Dear reader,

I have today resigned from Blyk , a company I co-founded late in 2005. My time in Blyk has been very successful and exciting, but now is the right time for me to move on.

Social media and rapidly developing mobile services combined create totally new markets for media, brands, operators, service providers and e-business as a whole. I want to explore this new emerging opportunity further.

The future of internet is mobile, said Google. Many other major companies have banked their hopes on mobile. And they have done so for a good reason. Nearly 3 out of 4 humans on this planet have a mobile phone, and the number is growing. And at the same time the computing powers of mobile phones are exploding. What a smartphone was 4-5 years ago, any feature phone today most likely exceeds it. The new Nokia dual SIM C2 retailing around 2700 rupees ($50) in India connects you to Facebook, Orkut, Twitter, Google, internet, has email, music player, radio, camera…well, you get the picture.

At the same time more operators are moving into All-IP network structures reducing complexity and enabling a much faster adoption of new services and solutions.

Our social behaviour fuelled by social network sites has created social media frenzy and media landscape is changing faster than ever. Earned & owned and not just bought media exposures change the way brands communicate with their audience. And now all this will be powered with mobility opening a completely new chapter in media business. Mobile internet statistics from US (already over a year ago) confirmed that majority of the traffic went to social networks. And it has only increased since.

And mobile is much more than just internet on mobile. Deals, coupons and other m-commerce solutions are finally breaking through and my prediction is that they will eventually create the biggest marketplace in the world. After all, mobile is your personal connector to the world and commercial solutions have just been waiting the right moment and maturity.

Mobile as a medium is coming to age, and as said many times by the great mobile expert Tomi Ahonen, it is the 7th mass medium. Although media buying and planning in mobile is a complex task given the vastness of the market and diversity of the players in mobile, brands have realized the importance of establishing solid strategy and execution for mobile media. At its best, it can become the ultimate tool for loyalty creation for brands, services and operators. It is instantaneous and interactive, something extremely important when fighting for loyalty.

Mobile is personal, direct, interactive and always-on channel to 75% of the worlds’ population. That’s an incredible opportunity to communicate and do business with the entire world.

If I asked you nicely and gave you deals, discounts and gifts against things you wanted to buy anyway, would you allow me to share my marketing message with you? That is the premise that permission-based mobile marketing works on. It is marketing that has a buy-in from the target audience. It is not just about transactions, but about building a dialog between the consumer and the brand.

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) recently came out with a white paper detailing case studies from around the world on permission-based mobile marketing. Supplied by the MMA Task Force, of which Blyk was a part, the case studies illustrate what I have long held—if you get a consumer buy-in with customised and targeted marketing, instead of blind mass-dissemination, you have a consumer for life.

The basic premise of permission-based mobile marketing is simple—it is about value exchange. It is a tacit agreement between the consumer and the brand. In exchange for their contact information and personal preferences, consumers expect the brand to respect their privacy even as it offers them value in tangibles like coupons, offers, deals, samples, or intangibles like apps and content.

It is essentially a four-step process. You start with giving the consumers the chance (and, of course, a compelling reason) to opt in. When they do, we can create a database of their preferences, which are then shared with the brands. The preference profiles are kept updated so that the engagement remains relevant for the both, the consumer and the brand.

For the brand, the benefit is the potential of a long-term relationship and compelling engagement with the consumer. And we all know that translates into higher return on investment. For the mobile networks, it is a chance to increase customer satisfaction and stand out among their peers with compelling content.

The study also illustrated that this type of marketing is best suited for a device as personal as the mobile phone. It is a device that offers the best one-to-one platform for interaction, giving the consumer personalized content and services.

Even though it is new in India, permission-based mobile marketing is already beginning to take off. After all, gives Indian consumers what they’ve never had—a break from being treated by marketers as just a huge mass.

The telecommunication & IT industry is in an unprecedented turmoil – you agree? These industries are witnessing bigger structural changes than ever before – you agree again? If you have answered “yes” to both of these then you could join the ever growing group of experts writing about these “events”. Speculation has always been the favourite sports for the idle. I stumble increasingly to opinion pieces, expert analysis, insights, viewpoints and “studies” that are all based firmly on hindsight and loaded with nothing else than speculations of what might be coming. It does not take too much effort to consolidate some known information into speculation and then publish it. Therefore to find truly good analysis, weighted opinion pieces and inspiring foresight is increasingly difficult as it is all buried under a heap of tweeted junk. The value of trusted sources is more valuable than ever before. Tweeted or not.