Source: www.tmcnet.com
By TMCnet Special Guest
Chris DeGrace, Vice President, Products and Alliances, OnePIN, Inc.
November 25, 2008 – People carry their mobile phone wherever they go because they’ve become used to the freedom to communicate with whomever, whenever they want. What is the first step every mobile phone user takes when making a call, aside from turning on the phone? Since most people have trouble memorizing more than eight different phone numbers, they’re likely to quickly access their phonebook to make the call.
Regardless of the mobile network, device, or form of communication, the phonebook is the most common denominator for over three billion subscribers around the world. Whether you’re a London hipster with an iPhone (News – Alert), a business person in Moscow with a slick PDA, or a teenager in Africa who just purchased an ultra low cost handset, your contacts and ultimately the phonebook itself are essential to every mobile connection you make.
So why is the phonebook such a pain in the neck to manage?
The answer is pretty straightforward. Mobile operators and device manufacturers have poured billions of dollars into upgrading networks, trialing new services, adding more pixels to camera phones, and launching slick advertising campaigns. At the same time, they’ve paid very little attention to making the phonebook – perhaps the mobile phone’s most critical and ubiquitous feature – easier to use. That’s too bad because aside from making life easier for their subscribers and increasing the phonebook’s usability and usefulness, operator revenues would increase via enriched social connections that are easily accessible in the phonebook.
That’s just what the social address book is beginning to do. The social address book is a new approach innovative operators are adopting to transform any standard mobile phonebook into a social networking platform that makes it easier for subscribers to share, exchange and manage contact information with friends, family and business associates.
With one click, subscribers can instantaneously take advantage of the mobile nature of their device and expand their social network after each phone call by exchanging contact information and adding new contacts directly to their social address books without the hassle of typing. Even better, these new contacts are automatically kept up to date when friends and colleagues change their contact information. Instead of struggling to maintain social circles across disparate websites, phonebooks, blogs, calendars, etc., subscribers can simply reach for their mobile phones. The result: mobile operator revenue increases as subscribers with enriched social address books make more connections – phone calls, SMS, e-mail, mobile instant messaging, video sharing, etc.
Thumb fatigue
Let’s face it. The current method of updating a mobile phonebook is painful. Sure, it’s easy in the Internet world as vCards integrate and store nicely in Outlook. However, handset phonebooks are proprietary and do not accept one format across manufacturers. To make things more complicated, cross-operator network interoperability issues also prohibit seamless exchanging of contact information.
There is also the issue of initiating the exchange, which isn’t easy when navigating through countless menus on the phone, especially if you’re in transit. For the average subscriber, there is no easy way to enter more than a first name and a mobile number – even for the closest of friends. I personally have a high-end phone that lets me download all my contacts from Outlook. But I still have no easy way of adding new people I meet when I’m away from my PC or when I don’t have time to key in their contact information. Additionally, keeping these contacts updated as people move around and change their information is still a significant challenge.
When adding and updating contacts is that cumbersome, subscribers will likely only manually do so for important contacts, while other contacts fall by the wayside. Bottom line for operators is that without giving subscribers the means to communicate to their social network across multiple mobile channels, revenues and service adoption beyond the base level will become stagnant.
The ‘Net effect on operators
In the past, mobile operators didn’t think they had control over the phonebook, and therefore, have not spent much time enhancing it. Operators originally believed phonebooks were device-specific applications under the control of handset manufacturers. Today, many operators still don’t realize that they have an advantage over handset manufacturers and social networking services like Facebook (News – Alert), MySpace and LinkedIn. The latter are also coming into the picture with their eye on the phonebook, and some of them have launched their own phonebooks. Mobile operators are best positioned to deliver mobile social address books that overcome handset limitations and social networking walled gardens.
While Facebook, MySpace (News – Alert) and LinkedIn want to keep their users within their walled gardens, mobile subscribers want to gain the maximum “social” benefit as their social circles cross many different social networking brands. Put another way, a mobile social network isn’t very social if subscribers can’t exchange contact information with whomever they want, whenever they want, or if they have to go to multiple sources (phonebook, Outlook, LinkedIn, etc.) to get access to their “contacts.”
Giving users fatter pipes and smarter mobile phones to access all of these different social networking Web sites is not a winning strategy for mobile operators because they are removed from the value-chain: they become a pipe provider. In order for operators to capitalize on the social address book’s benefits, they need to make it easier for subscribers to share, add and update contact information.
Some operators are investing millions of dollars in network address book solutions – enabling subscribers to sync their mobile contacts to “the network,” where they can be accessed by other applications or manipulated and sent back down to the handset. However, the root problem still exists: contacts cannot easily be added to the standard phonebook, whether it’s people in my closest social circles, or a high-school friend whom I’ve recently reconnected with on LinkedIn. And even if I get these contacts (with limited information) into the phonebook, how does this information stay up to date?
Mobilizing the social network
The social address book approach solves many of the above problems. Progressive operators have launched services that make adding new contacts and staying in touch one-click simple. The phonebook is usually involved in the first series of clicks every subscriber makes when initiating a phone call, SMS, mobile e-mail, or mobile IM chat, and it is therefore the key leverage point for increasing service usage for operators. Those operators that figure out how to streamline contact exchange and management will empower subscribers to keep their lifelong connections. In turn, subscribers will reward them by making more connections (increasing revenue) and staying put (reducing churn).
TMCnet publishes expert commentary on various telecommunications, IT, call center, CRM and other technology-related topics. Are you an expert in one of these fields, and interested in having your perspective published on a site that gets several million unique visitors each month? Get in touch.
Edited by Jessica Kostek