While Yahoo was busy rejecting Microsoft, quietly around the back the folks in Redmond were acquiring a company called Danger. Notable for making the popular, though not widespread, and very user friendly SideKick.
As a marketing person, while the former is fascinating, especially due to the big numbers. It's really a traditional business move rather than a revolutionary move. The modern version of newspaper companies and conglomerates trading hands. With all the usual investment banks, PR powerhouses, pending proxy fights and law firms amongst others.
As a marketer, what gets ever more interesting is the mobile space. Obviously iPhone made mobile telephony human friendly, Google and Android want to take that to another level and will have advertising revenue streams of some form built in. What Microsoft plans are are simply speculation, but insert the phone device their consumer products group already containing Xbox, Zune (which some really really love) along with existing long standing mobile software development makes for an interesting mix.
As a marketer, having a new form of media "thing" (i.e. newspaper, TV networks, computer screen, billboards, etc) that people take with them everywhere while allowing real time data to sync with some form of input about what they are doing, where they are going or what they want to do or where they want to go creates a powerful opportunity to create contextual communications, however they may manifest themselves. This is where it gets exciting. If we think beyond the inane texting campaigns, logos on mobile specific web pages and carrier uploaded unsolicited video content and start imaginging how these new mobile devices can convey different kinds of communications/stories that use the merits and abilities of the technology, we start entering an new creative playground.
The one thing we can be assured of is that content will be king, but just what that content looks like will be fun to figure out.
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