Nestoria Blog

For years now we’ve been hearing “the future of the internet is mobile”, especially here in Europe. As such, we thought it would be interesting to speak with an expert in mobile / web convergence: Prashant Agarwal, author of oneInternet a blog that charts the overlap between traditional internet and mobile consumer experience.

Prashant was a product manager at Yahoo! Europe where he developed innovative mobile services for instant messenger (IM), World Cup 2006 and search. Before that he founded a mobile IM start up, launched Techdirt Wireless and consulted for music and mobile start ups. He’s currently an advisor to Techdirt and Option3.

Prashant, thanks for taking the time to talk with us.

1. Explain a bit about why you believe mobile and desktop are merging?

I got interested in mobile back in 1999 after 4 years of working in online media and e-commerce. I wanted to take my online experience with me. That’s what drove the first wave of mobile internet services. But the online and mobile ecosystems and platforms were just too different. As a result the desktop internet and the mobile internet diverged with specialist players in each area. The web moved towards UGC, communities, video, AJAX, etc. While the mobile industry borrowed some internet concepts and operators developed walled-garden mobile portals with some information services, but they mostly just ended up selling ringtones and games.

There have been a number of important trends over the last couple of years that are driving the convergence between the web and mobile. First, there is more bandwidth and the devices have good color screens, decent browsers and support java applications. Secondly, operators are looking to drive data revenue from mobile search, which will help grow off portal services. Thirdly, users are heavily invested in online services such as Yahoo, Google, and Myspace. They want oneInternet because they expect ubiquitous access to these and other online services they access every day on the desktop.

There are two big challenges left; raising awareness with users that they can surf the web on their phones and continuing to make that experience better. The entire mobile industry is going to get a lift from all the marketing that Apple is going to throw against the iPhone and its mobile internet capabilities. On the user experience side, the industry is getting better at this through trial and error. All the product launches to date have been learning experiences and there is a well understood body of best practices and developers with the right skills.

2. Can you provide some examples? Who are the innovators taking advantage of this trend, especially here in the UK?

3 and T-Mobile UK are doing a great a job of teaming up with internet brands to promote mobile data services and moving towards flat rate data pricing. 3 is working with Yahoo, MSN and Skype to name a few. Start ups Reparo and Refresh Mobile have good mobile apps that provide a wide variety of internet services and content in rich java applications. Mobyko is doing some interesting things to help users manage their on device content from the web. Shozu has a great application to upload your camera phone pictures to your blog or Flickr account.

3. What are your thoughts on the developments in the property search sector in the last year? What implications does your “oneInternet” worldview have for this category?

I think the concept of property search is pretty new for most users. They are used to calling up estate agents and being shown properties in an area. Nestoria does a great job of providing more context and helping to find properties that meet specific criteria.

Nestoria is a perfect oneInternet candidate. I want to be able create a shortlist of interesting properties on the web site and take a map of them on my phone when I go to check them out over the weekend. And since I’m already a Nestoria users on the desktop I have a trusted relationship with you. So when I’m out and about in a new area, I want to able to access your site on my phone and get a list of properties that are available in that area. We all see the for let/sale signs all over town. It would be great to be able to easily get the details for that property by sending a text to Nestoria with a code from the sign.

4. What are the challenges you think a vertical search engine for property like Nestoria faces?

Like any online or mobile business the biggest challenge is driving users to your service. We know how to build great services that solve user problems. But communicating that to users is the really tricky part.

Thanks Prashant, lots of food for thought. I can’t reveal an immediate timeline for Nestoria mobile services, but I can say it’s an area that we track closely.

past Nestoria interviews: Paul Carr, Steve Coast, Joel Burslem
Who would you like to see interviewed next? Let us know.

For this installment of the Nestoria interview series we spoke with Paul Carr, CEO of Fridaycities, an innovatice new social site with whom Nestoria recently partnered.

Paul, thanks for meeting with us.

1. Explain a bit the Fridaycities approach to online community.

Well, the three of us behind the site are journalists by background and when we looked around at the existing community sites on the web, the thing that jumped out is the lack of editorial influence. User generated comment is a wonderful thing, but it is also slowly filling the web with junk. On Fridaycities, each city has a professional journalist who produces daily editorial content based on things our members have been talking about. Each city also has a dedicated ‘host’ - a moderator and editor who approves posts before they appear, mediates in member disputes and generally ensures that the community runs smoothly. We employ very light-touch moderation (otherwise we’d never be scalable) but seeing high quality editorial and knowing there’s a moderator watching really encourages members to up their game when posting. You only have to see the front page of Fridaycities to realise that even the user generated elements are an oasis of information and wit in a desert of social networking LOLs and ‘thx 4 the AD!’s elsewhere.

Secondly, we think that if you’re going to have an online community, it should have a point. Social networks and online communities in general are all well and good - especially if you’re 15 years old, or a college student and keeping track of your social network using phone or email is just too much of a drag. But for grown ups, there has to be a point. On Fridaycities, the point is to allow people who live and work in major cities to exchange information about those cities, in order to enhance their offline life. So, if you want to know, for example, where the best place to hold your hen night, or where to get the best hangover breakfast - or just want to find out the name of the busker with the singing dog outside Brixton tube station is - you can be sure Fridaycities will have the answer. And the community is already so large - and so well informed - that our average response time to new questions posted is less an a minute. Which is a bit scary. This time next year, we’ll be faster than Google. Probably.

2. Unlike some of the big names in social networking (MySpace, Friendster) you’ve taken a geographic approach to launching your service, starting with London. Why?

Because what’s the point in making friends with someone who lives a thousand - or even a hundred - miles away? In fact, what’s the point in making friends just to get your friend count up? The point of Fridaycities is that any social relationships that may be formed through the site - be they drinking buddies, partners, flatmates, or just a bunch of strangers getting together every week in a pub to discuss philosophy (one of the many ad hoc groups formed on the London site) - actually exist in the real world too. We chose London as our first city because our team is made up of London journalists and we previously ran a newsletter called London by London which evolved into a cool guidebook by the same name that’s now in its third edition. We have plans to be in 5 cities by the end of the year, and 10 within 18 months.

3.What are your thoughts on the developments in the property search sector in the last year? Do you see a social angle in this sector?

I can only comment as a user and not as a property search expert (we concentrate on our areas of expertise and let users do property search through our partnership with Nestoria, of course) but it seems to me that the level of innovation has gone through the roof. Google maps has given everyone the tools to do cool location-based search stuff, and innovations in geo-tagging etc have made almost anything possible. But the key is to focus on the user. Just because you *can* do all sorts of clever stuff with search and maps and geography doesn’t mean that users will either a) bother to explore all the possibilities you offer them or b) be able to even navigate through them. Like everything, the key is to focus on what the user wants and hide the cool tech stuff behind a totally intuitive user interface. The art lies in concealing the art and all that. As for a social element - heck yes. Just knowing that a property is available in a certain street is about 20% of the process of choosing somewhere to live. The other 80% is knowing whether it’s a nice area, whether the shops are any good, whether you’re likely to get glassed in your local pub. And the best - perhaps the only - way to find out that stuff before spending your nest egg on bricks and mortar is to ask a real person. Or better yet, a couple of zillion real people.

4. What are the challenges you think a vertical search engine for property like Nestoria faces?

As I said above, it’s a usability thing. Vertical search engines have an in-built advantage in that users are predisposed to assume that a dedicated property search is always going to be better than a general search tool like Google. But there’s an easy temptation to assume that because you’re a dedicated property search then you have to offer a zillion bells and whistles, and basically become a portal (yuck) of everything to do with property. The biggest challenge then - is to take a step back, put yourself in the place of your user, decide what they expect a vertical search tool to do, and how they expect it to do it, and then throw everything else out (or at least hide it) and just focus on creating a totally perfect user experience with your core functionality.

Thanks Paul, we couldn’t agree more on the need to display the wealth of information we have available in a simple way. It’s why we spend so much time systematically testing interface changes.

past Nestoria interviews: Steve Coast, Joel Burslem, Ed Parsons
Who would you like to see interviewed next? Let us know.