Reality Check: Listen to what he says

Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reality Check column. We’ve gathered a group of visionaries and veterans in the mobile industry to give their insights into the marketplace.
This industry provides plenty of topics, and I was torn this week whether to focus on earnings announcements from Time Warner Cable (stellar), Comcast (very strong) and Sprint (d-EVO-ted to 4G) or to try a different angle. You can see all of the announced earnings analysis on The Sunday Brief, but I thought it was important to make you aware of a very interesting and profound interview.
On April 22, TechCrunch ran an interview with Ron Conway, one of the largest investors in Web 2.0 and an angel investor in Google, Twitter, Foursquare and several dozen other start-up companies. Ron had just raised a $20 million SV Angel fund focused on early stage investments, a rarity in any, but especially this, economy.
In the interview, Ron gives his view of three important trends – call it free consulting in advance of your strategic planning sessions. These are the themes that are driving millions of dollars in investments and hopefully hundreds of millions of dollars in ultimate valuation. The three trends Conway discusses are as follows:
1. Real-time data. In the case of Twitter, it’s what’s on your mind. With Foursquare, it’s where you are. Regardless of the application, it’s about receiving and acting on information now, not in isolation, but in groups.
In many ways, Twitter is the antithesis of traditional phone conversations – Twitter is broadcasted; phone conversations are two-way but not broadcast (unless you still have a party line). Twitter does not demand a response – most phone conversations do. Twitter encourages re-transmission of existing content; try doing that with phone conversations without the other party’s permission. Both forms are intended to stimulate conversation, although one is audible while the other is written.
Many in the telecommunications industry considered Twitter a “toy” or a “trend” in 2008 and even early 2009; now it challenges all forms of traditional communication. Who saw Twitter coming in 2008? Who is ready in 2010 for video Tweets?
Real time data requires lower latency in the network. It’s a trend that is ready made for this industry. It’s time for the “Tweet Guarantee.”
2. The Web is more social. We share a lot more about ourselves, and our lives, online than we did yesterday. We will likely share more about ourselves tomorrow. I am communicating with my sister in Japan, my cousin in China, and my Mom’s first cousin in El Paso about my lunatic brother who lives in Chicago. All in one Facebook post. I didn’t have that reach in 2007. I’m consoling a childhood friend whom I have not seen in 25 years as he suffers through cancer treatments. I could not have done all this in 2007.
Facebook took our time away from something – boredom, perhaps, and no Web 2.0 startup can add minutes to the day. They developed a portion of the Internet where others tried and failed. How did Facebook do this? They bet on customers sharing more about themselves – a lot more. And, if you are an active social network user, you see every day that this bet paid off – handsomely.
Carriers who believe that we are moments away from Facebook failure and that all of us are going to crawl back into our homes and “shut in” to a new era of privacy are the ones who are delusional. Instead, carrier strategies should be centered around “What does Facebook + XXX” look like to our profits in 3-5 years? What combination of social networks significantly alters our model? What does the 4G version of Facebook look like, and what makes that version even better? And, most importantly “How can customers protect their privacy, yet participate in the social Internet revolution?” (Hint: one such solution has the name Mobile Symmetry).
3. Social commerce/flash marketing. Ron doesn’t pose a good definition of flash marketing, but I will hazard a guess that it’s something like this: Time-bound and quantity-based promotions targeted to specific interest groups, usually organized by subject matter, geography, or age, and delivered through Internet and/or mobile devices. As one of my colleagues put it, flash marketing is “A blue light special to those who never appreciated its dazzling glow.”
I am an avid Groupon follower. It’s a boon for any business who wants to serve a very localized community. They offer deep discounts for services I really don’t need but at that price, it’s worth the chance.
Like the BLS, its unpredictable, a catalyst to customer perceptions of value and bargains. Will it replace Amazon? No, but a Groupon for iPhone or Android applications – let me to the front of the line! How about a Groupon for automobiles, or local (perishable) groceries, or oil changes? I’m ready to follow, and, in some cases, buy. So are many others, as the $1.35 billion valuation of Groupon implies.
How do these trends relate to telecom? Aren’t we in the business of network provisioning and management? Won’t these eventually appear on all networks, so any advantage is fleeting and everything evens out in the end?
Beware of that logic. Putting fun back into telecom through real-time data, improved social connectivity, and flash marketing might just work. Ron Conway is a deep, original thinker and he’s putting $20 million to work today. Listen to what he says. From these thoughts bud the strategic flowers of a rejuvenated industry.
Jim Patterson is CEO & co-founder of Mobile Symmetry, a start-up created for carriers to solve the problems of an increasingly mobile-only society. He was most recently President – Wholesale Services for Sprint and has a career that spans over eighteen years in telecom and technology. He welcomes your comments at [email protected].