This submission to keitai-l is a comment on Jeff Funk's paper "The Mobile
Internet and the New Economics of Information", which I stumbled across
while exploring links in his recent posting about some books of his coming
out soon. I should stumble out more.
I confess to be inspired mainly by my sarcastic and curmudgeonly
nature--especially when it collides with anything purporting to address a
New Economics of *anything*.
But my main beef is petty, really: the title.
"New" is, after all, one of the top five favorite sales words, along with
"I", "you", "love" and "free". (Work all five into a domain name, if you
can. Someone might buy it, who knows?)
As for Economics, it seems to be one of those subjects that not even
economists can get right, especially when they could get rich by being
wrong; and the great unwashed who bought into the New IT Bubble Economy
seemed to have gotten economics completely inside-out, in times not so long
past. But it's still cool to talk knowingly about it, or to not talk about
it at all, but still pretend that you are.
As unwashed non-economists go, I'm grubby myself, I admit. I have one foot
in the gutter and the other halfway down a drain, when it comes to anything
involving equations of the kind I haven't solved since college. But some
things are so basic, you can do an economics lecture about them until
someone needs that parking space, and with a reasonable hope of scoring a
point or two with passersby. So if you happen to be passing by (and can
help me get my leg unstuck)--
Basically, I contend that the keitai phenomenon involves *no* new
information economics. It does not create a "new tradeoff" between Richness
of media and how far media can Reach. All it does plot another point in the
existing space of tradeoffs. Sure, it presents old media with some
competition for attention. But a new medium always does that, if it's worth
anything.
Consider a more traditional mobile media system: the magazine rack. Here in
Tokyo, walking down the street, you can literally hold your breath between
encounters with magazine racks (don't walk too fast in outlying areas,
though -- you might pass out.) Considered as a total information delivery
system, one that includes printing operations, distribution trucks, and the
host storefronts, magazine racks have a Reach that rivals keitai, while
offering a farily high degree of Richness of media. (Even with all that
grungy recycled newsprint in Young Champion, Young Animal, and...what's that
other one? Oh yeah: Young Vegetable.)
Magazine racks do not offer full-motion video, or wide screens, or
stereophonic sound (or any sound at all, for that matter.) But access
charges range from free (tachiyomi), to the full price of the
magazine--which might, for the subset of desired information, be more
expensive than downloading your selection from a mobile site. There's a lot
of choice.
What you buy when you finally buy that magazine is a bit *more* mobility and
a lot more potential (near-future) comfort, for consuming your neatly
packaged information-dose.
Also, the store clerk will stop glaring at you.
You can't do magazine-rack tachiyomi while walking down the street, of
course -- it's not *that* mobile. Just the other day, however, I needed to
get the name of a certain train station, and I could only remember the
subway line and the fact that it had a particular college campus within a 3
minute walk, AND that it wasn't more than 10 minutes out from Shinjuku
station; so I just walked into a small bookstore nearby and had the
information I needed in short order, from a map book that I didn't even have
to buy. It was either that bookstore, or the one just across the street. I
had choices. Sure, some mapping engines available by keitai offer choices
too, but can they handle a query that complex? Can I get the answer as
fast, start to finish? Can I use these services routinely without going
blind?
A high enough density of print venues is also mobility in media--you don't
need wireless electronics for a lot of this stuff. Yes, magazine
distribution and merchandising involve significant infrastructure, but so do
mobile phone networks; it's just tucked out of sight.
Tokyo magazine racks are a product of the Old Economy, running Old Economics
Release 1.2 (stable)., in a high-population-density urban area. But so is
the 503i series, when you get right down to it.
So this part of Funk's thesis, I think you'll find, is new, free, and easy
to love. But I don't buy it, and you shouldn't either. (Did you spot all
the top five blurb words? That was a test.)
Jeff does, however, make a very interesting observation: location-based
services are hard to do, and they don't offer huge value. And there is no
New Economics here--we can know this just by listening to the Old Economics,
which tells us that car navigation systems (in their 15th year, now?) would
be far more popular, and would host far more location-based services, if LBS
formed a class of killer apps.
Basically, Jeff says, people are a lot more interested in the choices
available in the places they are going TO--especially if they've never been
there before, or haven't been there much--than they are in the choices
available right where they already ARE. And computers can't read minds yet.
Where do you want to go today? Not even Microsoft knows for sure. Why?
'Cuz we're not tellin'.
If this pattern holds, the real market for location information about mobile
consumers might be in *destination*-based services, both for yourself and
for making recommendations to friends and others you trust to some degree.
If someone can pull it off, that is.
If, for example, I discover a decent Vietnamese all-you-can-eat lunch spot
near the Seibu-Shinjuku line terminus, it would be nice if I could just
point my keitai at the restaurant cash register on the way out, and hit a
"rank this spot for my friends" key.
And have all the right things happen. And none of the wrong things.
(Yeah, right.)
Smart keitai calendar and e-mail analyzers in the mobile phones of my
friends--yes, I do have friends, thanks so much for asking--could peek at
itineraries, and tell them, when they schedule a visit to an area (and/or
not long before they embark), that Michael Turner found this lunch spot that
might interest them.
And more: a "decline" button could take them to a questionnaire webform--the
completion of which might be buyer-point-incentivized--where people could
tick "Sorry, I don't like Vietnamese food", "OK, but I browsed their on-line
menu, and the prices look high", "I don't have time today, but remind me
next time, thanks," or "My *friend* Michael Turner? On a scale from 1 to
10, he's *zero*. Please filter these from now on."
OK, just kidding about that last one. I think.
The key to exploiting destinations is the bugbear of online *anything*,
pure-play or not: privacy and security. You need a good P2P offering that
keeps personal contact and location information behind a Chinese wall. You
need just enough bits getting to the real customers--the venues being
ranked--that they can use the feedback to improve their services. But not
one bit more. Destinations are, if anything, *more* personally sensitive
than current locations.
One bright spot: you don't need a lot of bits to do this. You need Reach we
already have, but even less Richness than is now standardly on offer.
I think it can be done. In fact, with my new, free, keitai-based service,
I'll be able to offer YOU all this and more, in a format you'll just LOVE.
It's NEW. It's FREE. And YOU can read all about it at
www.ILoveTheNewFreeYou.com
And did I mention that it's free?
Oh, I did. OK.
-michael ("*zero*") turner
leap@gol.com
P.S. The destination-based service ideas above are not terribly original;
and are probably inspired by (if not actually purloined from) Sam Joseph's
P2P article in Japan Inc. than by Jeffrey Funk's paper.
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Received on Thu Oct 25 14:46:53 2001