Moderators: Staci Kramer, Rafat Ali

Panelists:
Peter Adderton, Founder and CEO, Amp'd Mobile
Maro Boerries, Senior Vice President, Connected Life, Yahoo!
Shawn Conahan, Founder, Chairman and CEO, Intercasting
Larry Shapiro, Executive Vice President, Walt Disney Internet Group
Jason
[NOTE: There's a lot of noise in a change of venue room, will do my best...]
Staci: What are you doing in social media? Larry: Trying to get more activity from users on our sites, as applied to mobile, looking at how it translates. We look at mobile as a part of a connected network, part of the same handheld ecosystem. ???: Sweet spot is where entertainment intersects with personalization and peer-to-peer, working on fantasy sports, can control entire lineup on mobile phone, can compete with friends, interacting with other people. Next frontier is intersection of mobile and Web, social networking and user-generated content. Has to be very different. Shawn: See massive opportunity on Web, social media is a construct, they all do the same thing, to provide a full-breadth approach you have to act as an aggregator. Marco: Mobile is going to be the platform for most of our social media interactions, all about new forms of sharing communications, mobile phone is with us all the time, helping people to aggregate their social networks. Peter: This is about how to make money about social media, and in the process you may lose what social media is all about, exclusive deals may stifle that, even if you think that it's going to make you money. Marco: I am not so sure about that. Shawn: Only new thing we're talking about is that consumers can communicate with other consumers, this is not a new thing. In 1999-2000 when phones were black and white, we thought about what we can do to make this a fun experience. Tried viral chain early on, network was overwhelmed, just made it cooler by letting people know who was sending the message.

Staci: How do you overcome the carriers? Shawn: When network operators shifted model from voice to mobile services they had to redefine their competitive matrix. People are now communicating through their MySpace friends' list. Peter: If you're relying on Sprint and Cingular to tap into users you're wasting your time, carriers are a few years away from working out relationships with social media sites. Shawn: Web is a well devised space, have cut and paste, mobile is far behind. You can provide integration for wireless network partners. Larry: Happy medium is value-add services. Peter: It's not about the user experience for carriers, it's all about money. Marco: Mobile carriers realize that if they cannot create valuable user experiences they're going to find another service that does. People want to see the latest photos from Flickr, that is consumer value. Some areas where Yahoo competes with Verizon.

Rafat: Why should a consumer care how much a carrier has invested in content? What's the value long-term of an exclusive deal? Missing link is an advertising model that works for mobile. Cross platforms applications are going to be very interesting. Question: Apple phone will have a full browser, how will that impact mobile products? Marco: It's all about the best user experience in the long term. Peter: Nobody cares whose network you're on, our job is to enable consumers to use the technology.

Sorry that I didn't get more of this one, had some distractions.

Labels: econSM, events