The New Asset Class of Mobile Applications
Mobile technology has certainly exploded in the past few years, and it was certainly obvious during SXSW. Check-ins, badges and media sharing were all done primarily with mobile devices. But is the industry fully taking advantage of the technology and data available to them?
Fritz Desir, Director of Experience Strategy & Architecture at Tribal DDB, moderated a panel titled “Pocket Intelligence” to discuss this exact topic. The panel included experts from the industry including Myriam Joire, Senior Mobile Editor at Engadget, Reno Marioni, a director from Nokia, and Nick Holroyd, lead user experience designer for JunkMyCar.
One of the most interesting topics discussed what the idea of making smartphones and their apps smarter. Yes, location apps like Foursquare can save you a few bucks at dinner with a check-in special, but what if you were automatically "checked in" to everywhere you went?
You’d be alerted about specials and other information at places you wouldn’t normally walk into. Business owners would be able to serve their current customers better and help them attract new ones.
A mobile app that’s already playing in this space is Highlight. Highlight launched earlier this year, and the application alerts you automatically when you near another Highlight user, no check-ins or updates necessary.
In order to do this and add utility to apps like Highlight, the group agreed that wireless carriers need to open up some of their technology to developers.
If all this talk about opening up information and data is making you a little uneasy, you’re not alone. One of the biggest challenges for mobile developers and marketers will be showing users the benefits of opening up their data and location.
Desir likens it to Facebook - the more information you share with the social networking service, the more tailored and better experience it will be for you. You have to input your birth date in order to receive those hundreds of birthday wishes!
“We need to help people understand about the world that’s coming and the data that we emit by carrying around mobile devices can help us as a group as opposed to just helping corporations,” Desir said.
A mobile app that’s already playing in this space is Highlight. Highlight launched earlier this year, and the application alerts you automatically when you near another Highlight user, no check-ins or updates necessary.
“Data and attention are now a new asset class,” he said. However, “we haven’t gotten to a point of realizing this.”
All of this data and the increased intelligence of smartphones obviously will help marketers target potential consumers, but they will need to provide a substantial amount of utility and worth in order for consumers to fully engage.
“I don’t think a marketer can do something that’s not seen as self-serving,” Desir said.
But there is a solution to ease this resistance! “As you start to address human motivation, once you start to enable some of those needs, the concern about ‘Why is all my data out there?’ really starts to diminish.”
Keywords: sxsw 2012
