The Definition of Cool is Not in Your Dictionary

Designing mobile applications for youth markets is a blind art, requiring developers to engineer unquantifiable properties like “fun” and “cool.” Some companies hire anthropologists to study tribes of teenagers in their native habitats. Some employ focus groups and usability studies. Some simply take a prototype home and let their kids monkey with it.

Even after all that, fickle teens can still dismiss the most carefully crafted products. In late 2000, Sprint PCS introduced ConneXus Corp.'s *CD application, which allowed kids to identify songs they heard on the radio and immediately buy the CD over the phone. As Sprint discovered, kids rarely hear a song on the radio they can't identify — and if they like what they hear, they often own the disc already.

“I don't know that that kind of application is necessary,” said Jeff Hallock, Sprint PCS's senior director of consumer services. Time to call the anthropologists back in.

Because mobile apps have such higher penetration rates in European and Asian countries, American apps developers can, to some extent, look to the rest of the world for creative inspiration. Mobile messaging, for example, is much more prevalent in Europe, where Forrester Research expects to see 17 billion messages a month by 2007. Ads in some British teen magazines display SMS codes as prominently as American ads show phone numbers.

But American applications developers shouldn't assume that popularity explosions on the other side of the globe will cause shockwaves in the states. As Greg Clayman, co-founder and VP of business development for mobile messaging developer Upoc, put it, “In Japan they eat squid on their pizza. I don't think that's coming here anytime soon.”

One way to capture kids' interest is to stay ahead of them, said Jeff Martin, CEO of Tribal Brands, which consults the likes of Nokia and Ericsson on youth marketing. Martin said he and his team often play the role of tastemaker, finding the next big thing just before it hits. But Clayman cautions that dictating what's cool to kids can be disastrous. “Companies who say, ‘This is the cool new X or Y’ — they just smell wrong. They'll fall flat on their faces.”

Case in point: In the fall of 2000, Scout Electromedia and its twentysomething CEO, Geoff Pitfield, marketed a one-way pager called Modo that offered opinions on everything from bars to bands to clothing stores, dictated by an ultra-hip staff of self-appointed trendsetters. When consumers decided they could discern for themselves what was cool and what wasn't, Modo faded away. “It was essentially a product nobody needed,” said Clayman.

Upoc's strategy, on the other hand, was to admit it didn't know any better than kids did what was cool. The company made content out of connectivity, playing host to more than 15,000 “mobile communities,” or common-interest groups that commiserate via SMS. Users created popular apps Upoc's founders never would have imagined, such as “Oh Snap,” a group that takes turns insulting each other's mothers.

When users' interests intersect neatly with commercial products, it gives app makers the opportunity to partner with movie studios and record labels on promotions. In May, for example, wireless content provider Zingy teamed up with TVT Records to promote the release of rap group Naughty by Nature's newest album by letting fans download ringtones from the new album as well as a voicemail greeting recorded by the group's front men, Vinnie and Treach.

Though these deals offset costs for the apps dealers, they tread a hazardous line between serving kids' interests and selling to them, which could be a turnoff. Clayman acknowledges the risk, but he says every message Upoc users receive comes from opting into a group, and Upoc is vehemently anti-spam. “Any company that's sending any unsolicited messages is tainting the market for everyone else,” he said. “It's so, so important not to send those.”

The rise of multimedia messaging is sure to pull the messaging industry in new directions, but predicting which apps will catch on is making amateur anthropologists out of almost everyone these days. “When you mix dating apps and multimedia messaging and you can have people sitting on park benches flipping through picture after picture — that's going to be huge,” said Clayman.

Gaming has proved its value with youth markets, but it has still taken a back seat to messaging in terms of popularity. Some carriers are moving to improve the quality of sound and graphics in their games through Java-based software and higher-tech handsets. For example, Sprint PCS will upgrade its games for 3G networks this summer by adding full-color screens and making the handsets vibrate during crashes in car games.

Scott Orr, CEO of video game maker Sorrent, is banking on three buzzwords for the next incarnation of mobile games: connectivity, persistence and convergence. Sorrent plans to introduce a suite of multi-player games, from sports to strategy, that will allow players to challenge friends and strangers alike.

Some analysts say mobile gaming isn't conducive to such immersion — that users only want quick time-killing games on their phones. “Even our adventure games can be five- to 10-minute time-killers,” said Orr. “We don't see a contradiction between simple and persistent.”

For Orr, persistence means using the same character in the game world every time you play, allowing users to gain skills that they can apply in any game.

“Having a character you identify as your alter ego is the beauty of it,” said Orr. “Getting better or worse over time brings a sense of ownership and emotional attachment to the character that takes it beyond a typical solo game experience.”

There's only one thing Orr can't know about the system he's creating: Will kids think it's cool?