it here where I mocked their "survey" approach) where they hold that, by 2012, 25% of all media would be created and consumed from within a circle of peers rather than from traditional media. If or if not the numbers were correct, the concept is very convincing (read e.g. Jaiku-founder Jyri Engstrom's rather insightful thoughts on object-centered sociality). Enter Facebook... 'Nuff said, I guess...

EA, the iPhone and Mobile 2.0 in general...

EA's Travis Boatman, VP Worldwide Studios, recently commented about the adverse effects Apple's iPhone would have on the sales of mobile games. He moaned that, whilst the device was good, "it's a replacement for someone who had a Razr before. They still want their content but there's no distribution platform in place so there's a negative impact on the industry."

Now, is that short-termism or the understandable fear of someone who oversees classic game development studios of being replaced by something else, namely online games. Because this is in fact what the iPhone is promising: a replication of the web on mobile. One could say, it's the entry of mobile 2.0. Online games on desktops became prevalent with the ascent of broadband and data flatrates. This is exactly the environment quite a few people predict for mobile, too. And whilst it was "World of Warcraft" et al that gave the EA's of this world the shivers on PCs, it is now the iPhone - but not because it's the iPhone but because it is the first device that, due to its intrinsically different approach (OS, touchscreen), focuses solely and only on the web as the fulfillment medium of content dreams.

Someone then also smartly noted that "[t]he problem of transferring games to new phones has actually plagued the mobile gaming industry since its inception. When users upgrade to a new phone, they most often can't bring a game that they bought for their old phone along with them." And the market data seems to confirm the challenges the industry faces: the percentage of mobile phone users who have ever bought a mobile game increased from 10 percent in 2005 to just 12 percent in 2007; that's not much...

Moving from downloadable games (or other content items) to ones that can be played (or consumed) online reduces the complexity to users enormously. Due to bandwidth challenges, there are some constraints as to what can be played with a certain level of satisfaction online and what can't: as a rule, everything turn-based, casual puzzles, etc would appear to be adaptable, heavier, more action-related games can't. However, is this any different on the desktop or, for that matter, the console? Has anyone ever heard of online versions of Call of Duty or EA FIFA? No, because they would not translate in such a constrained environment. Now, Tetris (published on Apple's iPod by, guess what, EA), Zuma, Luxor, Bejewelled, Poker, on the other hand, provide a rather splendid user experience even when played online and, lo and behold, they are predominantly found as online games on the desktop, too.

The same applies to other content sectors, too: prior to YouTube, the consumption of video via desktop was niche. One might watch a DVD on a long-ish train ride but who in their right mind would download shorter clips to watch them later (well, maybe with the exception of certain post-watershed offerings)? YouTube came and made it easy to consume AND operated in an environment dominated by an economical usage ecosphere, i.e. data flat rates and sufficient bandwidth, and off it went.

For EA (and any other mobile games publisher) this may mean that, in the mid term (i.e. once now pertinent issues such as data charges, bandwidth constraints, etc have been tackled), users will go online on their mobiles, too, to play such casual titles. However, fans of more intense genres will continue to download. The challenge is therefore not so much someone like Apple and any of their products but the current distribution and commercial environment (namely regarding billing) that would appear to slow down take-up. So, yet again, the finger points to the operators who, from their position understandably (why would they be reduced to a bit pipe if they don't have to?), are in the way of turning mobile into a media consumption channel like any other. The front is however getting diluted: more and more operators throw their data plans into the open and offer more generous plans to users (led by 3 who even offer dedicated Skype mobile phones with the respective data plan to come with it).

And what will EA do? Well, continue to publish games which only make sense when played on dedicated devices. Oh, and they will probably release the Sims as an online version... Not so bad then...

Mobile YouTube lukewarm

YouTube appears to have put its mobile site live: under http://m.youtube.com/ you now get a slimmed-down version of the YouTube service. However, that's about it. The site starts with a warning: "YouTube Mobile is a data intensive application. We highly recommend that you upgrade to an unlimited data plan with your mobile service provider to avoid additional charges." I see, OK, well, why didn't you adapt this more appropriately then? Isn't this somewhat scary???

What follows is clips varying in length (tonight, there were 2 with more than 4 minutes length in the top 10). A couple of categories (highest rated, newly added, etc - in short: the usual suspects) but absolutely nothing that would suggest a specifically mobile offering. I find this rather disappointing. Shouldn't we be able to expect more when "two kings have gotten together"?

So what is this? Don't they understand mobile? Didn't they have enough time to study this during their Verizon exclusive that now expired? Do they not have the resource to design their mobile service so as to provide more than a simple extension of their existing site into mobile (but without the functionalities the online version has)? The WAP offering lacks the very features and navigation, etc that arguably contributed so much to YouTube's success. They'll have to up the ante drastically to get going on the small screen, too. This doesn't cut it!