Agora Media Group Innovation Blog

Microsoft presented their Augmented Reality mapping technology at TED.
Look at the video below, fantastic what it can do.

For me, three things strike out:
*The incorporation of Photosynth processes in their maps. Great way of including crowdsourced images in a natural way.
*The abilty to augment a location by use of the mobile phone camera and being able to see their real-time view superimposed on maps.
*The ability to look inside buildings due to the use of backpack cameras.

What is your first impression on the new opportunities?

We did it!

The prediction by CEO Richard Kastelein has received plenty of votes, enabling him/Agora Media to be present at the Deloitte Technology, Media and Telecom event the outlook for 2010 and further. This is the chance for him to be recognized as a ‘Tech Visionary’ representing Agora Media – and further – the entrepreneurial community of the Netherlands.

Richard’s prediction is in line – of course – with Agora Media’s outlook of the future in terms of Media Convergence and the rise of Social TV.

His entry:

Media Convergence and Social TV
If we all thought the Facebook and Twitter social media growth phenomena were extraordinary, wait until social TV hits your screens. And it is not as far away as you think – not only with the logical IPTV market, but also terrestrial TV. Social media fused with TV is …the future and the implication of reach that will touch billions not millions.

As Facebook revolutionized the way advertisers can niche-target their online demographics, social TV will profoundly change the ad agencies and marketing departments will offer their wares in the television realm. It’s called tCommerce and watch out – TV widgets and recommendation engines are not far away.

Neilsen ratings seem vague, less targetable and will likely become obsolete in TV 2.0. See http://agoramedia.co.uk/blog/?s=kastelein&x=0&y=0 for articles I have written on Convergent Media and Social TV.

Contest link

On March the second the prediction will be pitched in front of a crowd of 200 Deloitte thought-leaders, CEOs, presidents and other VIPs in the Dutch TMT sector. The winner will be selected by the crowd.

This will be great exposure and certainly the platform to show our outlook and opportunities in these sectors.

We will keep you up to date!

Great graphic by Randy Krum who created his personal infographic.

Of course, not everybody has all these devices, but it’s clear that we’re become increasingly mechanized beings and have many extensions that are belonging to the daily repertoire.
With the rise of the smartphone and other convergent devices, many activities can be completed at anytime and anywhere. This only will increase in the future due to more advanced processors/hardware and societal diffusion of technology in general.

What are your thoughts on the digitalization of society?
Do you adhere the Transhumanist view, that science and technology improve human lives and want to intertwine it as much as possible?
Or do you adhere the Modern World critics view which see an advancement in technology as an involution of the human being?
Or somewhere in between?

Mobile is in the spotlights, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, like the Verizon Wireless-Skype agreement, Google’s new Mobile mantra, the Windows phone etc.
Interesting announcements are made, ubiquity is becoming clear, the Mobile Web is being adopted fast, Mobile Search rises and many more -convergent- developments.

Where does Mobile stand in your strategy?
If it’s important for you, what are you doing right now to incorporate it in your strategy?
If not, what are the reasons for that decision?

Discuss as well via Google Wave
read more

More news from the  Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Yesterday I reported that Verizon Wireless and Skype are at the verge of changing the industry.

Today other news reached me, this time it’s Google, who’s new mantra “Mobile First” is being put as primary focus of the company. The latest acquisition in that space, AdMob, is a result of this new strategy.

Mr. Schmidt said that three areas are coming together on the mobile device, namely the Cloud, computing power and interconnectivity. All these three areas converge in the mobile device, making it a most powerful device where strategies need to be developed in order to thrive or at least, survive.

The signs are there, smartphone sales are growing at a 30% year-over-year rate, which will eventually surpass the personal computer sales.
Even more important, the adoption of the Mobile Web is growing annualy eight times faster than the Web adoption did a decade ago.
In countries like Indonesia and South Africa more searches are done via the mobile Web than via the desktop, it simply cannot be ignored.
For other key mobile trends, have a look at the 8 key Mobile Internet themes article.

These are all serious figures developments which cannot be ignored by companies if they want to keep up the high pace of emerging and converging opportunities.

What do you think of this ‘declaration’ by Google?

That is what Verizon Wireless and Skype have announced yesterday at the 2010 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona!
It was bound to happen at one point, but I never thought that Verizon would be the operator to initiate this.
Secondly, this is a huge milestone for Skype which is trying to get access to wireless networks for several years now.

What do you think the effect of this development will be on the mobile industry and on the current relationships?

Press release from Skype:
read more

The information on Youtube says the following on this new and experimental way of applicating Augmented Reality:

Adidas Originals is launching the first Augmented Reality experience in footwear. The adidas Originals AR Game Pack is a set of 5 shoes, each printed with an AR code on the tongue. When you hold the code in front of your webcam, you’ll gain access to a virtual version of the adidas Originals Neighborhood. Each month between February and April, we’ll launch a new interactive game within the Neighborhood and your shoe will be the game controller. The experience launches on February 10th at http://www.adidas.com/originals

Great way to get attention and be an innovative brand!
It certainly is a fun way to use your shoes ‘slightly’ different than normal. The campaign behind is excellent, giving the Augmented Reality enabling also real meaning by using it as the game control and not solely as something which calls a digital superimposing.

Augmented Reality can be applicated in many situations, creating new, fun and innovative ways to bind customers, offering them a new experience.
What other examples can you give where AR is applicated like this?

TechCrunch announces in its article Facebook’s Project Titan: A Full Featured Webmail Product that Facebook is developing a full fledged webmail product. Internally -of course- it’s seen as a Gmail killer. For some of the known features of Facebook’s webmail product, click the link above.

What I do find more interesting, is the question if this might be or not be, the Gmail killer?
Facebook has one advantage that Google does not have, the social network. Where Google wants to organize the world’s information, Facebook tries to be the global social hub.
70% of the time spent online is attributed to social networking, communication through email is simply an extension of it.
The question is if people would trade Gmail for Facebook email if that simplifies the activity and centralizes these activities on one platform?

What do you think, would people back away from Gmail to Facebook or are the perceived risks too high and has Google diffused so much that it’s not an option for many?

The book Groundswell was enlighting, how to create Social strategies and so on. It was an eye-opener for many to understand how Social Media can be applied and intertwined in marketing efforts.
One of their tools is the Social Technographics, which classifies how people use social technologies.

Forrester has announced an upgrade in the classification of their Social Technographics ladder, they added the Conversionalists to it.

It’s good to see the enhancement of the ladder, because it shows the evolution of the usage of social technologies.
Dynamics as less perceived risk, adoption, diffusion amongst their circle of people, social technologies upgrades and so on, make the Conversionalists a new and present group. This doesn’t mean that status updating didn’t happen before, but networks and interoperability of networks have made it so much easier for people to inform their connections on what they’re doing.

The Social Technographics ladder is an important tool in social strategy creation.
First of all it let you create a profile of your customer base, it will prevent the creator of deploying tactics on networks where your customer base is not present, or with the wrong activities.
At the right of the ladder you’ll see the activities per group, these have to be tuned in with the marketing campaigns you’re going to execute.
On a wider scope, you’re able to segment the audience appropriately which will increase the relevancy, quality and successes of strategies.

What does this mean for social media plans?
Microblogging or real-time updating has become an important way for people to interact with and inform their networks.  It also shows that people are becoming hyperconnective, a constant flow of short messages which are bounced back and forward between people and objects (read The Synaptic Web and the Flux of Information for the impact of the connections) to create an information infrastructure for private and business purposes.

Your target audience might have reached a critical mass to seriously investigate the opportunities of your Conversionalists, how to reach them and most importantly, how to empower them to create word-of-mouth enthausiasts. C2C (consumer to consumer) communication is a daily activity.
Your brand is what customers think the brand is, it’s in their hand, and the simplicity of status updates offers lots of opportunities to tap into this vast resource.

The challenge though, which as a community needs to be looked at, is how we can make sure that users won’t have a constant information overload?
An effect for this example is that your current customer base and potentials don’t read your content as you’re not the only one asking for the consumers’ attention.
Another effect is that the content which is communicated has to be relevant (be it in time and network), here the Social Technographics ladder proofs its importancy. It’s better to create small vertical campaigns which reach smaller amounts of quality people. It might cost more (in time), but you’re assured of a better long term effect and word-of-mouth.

Like the Social Technographics ladder is being updated in reaction to the differing usage of the Web, the next phase is how to cope with all the fragmented information, both from the customer and business point of view.
Technology-wise, opportunities lie ahead to find the much needed solution.

What’s your first reaction?

We hope that people in the industry will be interested in anonymously contributing their knowledge so we can all benefit from the aggregate results.   The intended respondents for these surveys are people who have built or have hired other people to build AR apps.  The intended readership of the results are people who are interested in hiring AR developers.  We hope this information will help more people feel comfortable hiring AR developers, that more information will be good for the AR economy and the people who want to be a part of it.   We’ll be sending the results out to everyone who participates, along with a discount code if you’d like to purchase the larger research report this will be a part of.   If you’ve got any questions you can email me at marshall@readwriteweb.com  Thanks for you time taking these surveys.

To access the surveys go to:

Webcam AR

Mobile AR