Molecularist

Emily points out a San Francisco Chronicle article on the growth of mobile in Silicon Valley.

Link: textually.org: Silicon Valley goes mobile.

… The growth of the mobile data industry is revving up Silicon Valley. Analysts and industry observers said 70 to 100 startups have surfaced in the Bay Area in the past few years, far outpacing any other region in the United States."

Go west, young man. Indeed, that’s what it is looking like.

Link: mobile jones.

This week’s CoM features some outstanding observations, analysis and commentary across a range of important topics on mobility.  I’m excited by the number of contributions and quality of articles in this week’s CoM.  In addition, this edition of The CoM contains more articles from women than any previous week.  I’m sure you’ll enjoy the reading.

Link: Musings of a mobile marketer: What is mobile marketing?.

Whenever I meet someone new and I tell them what I do for a living, they usually assume one or both of the following:

   1. That mobile marketing is sending junk text messages to get people to subscribe, unwittingly, to a mobile content subscription service. Ergo, mobile marketing is bad.
   2. Mobile marketing = marketing using SMS (text messaging)

Neither assumption is true so this is my lowdown on what mobile marketing includes. This is a long post so bear with me.

Link: Tom Hume: Selling New Mobile Phone Features.

We all like to play; whether we’re trainspotters, online gamers, old or young, we all take pleasure from playfulness. It can be solo activity, a social exercise, investigative, educational or just plain fun. In a mobile context, play is usually associated with simple downloadable arcade games – but this needn’t be the whole story.

Niel sums up his feelings of the conference. Two points that are worth highlighting:

1) ‘So the event’s popular, but I’d also argue it faces a real challenge if
it’s not just to end up an enjoyable, but largely fruitless, meetup for
blog fans’ – The first Les Blogs was like a Loïc meetup-schmoozfest. Great fun, a good first turn of the flywheel. Now with the second conference – bigger, badder, better – we have reached a good conversation rumble. But, it was still talk. The next one needs to come up with concrete stuff (actually, my suggestion last time was that we wait 18 months for a more concrete event) – case studies, examples, anecdotes, outcomes, deals. Might be asking for much, but I think we are now there.

2) ‘Speakers can’t attempt to lump Europe together as one entity (although
a few may try). You can’t credibly say the media in Italy is much like
that in the UK, or Sweden’s much like Spain’s, I’d argue.’ – Which ties into my mini-rant in the last panel, abusing my position as panelist, highlighting the dominance in this space of not just the US, but of Silicon Valley. I think Europe might end up being insignificant in the end, for reasons that have nothing to do with enthusiasm, innovation, and creativity.

Link: A challenge for Les Bloggers from Guardian Unlimited: News blog.

Good afternoon from Paris, where I’m at the Les Blogs conference. It’s the second of these gatherings of European bloggers, organised by French entrepreneur Loic Le Meur (who also runs the European arm of Six Apart, who make blogging software).