Mobile Marketing is six years old today. It was on 1 November 2005 that we went properly live, after announcing ourselves to the world a month earlier.

In those early weeks, we reported on 3 UK’s plans to bring mobile advertising to its handsets; Informa’s forecast of 153.5m smartphone sales in 2010 (a figure that was, in fact, surpassed a year early); and a report from messaging company Textalert that revealed that 72 per cent of SMEs using text messaging in the UK and the US had increased their turnover by more than 10 per cent. Some things never change.

When we launched the site, I think I remember saying we had no idea what to expect, but we thought it would be a blast. Well it certainly has been a blast, and I think it’s fair to say we had no idea how much innovation and smart thinking we would be reporting on between then and now. The iPhone was just a sketch on a piece of paper, if that; Google’s Mobile First strategy was still a few years away; and tablet PCs were just an idea that Microsoft and a couple of OEMs were floating, without much success.

But it has been our privilege to report on this burgeoning sector, and it thrills us to think that in reality, we’ve only just begun. Apps did a great job in bringing mobile marketing into brands’ and people’s consciousness, and since then, with every new QR code or Augmented Reality magazine cover you see, you realize that this idea of the mobile phone as the remote control for your life is becoming a step closer.

It’s fair to say that with some honourable exceptions – some of which we will be recognising at our Awards Ceremony later this week – brands and mobile operators are still trying to work out how best to engage with consumers on mobile. But the good news is that a lot of the mistakes have already been made, the lessons learned, and the strategies and tactics honed, to create, better, more effective mobile campaigns and solutions.

As for us, we’ve evolved too. From a Typepad blog, we’ve grown into a fully-fledged publishing business, with the website supported by print, mobile, iPad and Android tablet versions, and in addition to all this, webinars, our Masterclass series, our Mobile Training Academy training division, our events, and of course the Effective Mobile Marketing Awards program.

Next Monday, we embark on the next stage of our journey, with a move into new offices in London’s Shoreditch, where we will be joined by two new members of staff, Celeste Marie, who joins as business development executive, and Alex Spencer, who comes on board as staff writer. Who knows what they’ll make of this crazy business, but we’ve told them to expect a lot of hard work and a lot of fun.

In the meantime, we’d like to thank the brands, agencies, and all our commercial partners who have supported us over the past six years with advertising and sponsorship. And while it’s highly unfashionable for journalists to say nice things about PRs, a big thank you to them too for helping us cover both the mainstream and the more obscure mobile marketing stories. And to all those people we’ve worked with in any way, shape or form over the past six years, who have helped us to get to where we are today.

If the next six years are anything like the last six, bring it on.

David Murphy
Editor