giffgaff, the people-powered network to whom we gave (what we thought was) a fair preview of, has released a teensy bit of news about their pricing. Well, that’s not strictly true, but we’ll come back to that part shortly….
giffgaff loves you
The ‘news’, coming in the form of a blog post from marketing chief, Kylie (no – not that one), explains that based on the feedback they’ve received so far, they’re now not really sure what kind of tariffs to launch with. While this may seem odd and somewhat indecisive on the part of the not-yet-launched MVNO, giffgaff have opened the question out to the blog readers:
“…we need your help. How do you think we should charge? Per minute / per text? Or bundles? Or something else?”
This is pretty much unheard of in the carrier space and we can only applaud giffgaff for sticking to their ‘people-powered’ principles.
While this isn’t actually news about the pricing (it’s more along the lines of ‘um.. we don’t know yet’) what the post does go on to say is that data on giffgaff will be totally and utterly free*.
Yes, that’s right… FREE*.
But not the kind of free* that you’re used to, not the kind of free* that comes along with a ‘fair use policy’, no, no. This is free* until we build the billing system!
“When we launch, data will be free. Honestly, that’s because we won’t have had time to build the bit of our backend system to charge for it, and yet we don’t want to launch without data – so we thought we’d just let you have it.
All we ask is that you don’t take the mickey, and that you do give something back by topping up, making calls, answering some questions, doing some marketing etc.”
That’s not too bad is it? Free data for the period of time it takes us to build the billing system. That’s certainly honest guys. Good work.
So the news from giffgaff:
We (still) don’t know our tariffs and data will be free until we know how to charge for it.
Honesty is the best policy but – with respect – this is still looking vague guys. Admittedly we haven’t come to visit yet, (we really are hideously busy day job wise), but it is on our to do list.
PS. Give us something a little more convincing and we might be convinced 😉
Hat tip to contributor Ricky Chotai for spotting this one.
This isn’t a rant about how much I despise prose and rhyme in all its forms, no, no. Of poetry, I am a fan.
Something else I am a fan of is bloody good theatre and bloody good theatre is something that I saw last night.
Bloody Poetry – a play written by Howard Brenton and currently showing at the White Bear Theatre in Kennington – is not a play I’m familiar with, however I must say that it was thoroughly enjoyable. Good theatre is often difficult to seek out in London. Often you find yourself paying way over the odds to watch a cast that would be lucky to get a walk-on part on Hollyoaks (the West End production of Lord of the Rings for instance). However, with Bloody Poetry, I was fortunate to be entertained by not only a bloody good script, but also a fantastic troupe of bloody good actors.
The piece itself tells the tale of two great poets of our time – Shelley and Byron – and how they first met on the shores of Lake Geneva, then of the subsequent summer of love that followed…
I’ll admit I originally only went along to support my dear friend and old acting partner, Alex Barclay. He’s a damn fine actor and appears in the play as Doctor Polidori, biographer to Lord Byron. I haven’t seen Al in a few months, so I saw last night as a chance to catch up and say hi etc…
But I’m not writing this post for him (sorry Al – I love you really).
I’m putting this post together because the play really is that good. I came out beaming. Byron is perfectly pitched as the horny, swashbuckling cad he no doubt was back in his day. Providing some humorous asides throughout the performance, just think of Rik Mayall’s Lord Flashheart, add in some poetic pathos and you’re there. Ellie Turner – cast as soon-to-be author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley – brings a fantastic realism and stoic worldly-ness to a woman who no doubt would have felt almost on the outskirts of the strange quartet that forms around her. Wise beyond her years, her talent is plain to see and was played perfectly. It feels rude to neglect the rest of the cast (who were all excellent) but I fear I am rambling so will leave you with a piece of blurb from the website and booking details too.
If you’re in London and you fancy something different one night this October, go and see Bloody Poetry, you won’t be disappointed.
“Percy Bysshe Shelley, radical nonconformist, poet, essayist, and committed vegetarian, fled England in 1816 with Mary Shelley and her step-sister Claire Clairmont.
Faced with unrest at home and Revolution abroad, England in 1816 had become a repressive surveillance state; exile was both a choice and a necessity for a poet who advocated for social justice, practised free love and opposed inherited power in any form.
On 25th May 1816, the Shelleys met Lord Byron on the shore of Lake Geneva. Together with Byron’s physician, Dr Polidori, the group spent the summer together, during which Mary began writing ‘Frankenstein’ and Byron and Shelley deepened their friendship. ‘Bloody Poetry’ explores the personal and political passions which drove these young writers and the obstacles they faced. It celebrates their daring while revealing their humanity. As a qualified idealist, Shelley still dares us to dream:
“The great instrument of moral good is the imagination. We must not let it become diseased…We might be all we dream of, happy, high, majestical. Where is the love, beauty and truth we seek, but in our mind? Poets are the legislators of mankind!—
The play runs Tuesday – Sunday until the end of this month. Tickets are £12.00 (£10.00 concessions) and are available from the White Bear Box Office website.
POST UPDATED 12/10/09 – Scroll to the bottom of the article for the latest…
Vodafone, oh Vodafone, why do you upset me so?
Regular readers of my work will know that I have an ongoing love affair with Vodafone UK, or ‘Big Red’ as I affectionately call her.
A mini Voda-moan
We’ve had our ups, our downs and our fallings-out, but over the years we’ve grown to appreciate our mutual quirks and subsequent relationship demands. Lo and verily, today we have another… hurdle to overcome.
Some of you may remember me wondering just where my handset of the moment, the N86, would land when it reached these shores. I speculated that it would be land on the lap of Big Red, but alas they passed and plumped instead for the N97.
Ah well.
So far, so what eh?
Being the Nokia aficionado that I am however, I wasn’t going to let a small thing like no carrier support prevent me from owning my handset of choice, so I promptly went out and bought one.
End of story, right? Wrong.
Thing is, among the myriad of reasons for me having been a Vodafone customer for the best part of 15yrs, one of them – today at least – is its home portal, currently going under the name of Vodafone Live!
It’s through this portal that I find music, games and mainly, my train times. I don’t drive and when I make plans, I keep them. I often plan my journeys with an almost military-like precision and Vodafone ‘My Trains’ is an invaluable service that I use pretty much every day, without fail.
From here I may choose to visit different parts of the Live! service… but this particular saved bookmark is nearly always my jumping off point.
Now, look at these two pictures….
Something’s wrong with the one on the right, right? Of course there is.
Even worse though is this, the Vodafone Live Homepage:
Both pages are from http://live.vodafone.com, both are connected using the Vodafone Live APN. The only difference is the handset I used; my old N95 8GB is on the left and on the right, my beloved N86.
Using the WAP access point will give you best chance of it rendering properly however it maybe a case of it not being Vodafone Live! compatible if it’s not rendering normally through the WAP access point. It may be worth posting your settings on the eForum to make sure everything is set up as much as it can be bearing in mind the N86 isn’t a phone we stock. Thanks.
The first part is fine. Naturally I’d check to make sure I was using VF Live as the default access point. I did. I am. The latter part, ‘bear in mind isn’t a phone we stock’… hmm. This was backed up and re-iterated by a couple ofVodafone staffers who also said ‘we don’t support phones we don’t range’.
This is also fine. A perfectly justifiable reason for not rendering your web pages. However, to me at least, this is EXACTLY the reason that you should be doing just that for these devices. Here I am, with a T-Mobile exclusive device (for argument’s sake) and I’m looking for a new network. I decide on Vodafone and sign on for a SIM-only deal. Then I discover that my phone isn’t supported on their webpages, so I decide to go somewhere else.
You see where I’m going with this, right?
The N86 is a similar screen size, build and design to the not-too-shabby (and Vodafone supported) Nokia N85. If it’s a simple case of switching the user agent* sniffer to present the N85 screens for the N86, then this is not a big job. Nor is it complex. Quick fix. Done.
*For the uninitiated, a user agent is basically the identifier string for the browser that you use when you browse the web (mobile or otherwise). For instance, the user agent string for the N85 looks something like this:
(Thanks to friend of Really Mobile Richard Hyndman, CTO at Mippin for that extra detail)
A final thought…
Back in my youth, while working through college, I had a friend who spent a his time working at a rather large chain of fast-food restaurants. The Manager of which had a policy that meant that for any food voucher or special offer coupon presented at the counter, no matter for which chain (be it for McDonald’s, Burger King, Wimpy etc), if they could fulfilit then they would honour the voucher.
As he told me at the time:
“It is better to please someone else’s customer who might come back another day than to tell them you’re not interested and never see them again.”
————- UPDATED – 12/10/09 ————-
A member of @VodafoneUK’s PR team has literally just been in touch to let us know that the Vodafone Live! pages have now indeed been provisioned for the Nokia N86.
Here’s a screen shot to prove it…
Huzzah! It's a-Live!
Congrats Vodafone, you’ve just earned 20 ReallyMobile points.
As the title suggests, it is indeed, time for a new adventure.
Today I’m doing just that by joining 1000heads as Engagement Strategy Director.
I’ve been aware of and worked alongside many different people from 1000heads (aka ‘the word of mouth people’) over the past four years, and they’ve always impressed me with their ideas, professionalism and more than anything else, their ethics. We’ve often shared stories about our respective projects & conversation ideals and very recently I had the opportunity to talk to them much more openly about my long term plans and ambitions.
It was the synergy that came from these meetings that made me realise that working with 1000heads was clearly the next logical step in my career. When it transpired that they felt the same way, everything just fell into place…
Even if you don’t know of 1000heads, you might not be surprised to hear that they are word of mouth (WOM) specialists. The company works with a range of clients from various industries to understand and engage with their consumers, from Nokia and 3Mobile to Canon, STA Travel, Sky and the BBC.
I am absolutely over the moon about joining the ‘heads and can’t wait to sink my teeth into the work ahead. I’ve already been into the office to meet some of the team and I’m going to spend this coming week getting up to speed with the accounts, campaigns and overall strategies I’ll be working on in the coming months.
After an eventful summer (where I really feel like I’ve been getting my hands dirty again), this move makes complete sense to me and well, I look forward to telling you all about the new adventures, as they happen.
Ten days ago reports were coming in that Nokia had purchased the super smart online travel sharing service, Dopplr. The one liner that I dedicated to it in my last post ended with ‘apparently’. This was an addition which, at the time, made perfect sense.
Noppler?
You see, at the time of writing, the story itself had come from a source that TechCrunch described as ‘close to the deal’ but, no had yet come forward to confirm.
Then, one week ago, a rather short but sweet blog post appeared on Dopplr confirming the sale but not really releasing any further details on the intricacies of the deal.
However, there were some nuggets of information given away. The final paragraph in particular is key:
The acquisition does not change the current Dopplr service which is available at Dopplr.com and on platforms where Dopplr is integrated, like Flickr and Twitter. As always, if you so wish, you can get a copy of your data from your account.
See that?
First up. ‘The acquisition does not change the current Dopplr service…’. So this is good news right? Of course it is. I mean, you wouldn’t expect them to suddenly shut up shop right? All the users that currently exist aren’t going to all be poured into one large Nokia silo… are they?
The next thing to take away is the ‘…on platforms where Dopplr is integrated’ part of the sentence. Dopplr, my friends, is available on the iPhone.
But will it remain so?
According to the post from Dopplr themselves, we’re leaning towards ‘Yes’. Time will tell.
Soon after the sale, Nokia also announced that Dopplr’s CEO, Marko Ahtissari, was to head up a new design and consumer experience unit within the Finnish HQ.Curiouser and curioser.
The big thing for me here is that as a service on it’s own Dopplr has never really proved that useful. Yes it’s fun to load in your trips on one of those dull days when there’s nothing going on on twitter and you’ve got a spare moment between emails, but has anyone here ever used it for what it is? Your ‘Social Atlas’?
Today, probably not.
But, in the future maybe? Yes. Maybe.
You see when the announcement was first made and the release landed on my desk, the first thing I instinctively said was ‘Makes perfect sense‘. Why? Well, you all remember Nokia announcing at Nokia World about their Social Location ambitions right?
You don’t? Let me remind you with the words from Nokia CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo:
“Automatically lets you avert traffic jams or crowds. By putting together your location, your contacts, you get mashups. I love this idea. Imagine what can happen when we mash up social networking and your location, when your device knows where you are, where your friends are and what they are doing. Your social location, or SoLo will become your here-and-now-identity.â€
Combine that (ok admittedly rather vague) way of thinking into Ovi Maps (that’s the Ovi Maps that’s shipping on every mid-to-high-end Nokia device from now until forever by the way) which also, is now including their latest feature ‘Good Things’. You can begin to see where Nokia are going…
Good Things for those that missed it, is Nokia’s new way for Ovi Maps users to share their favourite places around the world. This is from the Nokia Conversations blog post:
It’s made up of three key elements. The first is the ability to spot Good Things on the map, where you can click on each one to find out more information, add it to a route or to your favourites. There’s also a live Good Things feed which shows the latest good things, as they’re added. And of course the key part is the ability for you to add your own Good Things. Once you’ve found where on the map you’d like to add, you just drag a Good Things pin onto the map to add it. Fill in a couple of details, walk through the security check and you’re good to go. You’ve made the mapped world a better place.
Make sense? Of course it does. User generated reviews populating your navigation. It’s all coming together nicely. Now let’s compare that to the contents of Dopplr’s about page:
Dopplr is a service for smart international travellers. Dopplr members share personal and business travel plans privately with their networks, and exchange tips on places to stay, eat and explore in cities around the world. Dopplr presents this collective intelligence – the travel patterns, tips and advice of the world’s most frequent travellers – as a Social Atlas.
What else can we add into this? Well, one of the really useful parts of Dopplr – one that I’ve been paying attention to of late, is the Carbon Calculator. Once your trips are complete, Dopplr, powered by AMEE, gives you an overview of your carbon emissions for that trip. Admittedly while there is no option currently to immediately recompense the climate for your travel, this information is handy for when you get round to doing it yourself.
It’s at this point that I’m reminded of several Nokia false start applications: Nokia viNe, Friendview and also, WE:OFFSET.
The former is a life-streaming service which was bascially a jazzed up version of Sports Tracker. Friendview, Nokia’s very own Google Latitude and of course WE:OFFSET, an application that monitors where you are and works out your emissions based on your methods of travel.
If Social Location really is the future as Nokia insist (and I’m leaning towards agreeing with them), what other mobile applications/services/experiments can they bring into the mix to really spice things up?
Your thoughts and comments as always, are welcome.
Ten days ago reports were coming in that Nokia had purchased the super smart online travel sharing service, Dopplr. The one liner that I dedicated to it in my last post ended with ‘apparently’. This was an addition which, at the time, made perfect sense.
Noppler?
You see, at the time of writing, the story itself had come from a source that TechCrunch described as ‘close to the deal’ but, no had yet come forward to confirm.
Then, one week ago, a rather short but sweet blog post appeared on Dopplr confirming the sale but not really releasing any further details on the intricacies of the deal.
However, there were some nuggets of information given away. The final paragraph in particular is key:
The acquisition does not change the current Dopplr service which is available at Dopplr.com and on platforms where Dopplr is integrated, like Flickr and Twitter. As always, if you so wish, you can get a copy of your data from your account.
See that?
First up. ‘The acquisition does not change the current Dopplr service…’. So this is good news right? Of course it is. I mean, you wouldn’t expect them to suddenly shut up shop right? All the users that currently exist aren’t going to all be poured into one large Nokia silo… are they?
The next thing to take away is the ‘…on platforms where Dopplr is integrated’ part of the sentence. Dopplr, my friends, is available on the iPhone.
But will it remain so?
According to the post from Dopplr themselves, we’re leaning towards ‘Yes’. Time will tell.
Soon after the sale, Nokia also announced that Dopplr’s CEO, Marko Ahtissari, was to head up a new design and consumer experience unit within the Finnish HQ.Curiouser and curioser.
The big thing for me here is that as a service on it’s own Dopplr has never really proved that useful. Yes it’s fun to load in your trips on one of those dull days when there’s nothing going on on twitter and you’ve got a spare moment between emails, but has anyone here ever used it for what it is? Your ‘Social Atlas’?
Today, probably not.
But, in the future maybe? Yes. Maybe.
You see when the announcement was first made and the release landed on my desk, the first thing I instinctively said was ‘Makes perfect sense‘. Why? Well, you all remember Nokia announcing at Nokia World about their Social Location ambitions right?
You don’t? Let me remind you with the words from Nokia CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo:
“Automatically lets you avert traffic jams or crowds. By putting together your location, your contacts, you get mashups. I love this idea. Imagine what can happen when we mash up social networking and your location, when your device knows where you are, where your friends are and what they are doing. Your social location, or SoLo will become your here-and-now-identity.â€
Combine that (ok admittedly rather vague) way of thinking into Ovi Maps (that’s the Ovi Maps that’s shipping on every mid-to-high-end Nokia device from now until forever by the way) which also, is now including their latest feature ‘Good Things’. You can begin to see where Nokia are going…
Good Things for those that missed it, is Nokia’s new way for Ovi Maps users to share their favourite places around the world. This is from the Nokia Conversations blog post:
It’s made up of three key elements. The first is the ability to spot Good Things on the map, where you can click on each one to find out more information, add it to a route or to your favourites. There’s also a live Good Things feed which shows the latest good things, as they’re added. And of course the key part is the ability for you to add your own Good Things. Once you’ve found where on the map you’d like to add, you just drag a Good Things pin onto the map to add it. Fill in a couple of details, walk through the security check and you’re good to go. You’ve made the mapped world a better place.
Make sense? Of course it does. User generated reviews populating your navigation. It’s all coming together nicely. Now let’s compare that to the contents of Dopplr’s about page:
Dopplr is a service for smart international travellers. Dopplr members share personal and business travel plans privately with their networks, and exchange tips on places to stay, eat and explore in cities around the world. Dopplr presents this collective intelligence – the travel patterns, tips and advice of the world’s most frequent travellers – as a Social Atlas.
What else can we add into this? Well, one of the really useful parts of Dopplr – one that I’ve been paying attention to of late, is the Carbon Calculator. Once your trips are complete, Dopplr, powered by AMEE, gives you an overview of your carbon emissions for that trip. Admittedly while there is no option currently to immediately recompense the climate for your travel, this information is handy for when you get round to doing it yourself.
It’s at this point that I’m reminded of several Nokia false start applications: Nokia viNe, Friendview and also, WE:OFFSET.
The former is a life-streaming service which was bascially a jazzed up version of Sports Tracker. Friendview, Nokia’s very own Google Latitude and of course WE:OFFSET, an application that monitors where you are and works out your emissions based on your methods of travel.
If Social Location really is the future as Nokia insist (and I’m leaning towards agreeing with them), what other mobile applications/services/experiments can they bring into the mix to really spice things up?
Your thoughts and comments as always, are welcome.
I’m sat at the back of Virgin Atlantic flight VS039 en route to Chicago. I’ve never been to the windy city before, for all intents and purposes it looks like I’m not going to see much of it either.
We’re just passing through…
Our final destination today, July 18th 2009, is Billings Airport, Montana. From there we are to be transferred to The Hideout ranch some four hours drive outside of the airport, over the state line into Wyoming.
All this travel is for challenge two of Lucozade’s Summer of Energy Challenges and time we’re Cattle Ranching.
Last week we were sand-boarding in Namibia which, it has to be said, was simply breathtaking. There are hundreds of photos to look at and just a few videos too. As you may know, I have a very, very hectic Summer lined up ahead of me and to say that I’m clocking up ‘a few air miles’ might be somewhat of an understatement.
Strange. I have a note here, it says:
‘Experiment with adjusted images’.
I think I know what I mean. I’ll have a play with that that later…
Moving on…
Through a rather strange set of circumstances, I find myself not sat next to my traveling partner in crime, Sam. But in face next to a young student going by the name of Grant Rostad. He spots my N97 and asks after a play. I offer it up gladly, and also go onto explain how, in my opinion, the N86 (which I’m also carrying) is the far superior device.
“Oh no!†he says “I’m all about having a qwerty keypad, and a touch screen. Those things make a phone for me. “
Americans are such strange creatures.
We talk more and eventually at the very last minute, we grab said N97 and throw a quick podcast together for The Really Mobile Project.
It’s all a bit incidental and a bit geeky too, but I kind of like it.
Later that day, on a different page…
Chicago came and went.
We board the 1547 United Airlines flight to Billings, Montana. THEN a 3hr drive into Wyoming.
Headed for a place known as ‘The Hideout‘ at the foot of the Big Horn Mountains.
Rejoining the ‘Notes from my Moleskine‘ series, we round up the final three pages from the first Lucozade Challenge: Sandboarding in Nambia.
—– Shofat, Manzoor, Sam, Me, Foyce and Suhel —–
Moleskine entry: July 12th, 2009
I’m home, at last…
We were all supposed to be back Saturday (today is Sunday), but early morning fog meant we couldn’t land in Walvis Bay and so we missed our connection. 24hrs in Windhoek, the Namibian capital, ensued. Forget the delay, the most hilarious thing I saw in those 24hrs was our pilot, Elsa, texting the control tower telling them she couldn’t see them
I digress, the important part is:
I am home.
______________________
Learnings & Memories
: Four kids from Brum can be all the company you’ll ever need for an extreme sports holiday to Africa.
The winners for stage two have been drawn and the competition for stage three opens real soon. Between now and then however, I’ll be Cattle Ranching through Wyoming. I’ve never ridden a horse before, let’s see how that works out…
Before I close the book on stage one mind, I need to make sure I write something about Eric & Raymond.
These were the two guys that held our hands and showed us the way the whole time we were there in Namibia. Without them it would’ve a been very, very boring trip and probably quite rubbish too.
Gents, I tip my hat. Thank you, both of you. You made it all worthwhile.
Hero Quest was one of my favourite board games when i was a kid. Yeah you had your Monopoly and your Cluedo, but when it came to getting your Wizard on (and if D&D was too complicated) then Hero Quest was the way to go…
Last night folks, I attended the launch party for Quest TV.
However, because of the trek down to London from my office in Marlow however, I was late and arrived just as they were showing the channel’s idents. These I thought were quite clever and the scope to expand on them is definitely there, but we’ll come back to this one later.
As the evening went on I was introduced to a couple of representatives from Discovery – the television company behind Quest TV, and we spoke about how/why the social media outreach had been done specifically for this Quest TV’s launch. Aside from the low-cost aspect (and subsequent potential ROI), they insisted it was mainly stemmed from their desire to try somethingdifferent.
A courageous move for sure and one that should be applauded. What with there being no real case studies to point to (regarding successes/failures with new ‘old media’ channel launches), they have carte blanche to pretty much do as they please. New TV Channels are a rarity here in the UK, so it’ll be interesting to see how they move this forward; it was noted at the time that the worst thing they could possibly do right now, would be to reach out… and then walk away.
Social media isn’t a channel, it’s the nonsense term applied to all things conversational and online, (these days I’ve taken to calling it ‘the web’), however – sticking to that principal – the web isn’t just another channel either. It opens up a world of interactivity and engagement which has never been seen before, especially in the world of ‘old/traditional’ media.
The idents that I touched upon earlier, are a great example of how the web could be used to further their brand.
Here’s a selection of the ones they had on show last night:
Not bad at all.
I can totally see an online campaign which involves viewers at home producing their own Quest TV idents. The ones shown above are short, fun and relatively easy to make. Why not further the conversation by reaching out to your own ‘users’ to help build the Quest TV brand?
After yesterday’s triple whammy from Ben, Vikki and Dan, it’s time for me to stroll back into Really Mobile town with three stories of my own that I’ve been watching unfold from afar.
Snap, snap, snap...
You see, I’m in Pittsburgh at the moment and, along with a certain Vikki Chowney, I’m helping cover the G20 Summit with Oxfam for the G20Voice project.
However, not only is it the week that the leaders of the world come together and try to do something about the World’s biggest issues (namely: Climate Change), it is also the week that EVERY SINGLE THING IN THE MOBILE WORLD has decided to happen!
First off we had the announcement of a new MVNO from our friends at o2 called, and I kid you not, ‘giffgaff‘. I’ll come back to this shortly.
On top of that, yesterday we also had three, count’em, three mobile development days, with Vodafone, Google and Nokia’s Ovi all wanting to play with our codes.
Google and Ovi we can come back to, there’s nothing new there – Vodafone however, that’s a new one.
(see our quite possibly extremely exclusive UI video for more)
Like I said, much too much to talk about, much too much going on and much too much to catch up on. Let’s get on with it shall we?
giffgaff - bees make honey?
Riff Raff, sorry. Giff Gaff.. Sorry, giffgaff.
What do we have here?
giffgaff is a brand new mobile virtual network operator from deep within the bowels of o2’s HQ. The Really Mobile team had been invited to go along and meet the giffgaff team to see what it’s all about but, what with half of us out of the country and the other half up to their eyeballs with actual work, alas – time was not on our side.
From the press release and from the website so far we can gather that giffgaff will be the first ‘people powered’ network.
Let’s take another look at that release:
“giffgaff, which means ‘to give and receive’, will operate with a low cost base, without the overheads of high street stores, handset subsidies and running large call centres. It offers a simple SIM only tariff and a range of online tools to allow members to self-serve and suggest answers to each other’s questions in online user groups. As well as that, members will be rewarded for things like referring giffgaff to a friend or relative, creating user-generated marketing, or voting on business decisions. The more that members get involved the greater the reward and they will be able to get up to 100 per cent of top-ups back.
giffgaff members have a choice of what to do with their rebate; they can use it for mobile calls and texts, take the cash, or donate it to their preferred charity or fundraising group.â€
So far so good, but aside from that details are thin on the ground:
The Q&A gives little away –
Launch?Before Christmas
Costs?We don’t know
Will it work in my phone?“It will work in any ‘unlocked’ mobile. Find out more about unlocking by searching on Google.”
Coverage?We use o2
Can I pre-register?Not yet.
I’m not being picky, I know some of the folk behind this launch, I just feel there’s not much to go on right now. I’m hoping that we’ll find out more when we get to sit down with one of the fourteen members of staff behind the service. That’s right, fourteen. There’s no phone line support if you have a problem and well, that’s about it.
What we can commend giffgaff for is the seemingly open approach that they’re taking with this ‘launch’. The ‘gaffer’ Mike Fairman, is putting himself front and centre of the network’s communications strategy and is asking for as much feedback as possible. Their blog pages are young and Mike’s twitter profile is gaining followers fast so, what happens next – who knows…
For now, we’ll file this under ‘one to watch’.
But for how long, we’ll wait and see.
I seem to have written a bit more than I thought I would, I’ll come back to Vodafone and Nokia later on today.
This isn’t a rant about how much I despise prose and rhyme in all its forms, no, no. Of poetry, I am a fan.
Moleskine entry: July 18th, 2009
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