Mark Curtis Foreword to my 9th book just released, here full text

I am very proud to have my very dear friend and long-time compatriot digital evangelist, Mark Curtis, the CEO of Flirtomatic and author of Distraction: Being Human in a Digital Age, write the Foreword to my latest book, my ninth overall, and the third in eBook format - Tomi Ahonen Pearls Vol 2: Mobile Social Networking. Here is Mark's Foreword in full:

I’ve known Tomi for over 5 years now and I can think of several remarkable things about him, amongst which are the trademark hat, pinstripe suit and furled umbrella.

 

More importantly, Tomi is a relentless evangelist for the cause of mobile data services. But whereas religious salesmen of all flavours tend to fall back on an insistence on raw faith when it comes to providing evidence for their beliefs, Tomi uses facts to establish his case.

 

And wow, does Tomi ever use facts. He is a one-man carpet bomber of mobile data. To assist his cause, he’s even branded the facts – as Pearls. This book is a collection of them.

 

He was collecting and distributing his Pearls when I met him. At the time, I was running Fjord, a digital innovation and design company, which is now in 4 countries and employs over 80 people. My partners and I could see how   important   mobile  was   about  to   become   as  a medium and to be frank, sometimes struggled to articulate our thoughts clearly enough. Tomi was one of the few people we met who really understood our mumblings, and could provide us with a context of trends and real case studies from a variety of different countries to inspire our confidence that we were on to something tangible.

 

A little later, Fjord gave birth to Flirtomatic, which I now run full time. It’s a mobile social network focussed on flirting and we have over 1.3m members in 3 (and rising) countries. We’ve gone a long way to show how the mobile internet and social networking in particular, can generate massive usage and meaningful revenues. And there’s still much more to be done!

 

Once again, Tomi’s Pearls provide encouragement. From Japan, with Mobage Town, from Germany with itsMy, from India with Babajob. However mobile is not the easiest industry to work in: it has a complicated value chain and is still so young that it is wide open to disruption from new players and technologies. Despite these persistent ups and downs, his belief that this is the 7th mass medium has never wavered.

In a way, I’m looking forward to the day when Tomi stops collecting and publishing Pearls. Because that will mean his job is done and mobile will have taken its place as a recognised medium in the front line. No doubt he’ll move on to analysing the differences between success and failure, based as always on facts.

 

Mark Curtis

CEO Flirtomatic

Author of Distraction: Being Human in a Digital Age


THANK YOU Mark! - that is brilliant. Carpet-bomber of mobile facts, ha-ha, thank you...  and yes, me too, looking forward to the day we don't need the evidence anymore and people will accept mobile as a new medium just like we are fully willing to accept TV today..

(Anyone who has already bought and received Pearls Vol 2, I will be sending you the updated revised edition with Mark's foreword, you don't need to ask for it. But am travelling heavily this week, so give me a few days to get it to you..)

And anyone who would like to sample free pages and a few of the 50 case examples ("pearls") in that 171 page eBook on the topic of Mobile Social Networking, take a look at this link: Tomi's Pearls Vol 2. 

Comments

[david cushman]

congrats tomi!

[Tomi Ahonen]

Thanks David!

Tomi :-)