And so it goes with social networking. Lured like lemmings to the cliff edge we all embraced Facebook in its simplest form as a great way to communicate with friends and family, keep up to date with our circle of friends and even extend that circle to our friend’s circles, and so on. What a romantic notion that something that would radically change our lives and take up so much of our spare time would always be free.

Whilst Mr Zuckerberg may have started with the same altruistic notion, the moment his ‘baby’ grew up and had to morph into a public corporation with all the pressures of sustainability, making money and distributing profits to shareholders, the whole game changed. The objective now is to use every possible opportunity to confront all those freeloading ‘faces’ with advertisements, offers and add-ons that have to paid for in order to fill the Facebook coffers.

To be fair, this is not a dilemma unique to Facebook. Almost every other ‘free’ online social scene-setter aims to get numbers up first by being free, then attracting investment against those numbers to allow even more expansion. Once it achieves enough momentum, and a viable number of subscribers, the founders and early investors push for an IPO or exit by sale and the whole thing emerges, hopefully, as a moneymaker.

However, unlike the successful case studies taught in business school, not all can make the transition successfully, and like their ‘dotcom bust’ predecessors, many will disappear without a trace. Tumblr, the six-year-old blog network that months ago began letting advertisers pay for prominent placement, expects to make its first annual profit this year after extending the feature to smartphones. Tumblr even tells advertisers to come up with campaigns that will spread through the network like its other content.

Teenagers are a good measure of what’s “cool.” Observing which apps they use and how they interact with technology can help the rest of us spot budding trends and lately it seems teens have grown tired of Facebook. MSN says that recent trend reports indicate that teens and tweens are now ‘kinda bored’ with Mark Zuckerberg’s social network, flocking instead to fresher services like the photo-sharing and filtering service Instagram and Snapchat.

Part of the appeal is that parents are less clued-in to these newer tools, so they can be enjoyed more furtively. Facebook actually warned investors of its declining cool factor recently, noting, “Some of our users have reduced their engagement with Facebook in favor of increased engagement with other products and services such as Instagram.” But before you start seeing the writing on the wall for Zuckerberg, don’t forget: Facebook owns Instagram, too.

Not long ago, many Instagram users were locked out of their accounts with a demand that they produce some government-issued documentation to prove their identity. Many on the forum said they thought the notice was a phishing ploy to get personal information. This comes after Facebook had infuriated users ofInstagram by changing its terms of service to allow it to sell peoples’ uploaded photos or related data. The change led to an outpouring of anger online — although the move echoes similar moves made by other services, such as Twitpic in 2011, which are allied to fast-moving micro-blogging services such as Twitter. Even Twitter is looking at becoming more commercial with ad placements.

But getting back to the point, if things take their natural course we may soon see sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram offering an ad-free option – presuming you are willing to pay NOT to be annoyed!

First published as The Insider at TM Forum

It really was no fun cramming onto buses and trains to get to the venue. Taxis were plentiful but restricted in movement because of poor management and traffic control in and around the venue. The distances people had to walk each day would qualify them for an Olympic event. There was barely any under-cover seating, but plenty of outdoor garden space that was only usable when temperatures reached 10 degrees centigrade or it wasn’t raining. Some even resorted to using toilets as temporary work seats! And the food, even with 54 outlets, was passable at best.

The new venue can only be described as an island smack in the middle of an industrial sea. It is large (very large), yet functional, has no cobblestones (a blessing), provides undercover walkways along its 1.2 kilometre span and despite having 72,000 people tramping over its nine massive halls, it coped really well. Barcelona itself is probably one of the few cities in Europe that can survive such a massive influx of people all needing accommodation, restaurants and bars to melt into after a hard day in the congress. Not to mention the endless round of parties, dinners and special functions put on to woo customers and press. No wonder people leave exhausted each year.

Yet all of this combined means that in one place for four days each year you can see, meet and hear almost every key player in the GSM mobile world. And there lies its secret. The glitz, the ritzy exhibits, the partially clad promo girls, the gimmicks, the giveaways are all inconsequential when you get down to the business of doing business. No longer do people turn up at events like MWC just to attend the conference sessions, walk the stands or attend the parties, they all come here to network in person and do business.

For suppliers, all their customers and prospects are in one place for one week. No need to send sales teams around the globe to meet with them, they come to you. And not just the managers and directors, there are more telco C-levels in Barcelona for MWC than are left behind in the office. For suppliers and operators alike, if you are not seen at MWC you are either out of business or out of a job.

Forget virtual social networking, this is good old-fashioned, physical networking at its best. Most meetings are arranged ahead of time and stands are changing slowly from gaudy temples pulling in passer-bys to sophisticated business environments complete with comfortable meeting rooms, lounges, bars, espresso machines and delicacies including Swiss chocolates, Portuguese egg tarts, French pastries and wines from every corner of the globe. Ericsson even recreated a village market square complete with food vendors on tricycles and roads taking prospects on ‘journeys’ into customer experience and network performance.

All of that aside, the most pleasing aspect of this year’s MWC was the appearance of so many digital service players. Carmaker, Ford, had a massive presence showing off its connected car solutions. There were e-Health players, smart grid and utility suppliers, m-Payment providers and the event itself was NFC-enabled. Hall 8 was packed with the most amazing application developments and mobile marketing purveyors. It was not quite moving the mountain but it was great to see the digital and telecom worlds really getting together after years of playing around.

Above all, the indications are that despite our worst fears of declining revenues and margin erosion there was a real appetite, not just for the delicacies mentioned above, but for venturing into new business opportunities with new partners. There is no doubt the digital economy is ramping up, and it looks like the telcos may actually be along for the ride.

First posted as The Insider at TM Forum

There is some merit to the argument when you consider that regulation stemmed from the old PSTN days when telecommunications was a national security asset operated by a government-owned monopoly. Regulation was established mainly to protect it. But when markets were eventually allowed to open up and ‘deregulation’ did take place, the regulator’s tack changed to protect the new players from unfair competition emanating from the monopolies they were trying to establish a beachhead against.

Now that most markets have multiple established fixed line, ISP and mobile operators competing on more even ground, the need for anti-competitive regulation and even universal service fund obligations are probably no longer viable or required. This alone should have been a fair enough argument by the operators, but they took it one step further in Barcelona.

Franco Bernabè, CEO of Telecom Italia complained that regulation and taxation in the industry harked back to days of high margins from a decade back, saying that the mobile industry was burdened by a ‘dated’ regime while struggling to compete. Vittorio Colao, CEO of Vodafone, said that the telecoms groups would talk to the European regulator in Barcelona and that he favored an approach that factors in pan-European scale, rather than one based on a single country. He also backed proposals for a single European regulator to help this happen and, when you take into account the inconsistencies across Europe, that argument makes eminent sense.

Surprise, surprise even AT&T’s CEO, Randall Stephenson, said he was “in violent agreement’ with his European counterparts, and that alone has to be a first! The conspiracy theorists are, no doubt, thinking all the CEO comments are a pre-meditated attack on the regulators, but the fact remains that all of them really do believe that it’s time to change the playing field.

CSPs are no longer competing just with each other; they are fighting a new battle for revenue from everyone that uses their network resources, not just their customers. This is the real world. They might believe that everyone that uses the digital highway should pay the toll, but that is simply not viable, at least for now. The big traffic comes from the OTT players like YouTube and Netflix, and the guys appearing to be making the most money are Google and, to lesser but growing extent, Facebook.

Turk Telekom Group CEO, Hakam Kanafani, held back no punches when he suggested on the TM Forum’s Business Transformation Panel that the very same regulation that CSPs had to abide by should be extended to everyone that used their networks, i.e. the OTT players. He felt clearly disadvantaged that his company was regulated, yet those using his network were free to do whatever they liked, especially with regard to capturing personal information. Is that a fair point?

The digital services players, however, are not only not hindered by regulation, they are also not hindered by all those legacy systems that burden CSPs. They live in an all-IP world. What do they care for the differences between copper, fiber, 2G, 3G and 4G mobile networks. They have less business processes to worry about, less delivery platforms and very simple subscriber and unit pricing models when delivering content or apps. They give voice away simply because the cost of billing it exceeds the margins earned and most only sell to customers that have bought pre-paid cards in shops or have credit/debit cards.

They don’t have extensive customer care operations, in many cases none. They run lean and mean – so should they be penalized for their efficiency just because their CSO counterparts are stuck suffering because everything they implement has to ‘backward compatible’?

Come on CEOs, stop griping and start fighting back. Maybe it’s time to dump the legacy and meet the challenge of the new competition on an even footing or, better still, start acting like OTT players yourselves.

First published at TM Forum as The Insider

Don’t get me wrong, they are both serious issues, but the latter should have Facebook users that choose to login to other sites using their Facebook credentials shaking in their shoes. How many sites now allow you to login using Facebook, your Microsoft account and others? Why anyone would opt for Facebook login for anything but Facebook defies logic. The whole idea of having different logins is to protect oneself from hacking in one vulnerable site that could expose the user’s personal accounts on other sites.

Twitter accounts for Burger King and Jeep were also compromised this week. As AdAge digital points out, “Twitter began as a platform for people to send short, mass messages, and as brands began to uncover its usefulness, they, too, jumped in. Today Twitter essentially treats as equals – brands with millions of followers and people with only a handful – offering one standard account type to serve both.” But the breaches certainly point to the need for a distinction.

Twitter declined to comment on the hacks, citing the privacy of individual accounts. But Gizmodo has made a speculative ID of the hacker based on the content of his tweets and posts that the Burger King account was breached by resetting a password via a compromised email account. Great, that might help find the culprit but there will be another tomorrow and the day after. Damn the excuses, the accounts were hacked and if Twitter wants to raise its status and remain viable it simply cannot allow these things to happen.

So many internet sites and social networks only require single factor authentication when most banks now require at least two. Speed and simplicity, however desirable, may prove to be a liability for many, but carrying around bags of security tokens is not be a viable alternative either.

It raises questions of whether identity and security should be inextricably linked but that also raises the question of who or what will be trustworthy enough to be act as the secure handler of those security details, and what if they are compromised. Governments, CSPs and banks have all been mooted as potential trusted partners, and even though they sound like far more secure options than Facebook as identity brokers, they too are a risk.

Consumers are advised to have a different login and password for all access to secure sites so that if any one site is compromised their information can’t be randomly used on other sites to gain access. But if you have logins to hundreds of sites, how can you possibly remember them all, especially if they have been created by those clever password generators?

Oh yes, there are those password storage applications that have proliferated on mobile platforms that store encrypted information in the cloud so it can be accessed by all your devices. They are brilliant in concept, design and operation but who are they created by, where is the data stored and who manages the encryption. I’m not saying that any of them cannot be trusted but if you plan to keep all your confidential information in a safe place you should probably check just how safe it is. If you can, that is!

So, what’s the solution? Stopping all access to any site via the internet is a start, but is no guarantee. Reverting to cash, writing cheques and quitting all web-based portals that hold any of your information might work, but is it really an option, e.g. you or your house could get robbed or your date may not be deleted. Having multiple virtual identities, if you can remember them is another.  As more and more ‘free’ social sites revert to any means of ‘monetization’ the options of being safe and secure are reduced. we are in danger fo killing of the digital age before we even get into it.

So, what’s left?

First published at TM Forum as The Insider