We live in a world where sharing has become an It-word. Contribution, engagement have all fast become pinnacles of every marketing expert’s arsenal.
And now O2, not always famous for the radical and new, has taken this concept, embraced it, turbo-charged it and took it to a whole new level. Enter: giffgaff (fashionable with no upper case). giffgaff is the world’s first people-powered MVNO (or “mobile service” as it calls itself), owned by O2 but apparently independently run. Here’s how it works (or supposed to work):
The network is a good (?) old-fashioned solid one, namely from O2. But that’s where it ends. Sales, marketing, customer service, brand development and the general business decisions will apparently all be made (or at least proposed or advised on) by giffgaff’s own users. I already found an entry in its forum calling for users calling for two rotating board-seats for users (though that will probably remain to be seen). giffgaff does have a gaffer (CEO in old-fashioned corporate speak) with a back-room (management team) overseeing the whole thing (and that team, according to early commentators who have met them, seem to be for real). The service appears to run on a SIM-only model and aims for “simple” tariffs that include voice, text and data (mobile web without restrictions).
The prices for the service should be significantly lower because there are no armies of marketers, sales professionals, account managers, customer service representatives, customer service managers, etc, etc – or at least much less of them. At the same time, the “sharing is caring” credo has shown its power and quality in many ways on the web so far (and with giffgaff people will apparently earn rebates if they contribute). And in particular on customer service it should be easy to beat virtually any carrier hands down, shouldn’t it?
So will it work? I think it would be wonderful if it would. I am not sure though if this experiment will be a massive success (maybe a small success is good enough anyway). And the reason for this is power law distribution: only very, very few people contribute significantly (Clay Shirky gives a wealth of examples) and most people contribute hardly anything (the question would then be if the rebates are enough to break that mould). Whilst this works well with something like Wikipedia, I am not sure if a user of giffgaff would be all too happy to wait however long it takes for a member of the community to answer his/her particular query, at least not if it concerns some core functionality. Such a user would arguably be disappointed and thus relatively quickly discouraged. Which would be the end of him/her as a user of the service. Which would be not so good.
I would be more than thrilled if they would pull it off. And I will clap and shout for them. It would really be a whole new level of sharing. Go on, guys!!!
In my last post, I hinted that the 
Why is this more significant? Because it is (like Google/AdMob) a cross-platform play that (unlike Google/AdMob) also expands the basis of business models deployed. Playfish derives the majority of its revenues from so-called virtual currencies, and in particular also from lead-generation deals (which recently have 
It was an eventful week but I shall pick
From Google’s and Admob’s respective business perspectives, it appears to make eminent sense, too (and I am not privy to their numbers): Admob will be able to bulk up and cement its leadership position in the segment. Its inventory and back-end ad management will be able to dip into Google’s vast resources, which is great for them. Google probably realized that Admob’s strength meant that they would be difficult to beat. And who you can’t beat, you shall join (or, in Google’s case, buy) them. For Google, it is a smart move as it gives them critical mass in an ad format where they have not nearly been as dominant as for other formats and gives them access to a lot of eyeballs.
Nokia’s 
The iPhone then was arguably the final punch. In spite of developer frustrations growing over discoverability within this pile of 100,000+ apps, the platform has spurned exceptional games galore, and not only casual ones either. Real Racing is as punchy a racing title as one will ever get one on a handheld. And with people flogging to the app store in drones (rather than visiting it once to rarely if ever return), it appeared a less risky (and certainly more fashionable) move to leave it at that. Notably, Apple got the positioning piece (see above) right: even though it is a powerful gaming platform in its own right (anecdotally, the good folks at Firemint managed to string Real Racing to up to an impressive 82 fps), it never looked at this as a sole or even the main focus of the platform. There is a good reason why their already famous moniker says
Well then. It at least gives Nokia the opportunity to focus solely on building out the Ovi platform and fix the bugs it has been plagued with at the start. Nokia clearly feels the pains of the rapidly changing market place and it struggles to adapt swiftly (which is – and one should appreciate this – much harder when you are running a product portfolio that has a market share of well double your nearest competitor and stretches all the way from the most basic feature phones to the most advanced smart phones) but it has people that should be capable to turn it around. Not easy, mind you but they’re a mighty player that has shown its ability to innovate numerous times, never forget that.
A couple of weeks ago, 
Again, I am curious about the price point: the way it is, it would be a nice marketing deal for Spotify but it could be said that not much was going for taking exactly that offer vs just signing up as it is already. A little discounted however (with the difference paid for by 3’s marketing department) might change the ball game altogether…