Focusing on the mobile experience

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on May 20, 2011 in Default | 0 comments

There’s a lot of talk around mobile marketing and it’s not expected to slow down. And as easy as it is to get lost in the buzz, we often need to take a step back and realign our goals and objectives with the executions. In my first post for the Econsultancy blog, I write about focusing on building an experience that may augment their real life experience rather than merely creating a substitute platform.

Click here to read the post on Econsultancy blog

The world’s favourite 800 pound gorilla is mobile enough

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on Nov 4, 2010 in Default, Geo Networking, Mobile, Social Networks | 0 comments

Facebook held a Mobile event yesterday where they had a bunch of announcements?:

• Application updates for Android and iPhone, both now have access to Places and Groups
• Single Sign On API which means you can log in to any application on your phone with 2 taps; no usernames, no passwords, no captchas.
• Open access to places API – so far most applications could only read into the API, now all applications can write and search.
• Deals platform – allowing business to have special deals/offers for users.
• Oh and they also announced that there are 200 million users who use Facebook on Mobile. So there’s at least 25% of the Facebook population using Facebook mobile (I’m going by high estimates for total 600million users).

These were the announcements made by Facebook but there are heavy implications and strong insights that can be derived from these. Here’s what I make of it.

Facebook makes Foursquare irrelevant

Facebook, the world’s largest social network and platform was seen as lagging behind Geo Location earlier this year. Everyone’s favourite geo location darling was Foursquare who had a great idea. But that was it; all Foursquare had was a great idea. Foursquare has been unable to adapt and improve considerably since its launch. The idea of mayorships and points got stale quickly and the only thing that could have people sticking around is the idea of rewards. Unfortunately with slow approval times for businesses (some like Wild Peeta had it in a week, I had to wait 3-4 weeks) the service wasn’t quick enough and this definitely could have a thorn in its growth path. Some local businesses in the UAE did get specials onto Foursquare but that took a while too. This is a luxury Foursquare cannot afford since that is its main selling point. Even the newly international app SCVNGR (which I am super excited about) has challenges, treks and rewards going for which are a lot of fun, but faces stiff competition. Facebook however has the entire social element  going to keep its huge user base busy while they roll our Places worldwide. In the mean time Facebook went ahead and launched Deals which added real utility to the location element. Facebook wins, even if it is in a few weeks/months of from today and Foursquare starts to become irrelevant.

Facebook wins by solving the Geo Networking fragmentation

By opening up access to the Read, Write and Search API to all applications, Facebook has essentially turned most Geo Networking applications into clients that use the Facebook Places service, assuming this is what they do and they would be stupid not to. You can now check in to Foursquare, tag your Facebook friends on it and your friend on Gowalla can see where you checked in. Of course Facebook wins and they do it by bringing the Geo Networking fragmentation at one locus point; Facebook Places.

Mobile! Social! Local!   Mobile! Social! Local!

These are three words Eric Tseng, Head of Mobile repeated a few times and for good reason too. Facebook has more than tripled its mobile userbase from around 65 million this time last year to about 200 million yesterday. If that won’t make you a believer in mobile than not much else will. Mobile by its very essence is local and the growing numbers point people want to be social, locally. Businesses that understand and adapt to this will succeed. Groupon is a business that gets it; they’re local by nature, social by strategy and now increasingly mobile thanks to Facebook.

My blog title of course talks about Facebook’s (and the entire industry’s) growing emphasis on Mobile but it also talks about how mobile (quick to move) Facebook has been at rolling out new products. The 2000 person company has been agile enough to adapt and evolve to just as well as it leads the industry and that has been a major factor for it’s success. This is why Twitter and Google are so far behind in location and why they should feel threatened.

A quote from The Social Network stuck by me which describes Facebook perfectly – “It’s never finished“. My last post talks about how I feel Facebook might have less conversation and more activity on the platform now, and maybe it might have had a negative connotation to it. But now I feel, and as the platform is growing, that might not be a bad thing. Social doesn’t necessarily mean just talking and conversing, it can mean doing things together and sharing the things we do ourselves. It’s about bringing our connections deeper into our lives and enhancing our social lives further.

Geonetworking – the new Mantra in Social Media Marketing in Travel and Tourism

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on May 30, 2010 in Default | 0 comments

I discuss the use of GeoNetworking by businesses and institutions in Travel and Tourism industry to promote tourism in the newest edition of Travel and Tourism news.

“Platforms like Facebook and Twitter have taken relationship marketing and permission marketing to a whole new level. But don’t blink yet, the next step in social networking and media is already here and it is telling you where to go and who to meet.”

Read the entire article here on the Travel and Tourism news website

What I love about my Nokia (Symbian S60v3) – Ex Windows Mobile user

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on May 29, 2008 in Default | 0 comments

It’s been about 5 weeks since I moved from the HTC Tytn to the Nokia E90. This was a huge change for me as it meant I was coming back to Symbian S60 after 4 Windows Mobile devices (SP5, Prophet, Wizard and Tytn) and the last Symbian OS device I used was the side-talkin-taco-lovin N-Gage. So far my experience has been a fairly good one. There are a lot of things I absolutely love about my E90 and a few I don’t. In this post I’ll focus on some of the former.

1. Snappiness

I’m not even sure if that’s a word but it sure is hell should be. The Symbian OS is generally much more responsive than an out of the box WM device. Even though you don’t notice the lag after a while in a WM device after a while because you’re used to it, you can tell the difference when you use a Nokia phone.

2. Profiles

This is one thing I have absolutely missed the most. The ability to preconfigure message, call and email tones, levels and vibrate settings into presets has been sorely lacking in WM. Sure there are third party applications for this ability (as for most additional functionality) that work just as well; but this should really be included in the basic phone features.

3. Browsing

The included browser with the Nokia devices is just a delight to use. The cursor allows for precision compensating for the lack of touchscreen. The biggest improvement however is the speed of rendering, it’s just blazing fast. And then since the layout is web-like and not mobile-formatted, looking at full websites on a handheld device is great. (This is in comparison of the browser of WM6, not WM6.1)

4. Connection Managing

Should I set it to, any of the applications will let me choose the connection I want it to use. This is especially useful, when you have a data plan but also access to WiFi at a lot of places. Not only will this let you save up on the data plan (if it’s not unlimited) but allow faster data transfer too since Wifi at most places generally seems to be faster.

5. PC Suite

Most people don’t realise it, but the Nokia PC Suite is actually a brilliant application; miles ahead of Windows Mobile Device Center or ActiveSync. Among other things it will let you configure synchronisation, pictures and file transfer, install applications. However what stands out most for me is the almost perfect backup and restore application and the desktop messaging. The former will backup files (phone memory and memory card), contacts, calendar, notes, messages, settings and bookmarks. This is a huge time saver when it comes to upgrading firmware. The desktop messaging will allow you to send text messages from your desktop when connected to your phone.

6. Firmware Upgrades

Nokia periodically releases Firmware upgrades for it’s phones (mine just received its last week). These mostly include performance tweaks and bug fixes, but can often include significant upgrades. Flash Lite 3 was included in the last E90 update which allows me to view flash content directly on the web page now. These upgrades aren’t generally found with Windows Mobile phones.

I still have a few complaints with the device and the operating system too. Some of them stem from my use of the WM operating system, others being general annoyances. I’ll be talking about them in a separate blog post.

HTC’s Best Yet! Touch Diamond

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on May 6, 2008 in Default | 0 comments

I would have been very disappointed had it been any other event where only one product was launched. But I’ve gotta hand it to HTC for making me excited yet again for their newest device, the HTC Touch Diamond. HTC has been in the market for many years now manufacturing devices for various companies including iMate and QTek; but only recently did they enter the retail market themselves and noone can argue they have done a brilliant job at it. All the devices they distribute themselves are manufactured to the highest quality, first examples that come to mind is the TyTn II and the Touch. The Touch Diamond is no different.

The specs are as follows:
Processor: Qualcomm® MSM7201A™ 528 MHz
OS: Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional
Memory ROM: 256 MB
RAM: 192 MB DDR SDRAM
Internal storage: 4 GB
Dimensions 102 mm (L) X 51 mm (W) X 11.5 mm (T)
Weight 110 g (with battery)
Display 2.8-inch TFT-LCD flat touch-sensitive screen with VGA resolution
Network SDPA/WCDMA:
* Europe/Asia: 900/2100 MHz
* Up to 384 kbps up-link and 7.2 Mbps down-link speeds
Tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE:
* Europe/Asia: 900/1800/1900 MHz
GPS GPS and A-GPS ready
Connectivity Bluetooth® 2.0 with EDR & 802.11 b/g
Camera Main camera: 3.2 megapixel color camera with auto focus
Second camera: VGA CMOS color camera
Battery Rechargeable Lithium-ion or Lithium-ion polymer battery
Capacity: 900 mAh

Quite honestly I couldn’t ask for better specifications in a phone. This one sounds like a beast and has near damn everything and at 11.5mm, it’s pretty damn slim. However the main winner is the User Interface here. See the video linked below and you will see what I mean. HTC has added a superior overlay of it’s own to bring up the user interface standards to the already high productivity standards offered by Microsoft. While some may argue that this shows MS was incapable of doing this on their own, the reality is that MS has always let the 3rd party developers work their magic on their software; MS just provides the foundation.

UI Demo:

More Diamond Videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/htc

Photo Gallery: http://www.htc.com/www/product.aspx?id=46280