Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Facebook Drives Mobile Video Growth

Robots and virtual reality advances aside, my SXSW experience was heavy on results and opportunities around mobile video.

On the live streaming side, we now know that last year’s SXSW darling Meerkat was forced to change its business model with the appearance of Facebook Live and the adoption of Periscope.

It was Facebook’s moves and associated metrics that especially caught my attention over the last few days:

As shared by a company executive, 100 million hours of video are viewed every day on Facebook. Mobile is a large driver.

Ninety percent of the views on Facebook for the Straight Outta Compton trailer were on mobile.

The trailer for Furious 7 had 100 million views on Facebook, with an undisclosed but high number on mobile devices.

Approximately 2.2 million people watched the Facebook Live stream of Peyton Manning’s retirement announcement. This came despite the fact that the event was shown on a variety of television and online outlets.

Facebook has long viewed mobile as its biggest growth opportunity. Clearly video is key to the company’s aspirations.

Elsewhere:

Of the gazillion people at SXSW, no one brought a better in-flight Wi-Fi solution. Damn.

In a panel on beacons, Clorox's Sarah Ortman said that a brand’s mobile outreach in store should solve a problem or delight a consumer.  Or both.

Despite the hype, I didn’t see many robots at SXSW unless you count those who stayed out until 4 a.m. and were forced to attend early morning panels.

The majority of McDonald’s U.S. business is via the drive thru, making mobile solutions more important. The company had a large presence in Austin.

In the UK this year, mobile ad spending will surpass TV spending as well as desktop spending, according to eMarketer

Half of all debit card holders don't believe it's safe to use their card for online purchases, Kantar reported. I wonder what these people would say about using a smartphone to make a purchase. Likely, no, thanks.

In 2015, Apple sold 441 iPhones per minute.

Some Will Be “First” At SXSW, But How Much Does That Matter?

Be it the Internet of Things, the smart home, virtual reality or something else, change is coming.

The next big stage is this week’s SXSW Interactive, where check-in pioneer Foursquare (which has since morphed) and Oculus Rift, a virtual reality gaming headset, were introduced.

It’s also where Meerkat won the day in 2015 only to be forced to change its business model less than a year later when it was overtaken by Twitter/Periscope and Facebook Live.

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs said that innovation separates leaders from followers. Serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis says, “You have to have a big vision and take very small steps to get there.”

The pace is in dispute, but the need to advance technologies and find new ways to engage with the near always-on user is universal.

But how? And what shape does that take?

“If you (as a marketer) have a real specific need for doing it and you think it's going to solve a problem, being an early adopter (of technology) is great,” longtime marketer Jonathan Stephen told me in an interview for my The Art of Mobile Persuasion book (www.artofmobilepersuasion.com). “You are quick to fail and quick to being successful. There are others out there who think this can be an enhancement to an experience and maybe those are the ones who don't necessarily jump on the early bandwagon but they continue to see as the technology improves itself, that they will adapt over time and a lot of the kinks will have been worked out. Best practice would have been created and they would have followed those guidelines.

“It really depends on the position that you're in. If you've got the capital to do that kind of investment, by all means I always think that being an early adopter is fantastic but you have to be prepared to fail. You're not going to get it right the first time (all the time). No one ever has.”

Sometimes being second, third or later has its advantages.

WhatsApp, built by former Yahoo employees as a text-messaging alternative, is a cross-platform mobile messaging app that allows users to exchange messages without having to pay for SMS. In 2014, Facebook purchased the company and access to more than 600 million active users for $19 billion.

“I always use the phrase, ‘I may not be early to the party but I always like to make an entrance,’” Stephen said. “Sometimes there are technologies out there and I wasn't the first to get to it but I definitely want to make sure that I get noticed when I launched that technology. It takes a lot of thought. It takes a lot of strategy in terms of what is behind it. It takes a lot of humility to take a step back and realize where you will be successful and where you want there to go.

“There will be a lot of successes and a lot of failures. You learn that over time. But more than anything it goes all the way back to that business strategy.”

Others who I talked to for the book view things in similar ways.

Curtis Kopf has seen – and been part of innovation – in large enterprises including Microsoft, Amazon and Alaska Airlines.

At Amazon, he was part of a hand-picked 14-person team in the U.S., Europe and Asia that scaled and extended “Search Inside the Book,” a discovery tool that searches and displays the full contents of hundreds of thousands of books from domestic and international publishers.

“Every company wrestles with this,” Kopf told me when speaking of innovation.  “We all come from different places whether you are an airline, a bank, or Amazon.com.  I've experienced the spectrum of companies based on their business model and who they are have different comfort levels and appetites.

“Amazon.com is going to be a company that makes really big bets -- things that may not materialize for five years or seven years, even ten years. Other companies won't view the world that way.”

Everyone, Kopf said, has a place.

“There's definitely a continuum of innovation and then there are obviously companies out there that are category creators,” he said. “Clearly a lot of the companies that we think of innovators weren't first. Obviously Google wasn't the first search engine (in fact, 20 were launched earlier, according to Wikipedia). They just did it in a new and better way. Apple definitely wasn't the first to do a smartphone. They just did it in a new and better way.

“Innovation is talked about so much that it is almost become meaningless. Every company on the planet says that they are innovative. It's part of their mission statement. Obviously as consumers we all interact with these brands and the truth is that they are not all innovative.”

 “Being first is great. There are times that being first could be really important. If you can get it an advantage that you can sustain, there's some buzz and credit that you get from customers by introducing something first. But I don't think innovation in and of itself means being first. It could be taking something that someone else started and doing it in a new way.”

What should we expect to see in Austin this week and what should be our SXSW takeaways?

 “South By (Southwest) has an interesting mix of what are perceived to be cutting edge talks or technologies that are really pretty basic,” Sean Bartlett, a former senior Lowe’s executive who is now Worldwide Industry Lead for Retail at Apple, told me.

“There is also the technology itself which is interesting. And then, what I think is most important, with respect to what I've taken away from South By in the few times that I've been there, is more cultural and how you think about things.

“One of the things that I took from a panel a couple of years ago that has actually become a guiding principle of the team is this notion of commitment to craftsmanship. I saw a panel of well-known startup CEOs talking about their products. One of the things that really hit home was how they talked about craftsmanship and quality of the product and the overall experience. It’s a true cultural takeaway that you can bring back and put in effect immediately. You come back from the show and on a Monday you can really start to drive that message home. That's one that always sticks out when I think about that particular show.”

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - MLB is Big League With Mobile App

It isn’t called the major leagues for nothing. Major League Baseball had 8.4 billion minutes streamed to its mobile app in 2015, per comScore. A total of 53% of the total minutes consumed were in the At Bat app with users watching or listening to games. The activity was more than than in all other U.S. official sports leagues apps combined.

Nearly one in four shoppers say that they have changed their minds while in a checkout line after looking up details on a smartphone: Google.

Meerkat is dropping the livestream. It’s a cautionary tale for those looking at "solutions"at SXSW that may be shiny and not stand test of time,

Headline: Retail Executives Say Mobile Investments to Increase This Year. Me: you don't say.

Two weeks after calling for an Apple boycott call, Donald Trump was using an iPhone to send half of his tweets: Marketing Land.

A man with a gun while taking selfies fatally shot himself in Concrete, Washington, police say. Interestingly, the Russian government has issued a guide to discourage people from taking dangerous selfies.

Consumers’ use of health apps and wearables has doubled in the past two years, according to Accenture.

After all this time, Apple has now opened a Twitter account to answer tech questions and to deal with problems.

I read a story that predicted: "When you tuck your iPhone 9 into your back pocket, it may well flex to conform to the contours of your butt" I can only say yay.

One in 10 U.S. Internet users (31.1 million people) will be mobile-only this year, eMarketer reported.

Mobile payments make up only 3% Of U.S. transactions, per GfK. Weren’t we told that cash would be gone by some Tuesday in 2015?

Unlike SXSW, the Mobile Marketing Forum Was About Business Results

I proposed a game at the start of this week’s Mobile Marketing Association’s Forum in New York where we would take a drink each time that we heard the word Meerkat.

My tweet stream the previous several days had been nothing short of overrun by Meerkats, which are live video streams sent from phones to all of one’s Twitter followers at once.

I figured that by noon on St. Patrick’s Day, Day 1 of the MMA event, we would all be as inebriated as some of those partying on Fifth Avenue.

I was wrong. There was nary a mention. And I believe that I now know why.

The introduction of something like Meerkat is made for the SXSW crowd, which includes those who crave shiny objects, first looks at innovation, and business models that could lead to great change.

That is actually in sharp contrast to what many came to hear at the MMA show – evidence of business results and proof that some of the products and services launched way before SXSW were moving boxes of tissues and bottles of ketchup while engaging mobile users in meaningful ways.

The most significant conversation in New York was around the latest SMoX (Smart Mobile Cross Marketing Effectiveness) research that was conducted by the MMA and some of its largest and most influential members. Aiming to scientifically assess the interaction of mobile channels and platforms in relation to the broader marketing mix (TV, radio, magazines, Internet, etc.), the exercise was intended to help marketers understand the impact of consumers’ shifting media habits, as well as how to optimize their marketing mix by rebalancing investments.

Here’s what we discovered:

In Coca Cola's Gold Peak Tea campaign, mobile drove 25% of top of mind awareness and 6% of sales despite only 5% of budget.

Mobile in Walmart's Back to School initiative produced a 14% change in shopping intent despite only 7% of the marketing spend.

In a travel card campaign, MasterCard saw mobile display and mobile video work twice as hard in terms of the number of people it converted on image per dollar spent.

The overall takeaway from the new U.S.-focused SMoX research was that the optimal spend for mobile is in the double digits - far more than is being allocated.

Adam Broitman, VP of Global Digital Marketing, MasterCard, called SMoX “a real breakthrough in the mobile marketing industry and the first thorough and comprehensive industry study that proves the true value of mobile.”

Said Tom Daly, Coca-Cola’s mobile lead, “It gives all the teams, particularly in the United States, something to think about.”

Here’s some of what else caught my eyes and ears in New York:

The hype would lead some to believe that paper and coin currency will be gone by the weekend given the advancements in Apple Pay and other mobile wallet products. But, according to MasterCard’s Michael Donnelly, 85% of the world's transactions are still made in cash.

We knew that long-form content has an uphill battle on mobile. And that was before we heard this -- the focused attention span for a consumer is eight seconds, down from 12 in 2000, according to Gfk. For perspective, GfK told us, a goldfish has a nine-second attention span.

Brandon Rhoten, vice president of digital and social media with Wendy’s, gave marketers like me who are a bit long in the tooth a pass on knowing everything about everything.

“There is no reason we should know how to use Tumblr,” he said. “It’s not where we grew up. So the biggest piece of advice I give is, ‘Be humble and back up and say ‘I don’t know what I’m doing.’ Go to your partners and talk to them. How can you fit the context of that platform at the same time you stand out?”

Rhoten’s take on Meerkat? Even if a “solution” is perceived by some as cool, if it hasn’t scaled or shown that it can move cheeseburgers, it doesn’t make it into a marketing plan dead set on generating business success.

(article first appeared on Mobile Marketer - http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/opinion/columns/20025.html)

Predicting Oil Prices and Aliens Arriving On Earth

There’s no better illustration of what Ford Motor Company futurist Sheryl Connelly calls the “balance between provocative and plausible” than the fact that her team talked about $100 barrels of crude oil nearly a decade ago, but also had a discussion about what would happen if aliens landed on Earth.

Of course, to our knowledge, only one of those scenarios came true. Whatever. Such is your life when your role is to create a Center of Excellence for global consumer trend insights and a forward-looking mindset that can support and inform design, product development, strategy, business and marketing functions throughout Ford.

Speaking to a packed audience (granted seemingly every venue was overflowing), Connelly offered Lessons From A Futurist during South by Southwest Interactive.

Many of her assertions were on the surprising side. Among them:

She once thought that the future is a mystery and best unexplored.

Connelly cautioned against the use of SWOT analysis that attempts to look at a company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. She said that such endeavors limit thinking and fail to take change into account.

“It’s foolish for an organization to think it owns its strengths,” she said. “Those are defined by the marketplace.”

Connelly describes her job as a mission to look outside the automotive industry to understand what's happening in social, technological, economic, environmental and political arenas so that we can understand shifts that are coming that may influence consumers' values, attitudes and behaviors. She looks for those insights and collaborates with people in Ford Design and Product Development who try to turn them into business propositions.

She said that SXSW was the perfect venue to talk about “information addiction” which she said is a medical condition. Further, she cautioned attendees from information overload, adding that it takes away self-reflection time that spurs innovation.

“Explore what you can't control,” Connelly said. “Use scenario planning - what if's.

You don't have to be a victim to the future - you can help develop it.”

(orginally posted on imediaconnection.com - http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2013/03/12/predicting-oil-prices-and-a...

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer: The South By Southwest Edition

Innovation was the descriptor for South By Southwest Interactive until we saw piggyback rides. 

With long lines inhibiting access and simultaneous events, I believe it's hard to give a representative take on SXSW. Mine? Analytics talk.

A soundbite that I’ll remember from Nate Silver appearance? Analytics and targeting are important but don't forget serendipity.

More Silver, who was one of the most sought-after speakers for SXSW after he accurately predicted the presidential election:

“I think sometimes people mistake what I do as someone who’s saying everything we do is predicable… Whereas really I’m more of a skeptic of prediction. What I’m actually doing is taking polls and averaging them and the fact that it’s so surprising says a lot about where we have to go in terms of science and math.”

My pick for the top SXSW ego buster? Tinder is a dating app that anonymously finds out who (if anyone) nearby thinks you're attractive.

Oh, the whining if iWatch comes to be and we're even more conscious of lost time when clocks advance. Did you catch all the Tweets about Daylight Savings Time. We got it after the first 50 or so. Actually we got it after the first two.

Shaq was on the hunt for innovative tech. If he jumps in, will bad guys look to hack-a-Shaq?

One of the more memorable moments was when we heard that we've gone from a Got Milk? message to a Got Milk, Michelle? message - personalization is key.

Also, a differentiating marketing message is often the technology itself.

Agency Team Detroit’s mantra for bringing innovation: fail fast.

I heard a healthy discussion on how much technology is useful vs. invasive. The upshot is that the consumer should be in charge. 

I agree with the statement that the consumer will pick what he or she wants and provide that access and no more.

Beware of Shiny Objects At SXSW

New objects shown at South By Southwest Interactive will be shiny whether or not the sun comes out in Austin, Texas.

My message to marketers: beware.

I’m not anti-innovation. Quite the contrary, in fact. I’m in tech as much for the unknown as the known. But let’s concentrate on the known for a minute. The estimated 30,000 going to Austin are not the norm (in more ways than one). We seemingly all carry iPhones and Macs, and many of us check in on Foursquare.

The norm is likely your brand’s target — about half of U.S. mobile subscribers don’t yet carry a smartphone, much less line up to buy a Mac. Their idea of a check-in involves questions of smoking versus non-smoking, a room away from the elevator, and the time the buffet opens in the morning.

What we saw at the Austin Convention Center and environs last year were early-adopter models, ones that caused a ripple on Twitter but not so much on Main Street.

The geo-location startups came into a marketplace that today shows only 30 million global users of leader Foursquare (for perspective, there are well over 300 million mobile subscribers in the United States alone and more than 6 billion worldwide).

So what is a brand manager to do? The smartest ones are relying on a mix of products and services that aren’t necessarily aimed at early adopters. Ford employs a variety of mobile strategies and tactics, including a text call to action in traditional media that produced a 15.4 percent lead conversion. An influencer on Twitter described the program as “meat and potatoes.” As a CMO who hasn’t touched beef in decades, I’ll dine on “meat and potatoes” all day and all night for such lead success.

We’ll certainly again hear lots this year about the mobile wallet. There surely will be hype around near field communication. But cash gone by Tuesday? Ummm, no.

So what should we do in Austin? Live. Learn. But don’t jump in blindly, sunshine or not.

(article first appeared at http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2013/03/06/beware-of-shiny-objects-at-...)

Why Savvy Marketers Won't Bet On Shiny Objects

More than three dozen of the savviest digital marketers in the country came together in New York recently for a customer summit and sharing of knowledge.

Each brought impressive mobile success stories, none of which included the use of a so-called “shiny object” or a product sprinkled by pixie dust at South By Southwest this past spring. These pros know that none of those types of products and services will move a business. In fact, if anything, they will move a business backward.

Instead, there was discussion of a Ford traditional media campaign that included a call to action involving the unsexiest of products – texting. Why did that make the cut in a day full of discussion? The answer is: business results. Ford saw a 15.4 percent lead conversion by including a mobile component to dollars already being spent.

There was talk of the programs run at Macy’s. In its Backstage Pass program, shoppers are given choices on how to respond to calls to action that lead to information on merchandise from leading designers. The elements include a mobile website, QR codes, MMS (multimedia messaging) and, yes, even text messaging. Macy’s is wise enough to give mobile users choice.

Sure, these marketers are on the forefront. Many attended SxSW and are as up on the newest and shiniest as anyone. But they aren’t buying vaporware. They are tapping into consumer behavior and interest, not what is displayed as the hippest.

Why?

They understand that their jobs have not changed. They need to, for example, sell more beer, move more shoes, and entice consumers to buy cereal. It’s the same job that their predecessors had, in some cases, more than 150 years ago.

The what is the same: It’s about moving product. It always was, and always will be. It’s the how that is changed in the mobile era.

Of course, they aren’t betting it all on mobile. But they are making intelligent bets. For instance, few are spending anything on the mobile wallet, which dominated conversation at SxSW. With miniscule adoption, 2012 isn’t the year to bet the marketing budget on Near Field Communication (NFC) and the wallet promise.

Even those chasing the dough in that category are realistic. “It’s inevitable that we will use this smart gadget that most of us have in our pocket now and increasingly over time all of us will have it,” Scott Lien, vice president of Intuit’s Mobile Innovation Group, told me in my new book, Mobilized Marketing: Driving Sales, Engagement, and Loyalty Through Mobile Devices. “First it will be a basic replacement for payments but over time it will gain more and more intelligence. At first there will be early adopters. They do everything on the phone. I think it will be high travelers and people who are in transit a lot.

“There are many ways that it will add intelligence. It’s shocking in this country that there are a lot of people in tough economic shape. Credit card debt is high. Many people are living paycheck to paycheck, yet they don’t have a good adviser on a daily basis that is helping them make good buying decisions. That could happen in many ways. Helping them find substitutes — if you want to get a good cup of coffee, you tell them, ‘Here’s the cheaper, better place and a better way to get it. Hey, you have points sitting there in your frequent flier account that are about to expire and you can monetize that and buy this thing you want to get.’ We all have three or four credit cards in our wallet. We can tell them that there’s actually a better card to use on this transaction because they’re going to get triple points.”

Lien has measured expectations for adoption. “The concept is very simple — harnessing all the data and all the information that is there and putting all of that knowledge in your hand at the point of purchase or point of decision to help you make a better choice,” he says. “I don’t think we’re years away from all that. I think it will start to come slowly and come in pieces, the way they came with the iPhone. First there weren’t any apps — now there’s voice assist and all that. This will come slowly and serve segments of users like the high-traveler, high-transit user who will start to adapt it very quickly.”

In other words, there likely will be a time to spend brand dollars against the concept. Just not now, not by marketers who went to New York to learn more about how to sell more today.

(article first appeared on adotas.com - http://www.adotas.com/2012/07/why-savvy-marketers-wont-bet-on-shiny-objects/)

My On-Camera Interview on SXSW "Pixie Dust"

I wrote on this blog and elsewhere about the danger of chasing "pixie dust" at South By Southwest. Here is a video with my thoughts on driving business results through proven mobile strategies and tactics.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - RAZR Revisited and More

Here’s a tale of two moms – my mother-in-law wants a smartphone. My mom needed help over the weekend clearing messages from my old RAZR (I’m not a cheap son - that’s all the phone she wants). The lesson for marketers? One size does not fit all. I used to think that the RAZR was intuitive. Gosh, was I wrong. I had to relearn the basics.

Battery life is the number one issue for consumers, but J.D. Power survey takers still rank the iPhone tops for satisfaction.

I am somehow managing to get by on the "lower-resolutionary" iPad 2. Others might think life is unfair.

What to make of Apple having a good supply of the “new” iPad? Sascha Segan of PC Magazine frames it this way on Twitter - “If the iPad didn't sell out, doesn't that mean Apple planned things properly? Shouldn't everyone who wants one get one?” Good points.

Were you like me bored with the iPad line stories? People camp out from Apple products. News here?

When Apple said it was announcing the use of some of its cash balance, I wondered if it involved branding the new device iPad 3? I would call that better late than never.

It was cool to talk to the Mobile Marketing Association and Direct Marketing Association about mobile certification training and a test around DMA 2012. More to come as we get closer to the fall show.

Is Google accurate when it says, “In a few years, not having a mobile strategy will be just as silly as not having a desktop experience"? Are we still years away?

I can’t argue with the SMS practices that are part of Xbox Mobile marketing. Be worthy, engaging, now and relevant.

In my Digiday column /jeffhasen/my-digiday-column-beware-of-sxsw-pixie-dust, I wrote about the danger in marketers chasing the SXSW pixie dust – shiny objects that caught attention but likely won’t drive business results soon or ever. Since, I’ve seen these numbers – there were 755,373 total tweets with keyword or hashtag SXSW. Plus, there were 3,702 concurrent Foursquare check-ins at the hall. The stats tell us what we already knew - attendees are not representative of Main Street. I doubt that there are 3,702 check-ins in many towns.

Another takeaway from SXSW was the lack of discussion about whether something was mobile or social. Of course, it's both. I’m glad that we finally got there.

My Digiday Column - Beware of SXSW Pixie Dust

Even before the sun came up in Austin, South By Southwest Interactive attendees donned shades to hide bloodshot eyes and the glare from all the shiny new objects.

It’s hardly my place to judge the partygoers’ activity. I was young once, too. I do, however, have something to say about the product launches and business models that stretched our imagination. My message: brand marketers, beware.

I’m not anti-innovation. Quite the contrary, in fact. I’m in tech as much for the unknown as the known. But let’s concentrate on the known for a minute. The nearly 25,000 in attendance are not the norm (in more ways than one). We seemingly all carry iPhones and Macs, and many of us check in on Foursquare. The norm is likely your brand’s target — about two thirds of U.S. mobile subscribers don’t yet carry a smartphone or line up to buy a Mac. Their idea of a check-in involves questions of smoking versus non-smoking, a room away from the elevator, and the time the buffet opens in the morning.

What we saw at the Austin Convention Center and environs were early-adopter models, ones that may cause a ripple on Twitter but not on Main Street. Proof of that? Highlight, Glancee, Banjo, Kismet. All geo-location startups coming into a marketplace that shows only 15 million global users of Foursquare (for perspective, there are well over 300 million mobile subscribers in the United States alone and more than 6 billion worldwide).

So what is a brand manager to do? The smartest ones are relying on a mix of products and services that aren’t necessarily aimed at early adopters. Ford also employs a variety of mobile strategies and tactics, including a text call to action in traditional media that produced a 15.4 percent lead conversion. An influencer on Twitter described the program as “meat and potatoes.” As a CMO who hasn’t touched beef in decades, I’ll dine on “meat and potatoes” all day and all night for such lead success.

It wasn’t surprising that SXSW was overrun by talk of the mobile wallet. Among the vendors was ISIS which demonstrated its latest iteration and even showed an add-on that gives current iPhone models NFC capability. But no, no, no, 2012 isn’t the year to bet the marketing budget on NFC and the wallet promise. Even those chasing the dough are realistic.

“It’s inevitable that we will use this smart gadget that most of us have in our pocket now, and increasingly over time all of us will have it,” Scott Lien, vp of Intuit’s mobile innovation group, says in my upcoming book, Mobilized Marketing . “First it will be a basic replacement for payments, but over time it will gain more and more intelligence. At first there will be early adopters. They do everything on the phone. I think it will be high travelers and people who are in transit a lot.”

In other words, there likely will be a time to spend brand dollars against the concept. Just not in the hours after SXSW.

(first appeared here - http://www.digiday.com/mobile/beware-of-sxsw-pixie-dust/)

SXSW Edition of Notes From a Mobilized Marketer

I had Catch Me If You Can on my mind in Austin with Leonardo DiCaprio at South By Southwest and approximately 1,000 Interactive panels and hundreds of parties vying for eyeballs, not to mention tweets, blog posts, and check-ins.

Like the rest of the nearly 25,000 attendees, I caught a small piece of the action given the competing sessions, Manhattan-esque traffic, and multiple sites. Also, what I didn’t hear was a debate on the convergence of mobile and social, perhaps signaling a realization that the two were never destined to be in silos. Just follow the consumers who would have none of that.

The most provocative comments came from futurist Ray Kurzweil despite his repeated statements about the neo cortex delivered to a crowd that had lost many brain cells due to the incessant partying.

What most caught my attention from Kurzweil:

-- "You can start world-changing revolution with the power of your ideas and the tools that everyone has. A kid in Africa has access to more information than the president of the United States did 15 years ago."

-- "As we go through this decade, search engines aren't going to wait to be asked. They'll be listening [to humans] in the background. And [the search results] will just pop up."

-- "If we can convince people that computers have complexity of thought and nuance ... we'll come to accept them as human."

The second and third comments can be debated. Will many want behind-the-scenes listening, interpreting, and advice from a machine? I agree with Kurzweil who shrugged off a suggestion that connectivity is a curse. He said that we are all in control and that “time triage” is an individual decision.

A few more things that caught my attention in recent days.

Samsung’s tablet revenue reportedly won’t only come from the sale of its own products. The company supposedly will sell to Apple $11 billion in parts for an iPad mini, according a report that quoted an unnamed Samsung source.

You say that there is no money in apps? Not this time. Draw Something, one of the top selling apps that I wrote about when Apple reached 25 billion downloads, is earning six figure revenues per day.

Clicks on mobile ads are 2X in Italy compared to the United States, according to eMarketer. In my upcoming Mobilized Marketing book, I spend considerable time talking to global marketers about the nuances in their regions. 

In 2012, $2.2 trillion or 10 percent of disposable household income will be spent on mobile devices and services, according to Gartner. Do you still think that it’s the early days of mobile?

I don’t want to flaunt the fact that I heard about authentication stacks during a SXSW panel. Tell me you aren't jealous.

Probably the smartest words in Austin – people don't care about your products - they care about solutions to their problems. Amen.