Me-tail – the key to telemedia's bright future?

Following the triumph of World Telemedia Marbella we took a bit of a breather – hence the late arrival of your weekly newsletter. But what a show that was. So many new and familiar faces, so much talk and networking – and business – and, of course, quite a lot of fun and games. I won’t go into the real details of the latter, that is what the World Telemedia VIP group and Telemedia-news Facebook groups are for (join if you haven’t already).

In among all this great partying, however, was some really meaty content. One thing that really stood out for me was the Me-tail theory espoused by Graham Halling from Spoke in the opening keynote. The idea is that, while mobile commerce is becoming the de facto place to do business these days, there is move for brands to look at how to do it themselves.

The argument goes that the likes of Nike know more about, say, sports than a national newspaper or non-dedicated sports channel, so why not offer sports news. This suddenly changes the game. Where once media were king, now brands are. And through this, they start to own the customer not just when it comes to, in Nike’s case, selling them trainers, but also where they turn for sports news.

And what’s in it for the telemedia industry? Plenty. You guys can help these brands monetise their engagements with these consumers, not only through content billing, but also through monetising social interaction and user generated content offerings that will go with it.

As Spoke’s Halling put it in Marbella: “Me-tail is an interesting re-imagining of our industry”.

But we won’t have an industry to re-imagine if we don’t get to grips with fraud, Josef Bruckschlögl from Kwak Telecom warned delegates in the day two opening keynote. PBX hacking is still rife, and there are worrying increases in high jacking, not to mention the raft of new technology frauds that are being perpetrated, particularly in Russia and China.

In some ways these are old frauds, often delivered in new ways, but they are still problematic. They cut revenues for everyone in the value chain, as well as eroding both consumer and potential customer confidence in using PRS.

And this is the dilemma that we face. There are rich pickings out there for many as brands and media companies vie to deliver content and services and monetise them, but unless the industry can present a clean image to these brands then something else will step in and make it happen.

The same issues affect billing and m-payments. PRS is still a great tool for microbilling and may yet have its best days still to come. But there are increasingly new ways – not least Apple, Amazon and Google – waiting in the wings to steal much of this brave new world. Oh, and the operators – who didn’t bother to come to the show, shame on them – are also trying to grab a piece of the action. Fat chance, IMHO, but we shall wait and see.

Full show report in next Telemedia Month, out soon!