Ever hear of Cinequest? It’s a California based Film Festival that’s running through this Sunday in San Jose. They signed on with Mozes this year to run a mobile social marketing campaign that allows the attendees of the Film festival to place votes on their favorite films directly from their mobile phones. This year Cinequest is presenting 250 screenings of over 80 films. So, lot’s of voting opportunity and I understand that Mozes is publishing a sorta leader board at the show. I hope Mozes publishes some feedback; I’d be really interested to see how that worked out, this is a great idea.

Heck, we need to have these types of voting opportunities at the Movie Theaters today don’t we? If you think the movie stinks wouldn’t it be fantastic to vote it that way, right there on the spot? Kind of a Two Texts Down!

I like this idea and I think we’ll start to see a lot more of it where things are up for judgment. I can think of a couple of places where it might make some sense:

• Radio song play
• Boxing or MMA
• Instant Replay (might be difficult due to time constraints)
• Encores for Bands at Concerts

It’s not totally outside the realm of reasonable thinking to envision a radio station that derives much of its play-list from social crowd voting is it? There could be huge potential in that type of model because users by the millions are text voting today and many of them are accustomed to paying a fee to place their vote. Users would love to have some measure of control over the play-list.

How about Boxing or MMA? Sometimes the outcome makes you go huh? That guy didn’t win, something’s fishy right? Let the audience take a vote to see who they feel won. I believe that we’ll see something like this emerge in the MMA space later this year. One blogger that I follow has mentioned on his blog that he is working on something mobile in this space but he hasn’t divulged exactly what yet. I’m betting its social mobile voting on MMA fights… real-time.

What about texting in your vote for an encore performance at a Concert? Hey, it beats going home with a hoarse throat from screaming right

Can you think of any areas where you’d like to see mobile crowd voting?

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I exchanged emails today yesterday with Giff Gfroerer. Giff is the President at i2SMS, he’s a smart guy who really understands the mobile industry.

Giff pointed out, and I’m paraphrasing… that Mitsubishi was exiting the handset market and wondered if companies were exiting because more time was necessary to achieve profitability.

It’s an interesting comment because nearly everyone is thinking that 2008 is the year mobile will take off. It’s unanimous right; mobile is getting hyped pretty hard right now isn’t it? Meanwhile, we are seeing trouble spots or companies getting out like Motorola, Sprint, Sanyo and Helio.

RCR Wireless News, great site by the way, I’m a subscriber… publishes a Wireless Stock Index. Take a look at the performance, the index had been on a two year climb up until about 6 Months ago, that’s when the decline started.

Perhaps what we are seeing is 2008 being the final groundwork year and 2009 might be bringing the thunder. What’s your take?

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The Boston Globe published interesting Associated Press mobile marking article today regarding advertising on cellphones.

The carriers are more than a little spooked at the location based services that everyone believes are right around the corner. Guess why? The carriers are afraid that some of their customers might not be all that jazzed to receive a location based offer from a Merchant while standing in or near the Merchants store. So much so they believe that some of their customers will get annoyed and switch to a rival service.

Look at this quote from the article:

“We have great expenses with customers leaving one company and going to another,” Verizon Wireless spokesman Jeffrey Nelson said. “One thing I can guarantee Verizon Wireless will not do is get a bump of short-term advertising dollars while scaring and losing our customers in the process.”

Ah, the dreaded switch. That sounds like it’s more about money than privacy for Verizon doesn’t it? Someone might want to remind Jeffery that the consumer pays too… something along the lines of early termination fee.

We haven’t even come close to hearing the last of this topic; privacy groups are going to be all over this issue in 2008 as this technology grows and mobile advertising spending increases. Not to mention Google released a mobile web app earlier this year that is capable of pinpointing your mobile phone location w/o gps.

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The folks from Airwide Solutions tell me that SMS Traffic this New Years Eve is forecasted to shatter previous numbers.

• US 720 million text messages.
• UK 280 million text messages.
• Switzerland 75 million text messages (7 times the normal daily average)
• China 1.6 billion text messages (normal daily volume)
• Greece 35 million (5 times the normal daily average)
• Norway 33.4 million
• Belgium 46.7 million
• Czech Republic 55 million

The Swiss get texting more prolifically than all others by increasing their texting volume 7 times the average. The Chinese are texting at a phenominal rate daily.

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I might cast a vote for WiTricity, the wireless power transfer technology developed at MIT this Spring.

Assuming the technology develops further, with WiTricity consumers obviously wouldn’t need batteries to power their mobile devices. So, in that scenario what if the Carriers and Device makers were to change the game and deliver WiTricity as a Service (WaaS) to the handset? That’s fee based and if it ever materialized that would have a tremendous impact on revenue. Am I crazy not to have said iPhone or Android?

What’s your vote for?

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