After a couple of boring talks by operators (the buzzword in that world: ‘market segementation’), Yahoo’s Mitch Lazar is up.

– “Mobility is absolutely core to Yahoo’s business”

– He flashes their “Vision” slide – says “to connect users with people and things regardless of connection and device” or something like that

Social platforms
– identity
– recommendations
– relationshops
– reputation
– …

– He’s remembering to be politically correct, talking not about Nokia phones but “Nokia multimedia computers” ;)

– Yahoo Answers has over 60 million registered users

– Search is a ‘very different paradigm on the mobile phone’. Most popular sites will have mobile-specific sites, rest will be transcoded

– Yahoo Vodafone deal makes Yahoo the exclusive advertiser

– The Web 1.0 vs. 2.0 slide: Operators still live in the 1.0 world of walled gardens. “Consumers have the key to escape, but they need to configure their GPRS settings and are faced with huge data charges.”

– Another problem: fragmentation of handsets. 5 different browsers on phones

– Yahoo’s offer to operators. Quotes Jazz musician Charles Mingus: “Making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creative.”

– Yahoo Go to ship this spring on S60. Now announcing also Yahoo Go on three new S40 devices.

Summary of the talk:
* Mobile is key to Yahoo
* Search needs to be different
* The client experience is vital. It’s simple
* Mobile advertising

Interesting comment by an operator representative during Q&A: “You are taking away our revenues by introducing free email and instant messaging. Maybe if you tried to work with us to monetize these services using the monetizing mechanisms we have in place, then we might be more willing to let you in.”

Lazar’s response: “We understand that you have an existing business and we want to figure out how we can protect it. Many mobile operators are realizing they don’t know how to do the internet community thing. They’re realizing they might have to partner.”

I took a morning flight into Amsterdam for Nokia World. The event’s big but not huge. I overheard someone mention there are about 3,000 registered attendees.

CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo opened. “Mobility and the interenet – these are the two key drivers in our industry.”

– Approximately 41% of the world’s population will own a mobile phone; almost a third will use it to access the Internet. Almost half made their first call from a mobile, in other words they never heard the dialtone.

– “We’re committed to bringing the Internet to the next billion people”. An increasing number of people access the internet for the first time on the phone.

– Nokia has had to change its estimate for when 3 BN mobile users will be reached from 2008 to 2007.

– He predicts 4BN will be reached in 2010. Half of the new growth will be from China & India.

– 850M people use nokia devices today. He claims they have the potential to connect more people to the Internet than any ther company.

– They estimate a total of 970 million mobile phones will be sold next year.

– Nokia’s WiMax handsets will come in 2008.

– He claims “Nokia is an experiences company.” They’re the world’s largest manufacturer of digital music players.

* Nokia Music Recommenders (powered by LoudEye). He makes it sound like it’s about top-down recommendations by David Bowie?
* Mobile TV to come to European countries in 6 months
* Catalog: buy software
* NFC: make payments
* Connect to Flickr (Flickr WidSets widget on the screen)

– Video insert where the CEO of a Hong Kong operator says mobile penetration there is 126%!

– Experience driven services. Services are about more than just technology.

– “Nokia is creating the world’s best platform for devices and solutions.” He also claims: “S60 developers can deliver applications without compromise.” That’s complete bollocks. Nokia recently started requiring developers to submit their applications for approval before the developers can legally distribute their own software. Imagine if Bill Gates had said no one is allowed to distribute Windows software before Microsoft has checked and approved the app. Would there ever have been the kind of Windows ecosystem we have now?

– He ends, “the internet on mobile devices will continue changing people’s lives all over the world. Nokia plans to be right there.”

The “mobility event of the year” aka Nokia World is taking place Wed-Thu. in Amsterdam. I’ll be heading there as will the key Nokia execs and a bunch of mobile developers so ping me on IM if you’re in town and would like to hook up.

Fredrik Weibull of Winkreative invited me to a herrmiddag, a sort of male bonding event in Stockholm this weekend. I never participated in a herrmiddag so it sounded exotic in an old-worldish way: about a hundred men, dressed in tuxedoes, meet at a luxury hotel from where they get whisked to some unknown location for the evening with no advance information about the particulars of the program.

The destination turned out to be a boat. We circulated in the Stockholm archipelago and the onboard menu consisted of snaps (shots) and skagen (toast). Each shot was preceded by a snapsvisa (drinking song). The Swedes were bellowing from their hearts; I was squinting to follow the lyrics from a sheet someone had thoughtfully administered.

Every once in a while the boat stopped on an island and the chic, increasingly raucous party climbed on the shore for short visits to seaside attractions (an aquarium, a historic telegraph station turned into a restaurant) and more booze, speeches, and singing. After the first couple of shots I had to start pouring water into my cup, stashing the shot glasses behind flower pots and tipping the contents inconspicuously into the water to avoid ending up in the hospital for a stomach hosing.

Although it’s not my regular scene I think I now understand better why these kind of collective drinking binges work. I got to talk with almost everyone during the evening: doctors, entrepreneurs, students, lawyers. Guys who’d otherwise never meet exchanged frank accounts of their professional and personal lives and worldviews.

On the plane back the experience got me thinking about how differently people still interact in the real world and online. It’s easier to be candid online when you have a fake identity – but the feeling of genuinity just isn’t there when nobody can trust the other person’s really who they claim to be in flesh and blood.

In contrast, the herrmiddag felt like the real thing. The Swedish gentlemen were genuine and the setting, attire, and alcohol worked to produce a state of mutual sincerity.

I agree with the panelists at SIME yesterday morning that there’s probably going to be more online socializing that happens with one’s real identity in the coming years. If so then people are probably going to create temporary spaces of reciprocal candidness online also. They’ll be getting drunk or whatever at home and logging on with their ‘real’ avatars to some ‘real’ virtual world (as opposed to make believe games) for schmoozing with each other as themselves but temporarily outside the regular social constraints connected with true identity. No doubt it’s already happening, just not yet evenly distributed.

On a related note, there’s a bit of a resurgence of interest in the personal trust element of online relationships going on in the research circles. Eric & Alex have more on that.

Marko closed the first day with seven points that I think astutely identified the collective brainwaves at this conference:
1. Bubble trouble: interpreting history through purely financial cycles will cause you to misinterpret what’s happening
2. Consumer power: they make the media, they listen to each other, corporations must adapt to communicate with those rules
3. Packaging experiences: those companies who overinvest in making things beautiful and simple to use will win
4. The end of anonymity: we’re no longer dogs on the internet. A growing importance of online communication based on real identities
5. Small group communication: from shouting to a mass, to engaging a group of 3-10 people to communicate with each other
6. Undeniable trend toward advertising business models: spinal tap for companies especially in mobile telecoms. Users represented by proxies
7. Let’s believe in Europe: in 5 years, over half of the top internet brands will be launched and run from Europe

Question from the audience (my translation): “What can save the mobile industry?”

Marko Ahtisaari: “I’d say drop data costs, make data pricing transparent, bring in advertising as a revenue source, and embrace the open internet.”

Some quotes (not precise, but by and large) from the Lords of the Blogosphere panel at SIME06 featuring blogger-entrepreneurs Loic Lemeur, Nico Lummma, Dan Gillmor and Henrik Torstensson. These snippets are shamelessly out of context and the guys said a lot more, but it’s what stuck in my mind:

On the core idea of blogging
“It’s not about mass audience. The majority of bloggers are not in it for the money, they’re in it to communicate. An obscure blog by some obscure person that is only read by their family members is more valuable per person than the most popular blog in the world” -Dan

On blogging in the local language
“I used to blog only in English but I rarely got any comments. These days blogging rocks in France. When I blog in French, hundreds of people attack me :)” -Loic

On how blogging fits in their personal life
“At first my wife was totally against my blogging but then she started a knitting blog” -Nico

“When I play WoW with my 8-year old son, I get killed all the time. It’s a weird experience when he has to come in to save his father.” -Loic

On blogging and marketing
“It’s a little harder for the marketers” -Dan

“You can’t fight agains 60 million people” -Loic

“The best example of a company using blogging to improve their brand was Microsoft and Robert Scoble – a real person instead of the corporation” -Henrik

Kävin puhumassa viime viikolla Opintoluotsin järjestämästä julkisen sektorin verkkopalveluja käsittelevässä seminaarissa. Kalvot “Web 2.0-mitä se on?” esityksestä löytyy täältä.

Laitoin alalaitaan omat muistiinpanoni, ne käynevät transkriptista vaikka ovatkin puutteeliset.

Heads up from the future trends panel, the first session of the morning at SIME 06. Four entertaining, edgy guys (no girls) moderated by the elegant Tom Crampton. Some quotes:

“MySpace is so out. Get the stupid people out of my life and get the interesting people in, that’s the only thing the girls [I studied] care about” – Alexander Bard

“The trend now is opposite to anonymity it’s people broadcasting to their friends where they are and what they’re doing with their real identity on services like Plazes and Jaiku” – Martin Varsavsky

“The mobile phone is a closer proxy to real life and we’re going to see virtual selves migrating to the real life through it” – Carlos Bhola

“Poverty makes for better thinking” – Martin V

“I mean real free Wi-Fi not Martin Varsavsky free Wi-Fi” -Thomas Madsen-Mygdal

“Mumbai is going to be the new Los Angeles where content is created.” – Alex B

“It’s getting harder to be a fascist these days” – Martin V

“The internet is making the world more democratic, but democracy is not necessarily nice” – Alex B

“Television, newspapers, and old media are dead dead dead, I’d advise you to get out of there as soon as possible” – Alex B (to Tom Crampton)

“Micro-entrepreneuship. All the exciting stuff that’s happening is about getting the micro to work” – Thomas M-M

“I’m a fucking sociologist, I’m just describing what’s happening” – Alex B

“I just wanted to point out that there are very basic necessities of life haven’t been addressed for over half of the planet” – Martin V

“Micro-entrepreneurship is absolute bullshit terminology because everything starts up small and if it’s successful it grows big” – Carlos B

We launched a new version of the Jaiku beta. Everyone on Jaiku now gets a presence stream where they can post updates about everyday things as they happen – what you’re doing, how you’re feeling, where you’re going.

Jaiku works from the Web browser and mobile phones. You can also configure it to add an update to your presence stream when you update your Web feeds.

Here are the main features. You can:

1. Start a presence stream at yourname.jaiku.com:

– Post presence updates
– Add icons to your messages
– Set your location
– Add your Web feeds

2. Add contacts, get their updates:

– Add your friends
– Get an overview of their latest updates
– Exchange comments

3. Use Jaiku from your phone:

– Text presence updates from any phone
– Download Jaiku Mobile to your Nokia S60 smartphone

Our group of friends is turning into a focused startup, and pieces are falling into place. Web developers Andy Smith and Juha Törönen joined our team. Andy previously worked at Flock and lives in Amsterdam. Juha is a Helsinki local who’s worked on projects with me before. I really like working with both of them. We also found an office space in a former factory close to the center of town.