Don’t underestimate this shift. Many people scoff at a service like twitter with the typical comment of “what’s its business model”. I used this same identity model in a presentation at an industry a meeting last month. Twitter was referred to as Pets.com. The fact is it doesn’t matter if Twitter is ultimately successful or not. My identity will not be a whole owned subsidiary of the operator as it is today. Today it is fragmented and it get worse before it gets better.

I am a modern day Sybil, I have multiple identities in the new world. I am my Facebook account to one group of people, LinkedIn to another. I broadcast myself with YouTube and Twitter. My tastes are recorded with Pandora or Spotify. I am everywhere. This brings tremendous opportunity for something to hold my fractured self together.

So as my identity splits and distributes, what will keep me together? It could be a service like FriendFeed that collates all my communication into a single stream, maybe it is an OpenID that represents me across all my services. But in the near future, I think it is the mobile. The open mobile handset can provide what others cannot: a single touch point that massages my Communication Entertainment into a manageable incoming and outgoing stream.

There are tremendous opportunities in the space for developers to build applications to help me tie my multiple personalities together.  Think about it. Today the mobile can receive all my communication; I consume the internet with the mobile. Today the mobile holds the addresses of my connections. Using these two pieces in conjunction will add structure to an otherwise chaotic mass of data. The one who can structure my connections and communication into the most elegant user experience will be the one who owns my identity.

And owning my identity is an extremely powerful concept.

Not only did it get Ma Bell split up, but it also is recognized as such an issue that LNP, Local Number Portability was created to allow me to switch my local provider

Interestingly as Google owns more and more of  our identity, it is increasingly the subject of anti-trust discussion.

More than anything else the internet has changed the scale of things. This is something we see in the web’s early winners. They worked to drive massive scale into everything. The local bookstore is no longer relevant, because of Amazon[1]‘s massive reach. The garage sale? No way, not with eBay opening my garage to a billion people. Tom Friedman wrote a best selling book The World is Flat all about how the internet has enabled unprecedented scale in our workforce. Facebook allows us to expand our network of friends from the people we see, to the people we have crossed paths with in the past. Does a small group of academics publish an encyclopedia? not anymore the global community writes Wikipedia.

That is scale. Everything has become massive. What chance does the small guy have when everything is done on a massive scale because of the Internet?

Well the above is the story of the Internet. It is interesting but it is not what I find hugely compelling. What I find hugely compelling is the mobile Internet. The mobile Internet does something different. I still get access to the Large Flat world. My social network is still unbounded. However, the mobile Internet is not the Internet on your phone. It is your phone on the Internet and it brings with it something unique each times it goes there. It brings location. Now the internet doesn’t only connect me to a large flat world. It increasingly connects me to my small local surroundings. The mobile Internet isn’t about me a global citizen. That was the internet. The Mobile Internet is about hyper connecting me to my locale, it’s about augmenting my reality. Small is the next big thing. This phenomenon in known by many names today, but I like to think of it as balancing the scales.

I would love your thoughts on this.

To paraphrase: He told me my blog was full of the same pedantic crap we always hear. “Take risks don’t be afraid to fail.”

I took this feedback to heart and came up with a two step plan.

1. Find a new source for feedback

2. Explain the evolving ecosystem in my blog

He is right in that we have heard this story of risk taking for years most notably Clayton Christensen work on disruptive technology in the Innovator’s Dilemma. So why is today different?  I say that the mobile ecosystem is more open today than ever before and that openness is accelerating. The open ecosystem in mobile is turning the balance of power upside down. It is creating a lot of discomfort for the establishment (which admittedly I am a part of). As I said in You will Fail, there will be more losers than winners in the open world. But the open world shifts the scales.

I am a big fan of Chris Anderson, for those that don’t know Chris is the editor of Wired Magazine.  About 5 years ago he became famous for his theory of the Long Tail and today for his book about Free. The concept is simple. In the past the content industry was dominated by hits because shelf space was limited. Book Stores made all their money from Dan Brown or JK Rowling for example. But the internet has lowered distribution cost and made it profitable for distributors to sell niche products. That’s it in a nutshell. It isn’t about the hits will no longer make tons of money. Just that you can distribute niche products profitably because you have unlimited shelf space. Amazon can sell 10 copies of a million different books. Now the author who wrote the book that sells 10 copies is still broke. But Amazon can make money off him.

But this simple concept is a huge factor in the emerging open ecosystem of the mobile. The current application store model has shelf space for everyone’s applications. All developers big and small will be able to address the market of 4 billion handsets. Now the people who create a great application that sells 10 copies will Fail, and as a said in post #1 that is everyone!  But what if you are the 1 in 100,  the 3 friends who create a cool app that sells for a $0.99 and gets .01% market penetration. That’s real money. That is the chance to build something exciting. You don’t need huge market penetration numbers when you are small and the market is 4 billion.

The open ecosystem and the long tail throws scale upside down. Sure there will still be behemoths. But there is opportunity for small guys to get out there. $400000 in revenue isn’t interesting to the handset makers or big software guys, but to three friends in a garage $400K lets you change the world.

The opening of the ecosystem put the little guy in the drivers seat. Sony Ericsson will continue to make great applications to provide Communication Entertainment devices but it is the small developer who will make themobile handset the computing platform of choice for consuming the internet.

Standard HR speak says that Meets Expectations is a good review. “We have high standards”, they say.

You know there is a word for something that meets expectations, a commodity.

The people I am most interested in are at either end of the spectrum. It is obvious that the “exceeds expectations” are your stars. I want to give them enough freedom so they too can miss expectations, to fail

Here is the problem, software used to be hard. Today it is easy and cheap. I can find thousands of people to develop exactly what I ask for. I can get a delivery that will meet my every expectation. The problem is if I can find thousands of people to do that and so can my competitors.

Find me someone who is will to do something different. Find me someone who is willing to miss expectations. Find me someone who is willing to go for the gold at the risk of coming up short, because honestly I am not in the commodity business.

You don’t want to be either.

The open mobile ecosystem is a huge improvement. Small developers now have the ability to provide their service or application without the third party deciding for the customer if it is good or not. This is the mark of a truly open system, the freedom to access the customer. The internet levels the playing field. Everyone (even 3 guys in the garage) has the opportunity to develop and market their application to the world.

So why then let Sony Ericsson play gatekeeper? So why PlayNow arena Applications?

Take this as my thoughts and not Sony Ericsson’s: Not everyone wants to buy from just anybody. Some consumers need help; some people need curation of content.  These people want to go to a trusted market place. Sony Ericsson can provide that trust to the consumer[i]. Yes, the model of being able to sell your application through multiple venues is a huge improvement. It lets you address more of the market but it comes with the risk of being lost in a crowd of crapware. In my mind, this is the number one promise of PlayNow Arena applications, a promise of high quality. Most consumers want to be free from the burden of too much choice, having an application in PlayNow Arena allows the consumer to choose from a set of high quality apps instead of wading through the bins.

I struggle with whether this is right topic for my first blog post. It is so negative, but it is important to accept the truth, you will fail. Why is it important? Because as they say, the truth will set you free!

Many of you have looked at the emerging application stores at Sony Ericsson and elsewhere and have started counting your riches and the fame you will gain from developing the killer app. The truth is most everyone reading this blog will fail in developing that killer app.  It is this one simple fact that has turned the mobile industry on its head.

Why? The truth will set you free.

Being free to fail, will allow you to conquer. You can risk failure. You can innovate, waste resources, put out betas, and thousands of other things that may not work seamlessly with the rest of the handset.

You can afford to suck. But maybe, just maybe you will be the 1 in 100 that will not suck. That 1 in 100 chance is tough for big companies to invest in but not you, you have the freedom to fail.

The application store above all else lowers the barrier between you and the consumer. It gives you the ultimate chance to create and fail. I hope you are the 1 in 100 and don’t fail. When you don’t fail you can change the world and nothing is more rewarding than that.

Keep checking back to my blog, it could be interesting to watch me fail.