Blyk: Mobile For the Young and Fun

Filed in archive Operators on November 3, 2006

About five years ago when I was with the Yankee Group, I forecasted an eventual shift away from the old PTT model of building a communications company around wires and networks, and toward the creation of communication lifestyle brands - that we would ultimately see the emergence of a service provider that took into account first the social patterns of a target user group, then architected the services to fit. Sounds natural, but communications services are still engineering first, then socially-oriented wrapping in the best cases.

Yesterday saw the announcement of Blyk, a new service provider created in Finland by veterans of Nokia and other ventures, which proposes to create a service aimed at younger users by providing free voice minutes in exchange for accepting advertising pushed to handsets - a Gmail for mobile voice if you will. The company plans to launch in Britain first, then spread to other parts of Europe.

Will it work? Analysts quoted so far seem to think it might, though consumers could grow weary quickly of dealing with ads in the small screen environment of the mobile. I am sure folks like Om, Oliver and such will beat up the business model and give it a thorough rinsing. With the boom (and possible bust for some) of MVNOs, it's tough for another new company to get to the market.

See Russell Buckley's dig into the math of Blyk here.

Maybe Blyk is just a little too early. But fingers crossed that new innovation continues. Maybe Blyk will have their say here - I am in Finland next week guys!