Neutrogena 'SkinID' TV Commercial Prompting Text Response

Skin care company Neutrogena is promoting acne remedy "Skin ID" on Disney Channel shows aimed at teens and slightly younger tweens. In the spot I saw teen actress Hayden Panettiere pitches the product, presumably to young girls and women. At the end of the TV spot a prompt to text to a short code flashes on the screen -- no URL, no phone number, just a short code.

NIM Moves into China

Networks in Motion, which is behind VZ Navigator, AAA's mobile app and other carrier navigation apps, is opening an office in China. This is a good and important move for NIM given that free apps with location awareness may limit the growth potential for subscription-based navigation in the US.

Whrrl Improves Neighborhood Awareness

Whrrl, a cross between Loopt and Yelp with a bit of Zvents thrown in, is vying in an increasingly competitive and noisy "mobile social" or "LBS" space for attention. Today the company (Pelago is the company behind Whrrl) announced a deal with Maponics for better neighborhood data. The company also buys similar data from Urban Mapping. 

Friday Mobile News Roundup

The following are some interesting stories that I don't have time to thoroughly "unpack":

Physical vs. Virtual Keyboards on Smartphones

First there was the iPhone. And then in the frenzy of market response came the all-touch-screen BlackBerry Storm. The BlackBerry, which people love because of the scroll wheel and physical QWERTY keyboards, ditched both to compete with the iPhone.

According to Changewave, users are split on the Storm's touch screen:

Nearly Ubiquitious WiFi Coming -- Fairly Soon

While the promise of free municipal WiFi has faded in the US the idea of ubiquitious connectivity has not. It will happen. The latest news along those lines comes courtesy of Ian White at Urban Mapping, who points to a USAToday article on BP's plan to bring WiFi to its service stations in North America:

Nielsen: Top Ten Mobile Phones, Sites

As part of the year end "top lists" ritual, Nielsen released a bunch of US top ten lists. Among those of interest to this blog:

 Mobile phones in use:

Mobile site traffic:

What Is 'Mobile Social Networking'?

There's lots of talk these days about "mobile social networking," but what does that mean exactly? Does it mean reading Facebook news feeds via a mobile device or updating Twitter, for example, from a mobile phone? Or does it mean using location-awareness on your phone through an application to interact or communicate with people nearby who are similarly mobile? Of course the two are not mutually exclusive -- and Facebook (and MySpace) will evolve over time to increasingly take mobile and location into account. 

'Mobile TV' Is Dead, Long Live Mobile Video

Mobile TV is dead, dead, dead. You heard it here first folks.

Anyone who's been reading this blog knows that I'm a detractor of "mobile TV" -- that is, the business model of paying a premium subscription for live TV on your mobile phone. I do however think that mobile video will continue to grow dramatically over time. The issue is: what's the business model?

AllRecipies Takes a Page from Urban Spoon

Recipe site AllRecipes.com has launched an iPhone app, "Dinner Spinner" that takes a page from the "game-like" experience of Urban Spoon, one of the year's most successful free iPhone applications: