In the late 90′s emerged the SEO firm that specialized in building solutions and strategies off of Google’s Search Engine or Search API. This way of thinking is a key reason for the success of Google. Google also succeeded with syndication ( offering Search as an API to be built into sites).  Well when twitter launched, releasing an API has given them the ability to generate an amazing amount of traffic through twitter via the different clients.  At least  today it is a vertical game of different twitter clients competing that has created a closed loop to drive the business of Twitter. The same can be said about Android today.  Be original and open, release and API and let others build something on top of the core and bring in all of their creative spirit.

I love hootsuite, tweetdeck and seesmic, but they are in a game of competition amongst each other that has spiraled to grow twitter.

In this world of the web, creating API’s for others to leverage their creativity now only builds your brand as a base platform, but gives you the chance to organically grow through degree marketing ( I use this term as the different degrees of relationship as it is like a super distribution model).

This seems like a a no-brainer, but looking at the stats really makes one think about what are the platforms you can create with an API for growing your business. This is a real strategy for 2010 for the web and beyond as well.

In Cooperation with MEF, ADObjects, Inc brings in the valuable overseas experience from Japan in m-Commerce as part of the International Guide on m-Commerce.  ADObjects, Inc provides leading edge consultancy services in the areas of mobile marketing and m-Commerce as well as building revenue generating partnerships with overseas companies looking toward market entry into North America. This guide has comprehensive examples and case studies from both leaders in Japan; SONY FeliCa and Entermotion.

FeliCa is a contactless RFID smart card system by Sony in Japan, primarily used in electronic money cards. The name stands for Felicity Card. First utilized in the Octopus card system in Hong Kong^[1], the technology is used in a variety of cards also in countries such as Singapore and Japan.  One of the key global operators to launch and bring FeliCa to the market was NTTDoCoMo. NTTDoCoMo’s m-Commerse Activities date back to the Early 20o5.   Brands such as McDonald’s and Seven-Eleven have fully utilized FeliCa for m-Commerce in Japan respectively.

Entermotion is one of the leading Japanese coupon and mobile marketing platform companies in Japan.

****************

Today, MEF North America Launches M-Commerce Guide to Drive Customer Acquisition, Retention and Conversion

• MEF values global mobile media industry at $36bn globally
• 53% of consumers have a propensity to use their mobile handsets for financial transactions*
• One out of every seven minutes of media consumption today takes place via mobile devices**

The M-Commerce guide is the first output of MEF’s M-Commerce Initiative led by an expert committee of members and written through consultation with leading industry players to engage, educate and evolve the potential of mobile. The guide is designed to help brands, content owners/producers and retailers better understand how to leverage the mobile device to drive customer acquisition, retention and, most importantly, conversion.

While the definition of M-Commerce includes a broad range of categories, for the purposes of this guide, we have limited the definition to include the following:

• Digital content, goods and services purchased and delivered on the mobile device (in channel services) as well as tangible products purchased through the handset but physically delivered (out of channel products)
• All forms of commerce whether paid for or ad-funded/sponsored.

Mobile banking is not included.

The guide has been authored with the leadership and invaluable support of the following MEF member companies: 2ergo, ADObjects, Billing Revolution, Boku, engage2mobile, Impact Mobile, Inmar, KPMG, mBlox, Motorola, Netbiscuits, Nokia, Polar Mobile, Playphone, RIM, Samsung, Sybase365, Synergy World, T-Mobile and Zong.

The guide has been published with the kind support and sponsorship of Impact Mobile, Inmar, KPMG and mBlox.

Download the Guide
To see the press release

Many SEO’s have struggled with the use of Flash in a site from the standpoint of this discovery and it has been a pain point in marketing for the greater search or social media marketing community.  New methods of tagging or marketing the Flash content and the use of other meta data/ keywords on a site have been used to refer to content , but it has not been optimal.

As Apps become more and more relevant and devices centralized around this experience has made it so that today we are looking at an entirely new Internet in my mind.   An Internet that has been structured by massively indexing webpages of content and the discussion and road map of the future of the Semantic Web.  Everything has been tied to links and now the rise of the meta-tags that can make discovery and access that much easier.  All of the things from the deep content we can search and discover to the apps and content that once was discoverable from a webpage.  Now with the growing trend of user experience and content consumption that are really self-contained packages derived from App stores the type of search needs to be treated differently.  This could be a new revolution for the advent of a new search engine to take on the Google, Yahoo, Bing of today that could essentially even be more social-media friendly as a search architecture.  Lately, I have found Google to be a mess in search relevancy, and I have been using Twitter as an alternative search engine for news and discussions more then 50% of my time.  It is also interesting to hear that   if Apple were to launch a new kind of search engine for applications it would clearly make sense given the course of this new Internet.

However, my gut still tells me it is going to be very difficult for one company like Apple to take on the world and create the next generation of Global Search Engine.  Rather a Search Engine for its own world and hopefully we will see some of the cool social elements associated with it.  What I believe could be the case from this strong spike in user adaption and the massive effect of apps on all of us is rather a new debate that stems back to the HTML5 vs. Flash discussion.  As Apple has been a strong advocate of the usage of HTML5 and has left Flash as the proprietary rich media standard out of its devices, there is room for the new innovation of leveraging now HTML5 as the new Application platform of choice for many media companies and developers and to breed an entirely new industry of Search Engine Optimization around HTML5 as it becomes the next foundation of the webpage and the run-time widget architecture of the Web.

Of course we will probably continue to see this self-contained in the closed ecosystem of Apple, and even through they are working with these open standards of HTML5 and others, there is this new paradigm shift toward Apps that will exist across all platforms that makes this discussion quite interesting.   Last week, at CTIA, I was discussing this with several different App developers from the Blackberry camp and found that they have started to do unique tagging of content even in the alert and push architecture of content from Apps.  This could be another hook into strong opportunities for searchable methods to all of this content that is formed from push experiences.  Apps have now been definitely know to be able to give us better experiences then typical web pages, but  the opportunities surrounding them from the standpoint of market discoverability of the deep content is still very open.  Will Blackberry at some point come up with there own search engine as well?  Will we see multiple search engines for different forms of App content that will then lead to the subject of an open API for the massive crawlers of the world to link each one in a greater search interface to find across multiple different channels?   Will this phenomena of the app keep evolving and create the opportunities for a new internet of channels and deep search accross those channels with dedicated tagging platforms within the apps of a each of the different platforms?

As the iPad’s application ecosystem evolves and so does the application ecosystems of  Blackberry, Nokia, Android, Palm, Windows, we will need to have a new kind of search and discovery mechanism that will lead us to a new form of Internet?  Look at all the Apps that live across Facebook and other social media and the opportunity for discovery requires one to be living in that portal. A simple Google or Bing search may take you to the App, but not the content within.

I would have never expected to see Apps over take Web pages, but this phenomena is getting so strong that it has and will create a New Internet  or Branch of the Internet that will keep evolving with the phenomena of  mobile usage case.  As we saw a strong growth in the area of SEO, SEM of the last 10 years, will we see a new form of SEO called SEOA ( Search Engine Optimization for Apps)?

Regardless of where this all goes, there is clearly new business opportunities for the SEO’s to start to design services and products for Application Publishers and Developers in designing their marketing and discovery platforms in a new way that is related to this phenomena of the mobile usage case.

We all know that after the Superbowl on the following weekend starts the Vancouver2010 Olympics ( #VO2010, #Olympics, #Van2010). Even though there is a usage case  for people  to use search the web during the superbowl, it may not be as much high-density searching as we we are going to probably see globally during the Olympics.  Google’s ad campaign was considered Brand building, but given the fact that Google has over 70% of the search penetration in most countries around the world and on average more then 50%, most likely people at some point during the Olympics are most likely going to be coming to Google and searching for an event information, results, etc… anyway regardless of brand building. Why was it so important to start this now when Google has made a statement they do not believe in this form of advertising in the past?

Up until now, Google has not been spending money on traditional media. Moreover, for an event like the Olympics,  sponsors are dishing out 100′s of Millions of $$$ for brand building. Google has traditionally used search and its own assets in search results at the top of the page as their form of marketing.  As they have said, “We are not keen on tweaking the organic results, but always like to follow their regimented strategic algorithms for determining what gets on the top of the pages”.  Some of the best marketing during the Olympics is going to come through Search during the weeks the events are live.  What I found interesting was that Google has really built up  its own strategy as a method to get the maximum exposure to their own properties without spending money on traditional media.    Have you seen their initiative around Google Earth and the 3D creations of all the different venues as a form of sponsorship?  Google offered to do these 3D models of the venues as a service for the Olympics Events.  I find this a very interesting offer, but can only imagine that the real reason behind this is to give themselves good ranking if the Olympics puts these links on the pages of Olympics site.  They become the masters of their own game, a way to use their own algorithms to finesse the system to give Google assets high-ranking during the events; thus driving traffic to Google maps for visitors to find local information on the go during the events.  With the billions of Dollars spent by the sponsors during the events, Google may have just again gotten away with a kind-of-freebie for its own marketing efforts to potential spoof the traditional marketing system.  This is only my guess, but it somehow makes sense to me. Would love the gamet of SEO experts out there to comment on this if you can?

Back to the Superbowl…..so then why did they buy advertising the week before?  Again I am only thinking and guessing and I do not have facts to support this, but again it makes sense to me in the greater scheme of things this kind of thinking:

If Google is getting all this search traffic during the Olympics for somewhat free at the expense of the traditional sponsors by leveraging their own algorithms to their own advantage, it might just kick-up a stir amongst traditional media  in the effect that Google using its own engine to get marketing value and  not spending money on traditional media.  ” Oh No”, they can say….. did you see we do spend money on traditional media as well. Did you see our ads that ran last week?  So by spending money on traditional media from time and again makes for a good balanced media strategy when the pundits start to sniff…..Smart I would think.

Again, I am only thinking from the standpoint of business strategy and it makes perfect sense to master mind the shell game of spending money on different media.  In this case for them,  the pea is under all the shells?…… for us, maybe there never was a pea?