After about 18 months, this is Tomi’s second visit to MobileMonday… still energetic and insightful, Tomi delivered his presentation titled “New Business Opportunities out of Mobile Social Networking”

So, here’s some key pointers:

Recession = it’s time to copy… copy proven and successful concept from other companies/countries/operators… launch it!

Great community services are built upon 4 principles: Connectivity, Culture, Commerce, Community. The ability to combine these attributes is the key to exciting services. Example: Sony Pictures Sofia’s Diary combines Connectivity (mobile voting via SMS) and Culture (teen’s interest in social/romantic dilemma) to create interactive mobisodic soap opera.

Then he shared the update and a lot of examples about Mobile as the 7th Mass Media (someone care to improve the Wiki page?) and the seven benefits of mobile, reminding us that mobile is different than other medias:

1. Mobile is the first personal mass media
2. Mobile is permanently carried
3. Mobile is always-on
4. Mobile has a built-in payment mechanism
5. Mobile is available at the point of creative inspiration
6. Mobile has the most accurate audience measurement
7. Mobile captures the social context of media consumption

Benefits number 1 through 6 is somewhat easier to grasp. Understanding the 7th is the most interesting – how recommendation, referral, viral, and WoM work and being enhanced using mobile. Obama’s m-campaign is taken as another example… it’s viral enough (SMS invitations sent to supporters, and can be forwarded to others as viral campaign), it’s social enough (twitter and iPhone apps that show poll result contextually – got to see it…)

Then, finally the business model for Mobile Social Networking. It’s a 100-million-plus-user service globally, and there’s a positive ARPU impact (according to Informa). There are six revenue models at this moment:

1. Subscriptions
2. Advertising
3. Personalization
4. Pay-per-view (with revenue share)
5. Gifting
6. Ego-services

The newest one is ego services… feeding on people needs to look good (virtually). Introduced by flirtomatic, if you don’t like your rating (5 stars etc), can now eliminate worst rating but pay for it. Or find out who gave you that rating (and pay for it too…).

Tomi convinced us that there are real business potential of new and creative mobile social network services. Adding value to the operators and to the consumers, creators as well. SeeMeeTV for example gives an average UKP 13 payout for content creator…

And lastly, don’t forget to make mobile fun! Gen-C will dominate the world in the future (and the mobile world now), so they all love having fun… (as much as we do).

Few links worth mentioning:

• Many of his examples are taken from Tomi Ahonen Pearls Vol 2: Mobile Social Networking, which just came out last month and has 50 case studies of successful mobile services. The eBook is not sold on Amazon or any other place, except directly from the website (which has free sample pages!!) so head on to: http://www.tomiahonen.com/ebook/PearlsV2.html
• Please join Forum Oxford, the free expert community of over 2,000 with over 40 of mobile authors and 16 of the 20 best-read bloggers in mobile. Check the details about this on his preso slide.

Slides? Oh yes, it’s available on our site: http://sites.google.com/site/mobilemondayid/

And… SPECIAL THANKS for Ericsson Indonesia – for sponsoring Tomi and for Telkom Indonesia/indigo for sponsoring the whole event (food, drinks, venue). Thanks a bunch guys!