Tomi Is The Social Media Slut - My 3 Fave Xmas Presents includes named most influential in mobile by Forbes

Happy New Year to all and Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. I had three quite exceptional 'Christmas presents' in the social/media/digital space over the holidays and I want to share them with my regular readers here on the blog.

TOMI IS THE SOCIAL MEDIA SLUT

Lets start with the astonishing news. Forbes measured the world experts, bloggers, Twitterers etc for their influence and found me - and this blog - as number 1 of the Top 10 Power Influencers in Mobile. I am humbled. I truly feel a huge weight on my shoulders now, and an obligation to you, my readers. I have always thought of this blog as a hobby and just a nice place to come to occasionally muse about things I observe about our industry. And Twitter for me is a place to come to comment on whats going on in the world, while simultaneously catching up on the news (without really doing much work, as all the 'real' experts that I follow - will find the real news for me).

We have a small tight group of regulars who come to this blog very often to comment on what I write and I think of those as very close to family or close colleagues and even where we don't always see eye-to-eye on everything, I read every comment left on this blog and try my best to respond seriously to all (serious) comments. But very honestly and seriously, I had never EVER thought I could achieve that level of influence in this industry haha. If I had even had that as a possibility, I should have made this blog more professional (and sell advertising on it haha). But don't worry, I will not change this blog or my Twitter style, I love what I do. I just never EVER thought it would reach that far. Thank you Forbes for making that analysis and I am truly humbled by the finding.

The other ten most influential in mobile are all must-read material and truly great experts, several of whom I have met in person. If you like what I write, please also consider following or reading these:

Gary Kim of the IPCarrier Blog out of Colorado USA and his Twitter handle is @garykim 

Ingrid Lunden of Paid Content out of London UK. The paid content Twitter handle is @paidcontent

Sue Marek the Editor in Chief of Fierce Wireless out of he USA (I believe). The Fierce Wireless TW handle is @fiercewireless

Varun Krish of Fonearena blog from who is also a fellow MoMo'er (Mobile Monday) out of Chennai in India. Their TW handle is @fonearena

Tom Krazit is another from PaidContent of the UK.

Vaibhav Sharma of The Handheld blog out of Chandigarh in India. Vaibhav's Twitter is @v4ibhav

Steven J Crowley at the Stevencrowley blog out Washington DC in the USA. He Twitters as @stevenjcrowley 

Zach Epstein one of the editors of Boy Genuis Report ie BGR which I think is out of the USA, Zach is on TW as @zacharye 

K Kugan of Malaysian Wireless out of Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia and their TW handle is @malaysianwireless

Every one of those blogs and news sites is worth reading religiously, and each of the other ten on Twitter are 'must follow' level experts. I am truly honored to be included in such esteemed company, and when I just now visited their sites, I truly felt that my little Communities Dominate blog here is quite amateourish in comparison haha, and my publishing schedule is very modest compared to their far more professional look and feel, and output. Well, at least we don't do ads on this blog, eh? 

This is how Forbes wrote of my position on the Top 10 chart:

 

Number 1 spot belongs to ex-Nokia executive Tomi Ahonen whose blog Communities Dominate is a fixture on the mobile scene largely because of Ahonen's comprehensive knowledge of the mobile ecosystem. He is based out of Hong Kong.

 

Forbes measured the influence across the digital space from Twitter and blogs to YouTube etc and measured across three scales. On 'Reach' I scored 77 which was highest of the ten - a truly staggering statistic when you look at the massive readerships and tons of Twitter followers those other professional sites have. On 'Resonance' I scored 73, second highest of the top ten (Ingrid has even more resonance) which means how much will what I write be repeated by others. And on Relevance I scored 91 which was only 4th highest on the list, as obviously here on this blog I don't only do mobile - like just now for Christmas I wrote that silly little piece about Santa Claus aeronautics haha. 

Thank you to Haydn Shaughnessy at Forbes for an awesome Christmas present. And the very funny line in the story is on a comment from Forbes staff member Kashmir Hill, asking "Is being a social media slut the same as being influential". Haha I love that. Yes, rather than being most influential, I think I prefer to think of myself as the biggest social media slut in mobile. I think I'll print that on my business cards haha.. 

I will comment about the blog, my readers, my sources, my followers and friends and colleagues here below. But lets open all the gifts first, shall we.

TOMI IS THE SOLZHENITSYN OF MOBILE

Then to another just heart-warming surprise for Christmas. Bruce Sterling writes for my fave tech magazine, Wired and wrote a an article about the smartphone penetration rates that I had previously blogged about and he kindly quoted from the blog including my statistical table (thank you for that, Bruce). But the unexpected part came in his introduction to smartphone stats, that totally took me by surprise. You regular readers know how passionately I have fought the (good) battle on the side of Nokia against the 'Evil' Stephen Elop the new CEO and his Microsoft Misadventure that so far has created the greatest crash of market share in any one year, in the economic history of mankind. Check out how Bruce introduced me as the source of the stats about smartphones (and recall, his story has nothing to do with the Nokia saga).

Tomi Ahonen is my favorite industry analyst. Studying the mobile business is like Kremlinology; it’s boring on the face of it, and most of the heavy operators are evil people who lie all the time, even to each other and themselves. And then, by sparkling contrast, there’s this Ahonen guy. He’s such a committed and relentless contrarian that he comes across like Solzhenitsyn. Here he is weeping for an entire half-hour about Nokia. And he’s right, y’know; the fate of Nokia really is a fantastic business story. A gigantic story of Gothic High-Tech collapse.

 

Thank you Bruce! Wow. Having lived as an adult in Finland back in the time when the Soviet Union was a global superpower with intentions to invade its neighbors - Afghanistan for example - and where in Finland we had a fair share of Kremlinologists trying to decypher the cryptic nature of the Soviet leadership (like Churchill said, the Soviet Union was like a riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma). And a hero like Solzhenitsyn. I know my little squabble with Elop is nothing of that magnitude obviously, but I think there would be some Nokians and perhaps Nokia share-holder Finns who might agree that Tomi is indeed fighting the good fight. Bruce, you have no idea how much that little paragraph delighted my day, week, month and year. One such comment is enough to restore all the frustrated and angry energy that I spent last year editing those blogs about the Nokia saga.

TOMI IS THE NEXT BOND

And lastly, a fellow blogger and friend, Nigel Scott at the Excapite blog created a mock cover of the next Bond movie, Burn Another Platform, with yours truly as the next 007.






Its not just that obviously I am a huge 007 fan as regular readers of this blog and my books and my Twitter followers all know, but for Nigel to bother to create that movie poster (or book) cover mock-up is just heart-warming. But the best part, that it celebrates my fight against the Elop Madness haha, I really got a huge kick out of that, Thank you so much Nigel. Thats not just my fave Christmas gift of the year. Its my fave gift of the decade. Follow him as @excapite on Twitter.

And Nigel also followed that image with a cool prediction for 2012 (one of many in his excellent 3 parts series of predictions for the year) which goes like this:

Tomi Ahonen will utilise his research into the "Elop Effect" to create the "Ahonen Principle" - A revolutionary new "burning platform turn-around" management theory that becomes the best selling Non-Fiction Book of 2012.  Thanks largely to the critical acclaim received from the editors of the New York Times Book Review Tomi is invited by Bill Gates to become the CEO of the new merged NokiaSoft Corporation. Of course Tomi enjoys the "James Bond" lifestyle too much and subsequently declines the offer. Choosing instead to focus on what he does best: Helping the rest of us to understand how mobile is going to change everything and make the world a better place for all of humanity.

Thank you so much Nigel. That is hilarious. And yes, I do love my James Bond lifestyle haha.

It is days since those items came out, especially that Forbes listing and I have been thinking very much about what to say. This blog is a hobby for me. Its not my job. We launched this blog with Alan Moore six years ago to help sell the book Communities Dominate Brands, and we thought we should 'practise what we preach' and that the blog might be a good idea to help us connect with some readers and fans. When we were writing that book, the world had less than a million blogs in total, so it was still a very niche and nerdy thing to do at the time. And we were not in any way sure if the blog would even last a full year and we were not sure if we should buy a full year subscription to Typepad haha. Seriously, we didn't think this was going to be that big.

For me the Communities Dominate blog is my digital home. Yes, I am often on Twitter and still very occasionally on Facebook and sometimes I even remember to go to log onto Linked In. Yes, I also co-moderate the Forum Oxford expert community on mobile. But this blog is my digital home.

You readers are visitors to my home when you come here. I really want to give you my best thinking - to the degree possible, amidst my heavy travel - and yes, the blog articles are often long and meandering, and the articles will go through history and repeat themselves often. That is the nature of the beast, after six years of debates and discussions in the comments. If I do not remind everyone in every story about mobile phone prices, that the US market has subsidies and the real price of the iPhone is not 199 dollars, but 600 dollars - else I have to answer a dozen comments who say that rather than a Nano iPhone costing 300 dollars, why not take the 'free' iPhone 3GS that is available now. Etc. I know many who visit this blog come for one story only, based on a link or recommendation or Tweet, and they are not experts of this complex industry. So I have learned to be very precise and thorough in 'every' blog. If I provide a link, that is not enough. I do need to repeat myself (haha, like a professor at the university). But also regular readers know they can skip parts and I try to label my articles with subtitles so regular readers can easily skip to the relevant parts.

But the thoughts on this blog are necessarily 'rough' and 'unpolished'. I am THRILLED when someone else takes my writing and summarizes it to the main points. I always happily post links to those stories to my Twitter followers etc.

AM A PYGMY STANDING ON SHOULDERS OF GIANTS

But I am not getting to my main point. I am truly thrilled and also feel very 'responsible' to my readers, to find out that Forbes measured this blog to be the most influential in mobile. That is not because I am somehow smarter than the others. I am not. I am nowhere smart enough to have thought of most of what I write here. I am always borrowing from the thinking of others, the writing of others, and the comments and corrections by others. Sometimes I do have a new thought of my own, but most of what I write about, is stuff I learned from others.

So first of all, while that list of the ten most influential people in mobile is a great list of experts, I have to point out, that being most influential is not the same as most insightful or most knowledgable. An influential person has great contacts and knows how to communicate effectively (plus most likely, is also a good expert). My knowledge and whatever insights I have picked up is fuelled by the real experts in mobile. Those who read this blog or my books or follow my Tweets or see me speak, see me regularly referencing 'the usual gang' of mobilistas. The REAL experts in mobile. Ajit Jaokar. Chetan Sharma. Lars Cosh-Ishii. Dan Appelquist. Jonathan JMac MacDonald. Kim Dushinksi. Russell Buckley. Emily Turrettini. Ewan MacLeod. Antti Ohrling. Helen Keegan. Tony Fish. C Enrique Ortiz. Rudy de Waele. Troed Sangberg. Mark Curtis. Paul Golding. Christian Lindholm. Horace Dediu. Peter Vesterbacka. Kei Shimada. Dennis Bournique. Jan Chipchase. Christopher Billich. Rory Sutherland. Gibson Tang. Dan Virtopeanu. Heike Sholtz. Colin Crawford. Mimi Ito. Andrew Grill. And many many more.

(Incidentiall, if you want any of their Twitter handles, the easiest place to find them is my 'Usual Gang of Mobilists' list on Twitter. And yes, the reference comes from Mad Magazine whose contributors are 'the usual gang of idiots'. in this context I am the idiot mad-man, that list is the real global 'usual gang of geniuses' in mobile)

Those are the people who 'know' mobile. I just report the story. When I make mistakes, they are my friends who also tell me when I am wrong (which is often). They are my sounding board, who I ask for advice when I don't know something, or I think that I've invented something. They are true heroes of mobile who invent things or create things or do things - and most of them blog and all of them are on Twitter and many of them are also fellow authors (or authors-to-be). And part of why my reputation as the social media slut of mobile is so strong, is that these people do kindly often mention me and this blog and provide links from their stories to me and this blog or my tweets. The Communities Dominate blog would have no valuable content, if these mobile giants turned their backs to me and stopped being my friends, and stopped supporting me, and feeding me stories.

MY READERS ARE MY FAMILY

Then: this is a blog. Twitter is a discussion. I do not only broadcast my propaganda. I try to engage with all who post comments either here, or on Twitter. If there was no discussion, this blog would stagnate into a moronic Ahonen monologue of no value whatsoever. Whenever you post comments here, it guides me into what is interesting, what is newsworthy, what is boring, what is against convention, what is unclear, etc.

So the second part of Tomi's 'big' reputation is you, the readers on this blog who visited this blog over a million times last year - and my over 7,000 Tweeps on Twitter. If you read the comments thread, you will soon find that several of my readers are there often, not only commenting with me, but engaging with other readers - even posting responses on my behalf, knowing what Tomi meant, or how I would handle that particular question. I am always amazed when I see that, and I am truly grateful that some readers have become such deep fans of the Communities Dominate blog that they take the time to answer questions posted by someone else in the comments. Most who post comments here post under aliases or abbreviated names, and where I might be able to see who they are, or they might reveal themselves privately via email or in person at some conference, etc, I must of course respect their privacy here. But let me mention a few who post comments under their own names so you see a bit about what kind of readership we have here. Look at the international reach and the professional range of responsibilities.

Terence Eden is the developer community manager of InMobi in the UK
Brian S Hall is an author of 5 books, based out of the USA
Henry Sinn is a consultant at Informatel in Australia
Troed Sangberg is a futurist with SonyEricsson out of Sweden
Sitaram Shastri is with Nokia working on smartphones in India
Lars Cosh-Ishii is editor in chief of Wireless Watch Japan
Sander van der Wal is the CEO of mBrain Software in the Netherlands
Christian Surlykke is a mobile expert from Denmark
Jonathan MacDonald is a mobile marketing author and guru from the UK
Rodrigo Arantes ie Rodrigottr is mobilista blogger out of Brazil
Steve Woodgate is CEO of Eyecon in Australia
Thom McKiernan is a SysAdmin at Microsoft in the UK
Russell Buckley is ex-Google ex-Admob author and guru in mobile in Germany
Roberto Mulazzi is a mobile expert in Italy
Alexander Harrowell is an analyst at STL Partners
Alex Kerr is a Director at PhoneThing in the UK
Antoine RJ Wright is the editor in chief of Mobile Ministry Magazine in the USA
Mike Stead is with the Digital Convergence of Hutchison Group in the UK (and Hong Kong)
Vasco Duarte is a mobile expert in Finland

That is only a selection of those who post under their own name, from the past few months. There is a huge collection of regulars who only use a first name or nickname and even if I did know their real name, I can't post that here. But you know who you are, thank YOU all to those who post comments here on the blog. If it were not for you posting comments, I would stop posting the blog. As long as you are there to let me know that there is an audience, I will continue blogging.

AMPLIFICATION

But while the experts give me the content, and the readers give me feedback, this blog could not become so influential without the amplification. That stories from this blog are so often repeated and linked to and mentioned. I don't know where to start, there are so many that do that. Some are major news and tech sites like Bright Side of News. Others are specialist blogs of very specific focus like David Doherty's 3G Doctor. There are real newspapers like the Guardian. I counted over 300 media references of me the last time I updated my media reach and that was a few years ago, I could not possibly thank every one of them. But it is my honor and always my pleasure, when anyone references a story from my blog. I often see sudden spikes of traffic from some country and at some time zone, and when I look where they came from, I see when I was quoted in Argentina or Finland or South Africa or Indonesia. Thank you all who quote me or mention me or translate stuff from this blog etc.

But I want to mention some of my dearest friends who have gone out of their way to help me and my visibility. That starts with Alan Moore obviously who helped me and blogged here with me at this blog for the first three years. Alan continues blogging about the social media space on his SMLXL website.

Then there is Ajit Jaokar at his blog Open Gardens and Forum Oxford, who has published three of my books. I also mention Peter Holland of Forum Oxford who also runs the practical aspects for my courses at Oxford University. Russell Buckley and Lars Cosh-Ishii have been among the most consistent supporters in all manner of online and real world help. Recently so too has Peggy Ann Salz and Jonathan MacDonald. Among journalists I am regularly supported by Emily Turrettini and Ewan MacLeod. My Latin American guru and friend who runs the ForoMovil site is Martin Feldstein. And of course Jari Tammisto of MoMo. Again, I am sure the moment I post this, I will remember a dozen more names that must have been mentioned, but my point is this. If my peers and friends were to stop mentioning my writing, there would be no amplification - and no influence.

I AM THE CLOWN OF THIS CIRCUS THEY CALL MOBILE

I am a 'conduit'. I am just the story-teller. Honestly! It is true, that I have actually printed a version of my business cards in Finnish which have my title as 'Satuseta' which is a Finnish word for which there is no good translation but it could be translated as your "favorite uncle who tells bedtime stories". I am not the guy who invents this, or does this 'mobile stuff'. I just tell the stories. I happen to do it pretty well across the digital worlds, and I also have a nice opportunity to speak often in public at various conferences and on TV and in print, so it helps keep me in the news. And I spread those stories. So yes, I am the ultimate social media slut for our mobile industry. I love my job.

I truly love this blog and my readers. I don't think of coming here as work, and neither do I think of my Twitter floods as work. I am truly blessed for having this life. Thank you for sharing it with me. And thank you for helping this site become the most influential blog in mobile. (regular blogging will resume shortly)

Comments

[Erich]

You are too hard on yourself! You are so noisy you deserve the credit! :) Specially your Twitter floods arn't floods anymore , more like Asteroid bombardments! But they are fun!

Really well done all though I wont call you the James Bond of the mobile industry rather the Jason Bourne. James Bond is SO 20th century!

James Bond : Dont expect me to talk Goldfinger

Goldfinger : No mr Bond I expect you to die

[Joey1058]

I saw your title and immediately thought WTF?...

Congrats on the recognition. :-)

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Erich, LeeBase and Joey

Thank you! I really enjoy this blog for the discussions we have and as long as you guys find value in it, I will continue my pontifications haha..

Tomi :-)

[Hoista]

Congratulations on the Forbes recognition. Haven't commented on here so much, but always reading. Will try and engage more in the comments this year.

[Tim]

Hei Tomi
Congratulations on the recognition by Forbes and others- all well deserved.
Kashmir Hill was perhaps not being funny at all when writing: "Is being a social media slut the same as being influential". A "slut" I would suggest has clear overtones of pornorgraphy and we all know that it is this business sector that drives technology growth and development. So in that context Kashmir is giving you an even greater accolade than you might think!

[Heike Scholz]

Hi Tomi,

Congrats on the recognition and thank you so much for mentioning me. I'm honoured to be in such a good company.

[Eee]

Congratulations Tomi! I've read your every post ever since I found your blog. Interesting stuff!

[Eee]

About making this blog more professional - you could limit the maximum width of this site, it gets somewhat painful to read such long lines of text in your longer posts. Try and limit the max width to somewhere around 1280 pixels :)

[Sb]

Just want to say that I love how humble your response were.

[Alex Kerr]

What this recognition does in part is lend credence and weight to the anti-Elop, anti-WP message you've been trying to get across Tomi, and that can only be a good thing. So well done on the accolade and the crusade :)

This chart shows for me the reality and insanity of Nokia's manoeuvres, and why so many Nokians jumped ship: http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-monthly-201101-201111
This shows actual USAGE of mobile OS. Symbian - at the top and crucially, on the rise.
Windows Phone - so small it features as only part of the 'Others' the dotted line at the bottom, and flatlining, essentially dead.

Says it all really...

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Hoista, Tim, Heike, Eee, Sb and Alex

Thank you all for the very warm comments. And hey, Tim - don't worry, I fully love the comic side of calling myself a 'slut' haha. I have already updated my official biography with that term.. Its not unlike the term 'Mad' for Mobile Advertising, I love being one of the Mad Men (something I used long before the TV show haha).

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[C. Enrique Ortiz]

Tomi, thanks for the mention. You awesome...

ceo

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