I judged the NFTE Quarter Final competition at a local San Francisco high school today.  NFTE is an organization that teaches entrepreneurship to students in high school and younger.

One of the pitches today was made by 9th grader Simran Pabla around a pilot program she's running at her school:  A business called Ready4Rain, which offers umbrellas to students so they don't get wet when they're going from building to building between classes.  You can see her full pitch to the judges here.

I was so impressed with her that I later interviewed her in the school's cafeteria.  Here's a 9th grader who's currently running a pilot program for a startup concept she had.  And she's not alone.  Jocelyn Hernandez has sold over 20 of her custom iPhone cases at $40 each via her company, Functional Couture.  And Mariana Ponce has sold over 100 of her Corny Cups at $2.50 each.  In the past, I've done talks with Stanford MBAs, UVA McIntire business school students, and Georgetown MBAs and I consistently find that many of them are terrified to take the leap to becoming an entrepreneur by actually doing something, and not just talking about it.  Consistently, high school or younger age kids are willing to take more risks than college students.  It's almost like some switch gets flipped at some point in college that causes many students to stop seeing opportunities to be entrepreneurial, and become afraid to try jumping into the ones they do see.

The interview above with Simran is great, partly because she's so honest about her motivations.  She simply saw an opportunity to solve a problem, and went for it.  She has no mortgage to worry about.  No kids to take care of.  Nothing to keep her from simply jumping to solve the problem she saw in front of her.  She just proves how simple it is to become an entrepreneur when it's what you really want to do.

So, kudos to Simran, Jocelyn, Mariana and their NFTE colleagues.  I hope they never lose that risk-taking spirit.  What may just seem to be a high school competition is actually an opportunity to effect massive change through entrepreneurism.  The great thing about "creating something from nothing" is that nobody cares how old you are when you do it.  There's no reason any of these ideas couldn't morph into huge, real businesses.  All these kids need is the will to do it, and the means to try.

If you're interested in volunteering for NFTE (something I love to do), drop me a comment below and I'll introduce you to someone who can help you figure out how you can really add value to the program.

If I weren't so passionate about the ways that mobile devices are changing the world, I'd be spending my time in one of the following three areas:  Crypto currencies like Bitcoin, the commercialization of drones, and the rise of 3D printing.

Oh, time is so our enemy.  Even a long-lived life only amounts to 750,000 hours or so.  And as per my recent keynote at the 2013 Mobile Outlook on a "Framework for Stupid Ideas," one of my guiding principles is to "focus on focus" to maximize the value of each of those hours.  Since mobile is my deepest passion, I'm not willing to dedicate the time to dive into any of these other things.  

Another of my framework points is to play in a "space that matters."  And these three spaces really, really matter -- that much will be obvious to everyone in the span of a few years.  So I'm hoping that some other entrepreneur will be as passionate about one of these three spaces as I am about mobile.  I figured I'd present a few highlights from each of them to showcase why they're such a big deal.

Crypto Currencies:

Some people liken Bitcoin to the Dainish Tulip speculation and crash of the 1600s.  And that's just fine with me, because another one of my framework points is that I love it when others think something is a stupid idea.  (The trick is to find a really good idea masquerading as a stupid idea -- that's where the multi-billion dollar opportunities are).

So why is Bitcoin actually a big deal when others think it's a fad?  Because a decentralized crypto currency with a built in supply ceiling and a well thought out structure and execution has the potential to create a global currency.  And creating a global currency carries with it all sorts of massive disruptions, like:

• Governments lose their power if they are unable to regulate currency
  
• Trade and border protectionism go away with a global currency
  
• Humans can innovate more efficiently with a global currency

Those are just two of countless disruptions that have the potential to change the way humans interact as a species.  And that's a really big deal.

If you don't know how Bitcoin works, here's its Wikipedia entry, and here's a great article in PC Mag that outlines the essentials. A key quote is this:

The network will increase the money supply as a geometric series until the total number of bitcoins reaches 21 million bitcoins (BTC).

Bitcoin releases a 25-coin reward to the first node in the network that solves a difficult mathematical problem requiring a certain amount of brute-force computation. Everyone in the network is then notified of the solution, and competition for a new block and its 25-coin reward renews. Currently 25 bitcoins are generated roughly every 10 minutes.

As of March 2013 more than 10.5 million of the total 21 million BTC had been created. Theoretically all bitcoins will be generated by 2140, with the last one consisting of fractional parts. To ensure granularity of the money supply, each BTC unit can be divided down to eight decimal places (a total of 2.1 × 1015 or 2.1 quadrillion units).

So about half of all the bitcoins that will ever exist have been mined to date, and it's going to get harder and harder to mine them moving forward, making each Bitcoin more valuable over time (this is exactly why they were created to contain eight decimal places -- it's very possible that one Bitcoin may be worth, say, $10,000 at some point (or way more) and you'll pay for something worth $1.50 with 0.00015000 Bitcoins.  One Bitcoin is worth about $120 today -- up from just a couple of dollars a few years ago:

(Note the recent spike to $260 and subsequent crash -- something that Bitcoin naysayers associate with the Tulip crash.  The thing they don't realize is that anyone can grow as many Tulips as they like, but the number of Bitcoins has a finite supply, and it's getting harder to mine them every day, as illustrated by this WIRED article on the topic of mining Bitcoins).

If you really want to geek out on Bitcoins, then read this whitepaper written by Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin's anonymous creator.  (Some people think that Bitcoin was actually created by a government.) The whitepaper goes into elegant detail on the theory behind Bitcoin, for example showing how a dishonest seller's chances of defrauding a buyer by creating a parallel chain would be thwarted by additional honest blocks in the primary chain, with a Poisson distribution of the defrauder's expected progress, illustrated with the following formula and code:

Commercialization of Drones:

Drones to date have been seen primarily as military hardware, but that will change over time.  Currently, it's illegal to fly dones commercially in US airspace due to FAA regulations, but new regulations are due out by 2015 (there's a lot of pressure on the FAA to draft regulations that are more drone-friendly).  The regulatory barrier is temporary. 

The commercial application opportunities of drones are tremendous.  Parody sites like Tacocopter.com and aerial newspaper delivery by drone highlight some of the possibilities.  (One side note -- mobile devices will likely play a tantilizingly central role in the world of drones.  I have a post here about how mobile apps are super relevant in hardware innovation).

Another example: Here's a video from a company that was taking aerial videos of luxury homes as a service for real estate agents (before getting shut down):

But aerial photography is just scratching the surface of the possibilities.  Drones will disrupt industries like:

• Logistics & delivery:  I'd bet UPS and FedEx will be early adopters of drones -- or if they're not, someone else will.
• Security: Imagine having a drone give you air cover.  Sounds silly now, but I bet some day it won't.
• Privacy:  Having eyes in the sky, able to peek into windows and all sorts of other places will mean lots of changes in the definitions of personal space and privacy
• Rescue: A drone could find and rescue people in ways that no other device could

Those are just a few examples of a long list of societal, commercial and technological changes that drones will usher in.

If you'd like to dig deeper, a great place to start is this NY Times article and this FastCompany article.

3D Printing:

The thing I love about 3D printing is how obvious yet nebulous it is to people.  Existing 3D printers are very primitive today.  They typically can only print small objects using injection molded plastic, rendering items that look like this:

And so people say, "yeah, I get it.  So I can print out my very own set of plastic shoes.  Why would I want to do that?"

But what 3D printing really is all about is the decentralization of manufacturing.  Over time, 3D printers will begin printing in all sorts of materials, not just plastic, and they'll become much more sophisticated.

Imagine being able to print:

• A gun (printing some gun parts is already possible today and it's something that the government is desperately trying to block)
• Any product you can order off Amazon.com
• A meal (remember how the Jetsons would press a button and a ready-made meal would pop out? Presto.)
• Spare parts for your vehicle
• An ear, nose, or other body part

3D printing has far reaching implications in many of the same ways drones do -- disruptions to logistics and shipping and a slew of societal changes and indeed the very fabric of the way we live our lives.  Someday in the not too distant future we may be ordering an item off of Amazon, and then receiving a license to print one qty. of the item at our neighborhood (or at-home) 3D printer.

Hopefully these areas of interest spark some passion in you; I'd love hear what you do with any of these in the comments below.

The crowd in 2005 vs. 2013 when the new pope was announced.

Yeah, mobile is totally just a fad.

Today at the Mobile Marketing Association's NYC Forum, the CMO of The Home Depot, Trish Mueller, gave a gangbusters presentation on the impact mobile has had to her company.

As she was showing off what The Home Depot's mobile app can do, she mentioned that users of the app can literally place a physical bolt onto the screen of an app to correctly size the bolt, making it easier to find the bolt in the store:

You can find more fascinating stats from Trish's presentation below, but to zoom out and be more macro for a bit: The app's bolt functionality is an awesome example of something that my co-founder Isaac and I have been discussing a lot recently:

There are two types of engagement in a mobile app.  Inherent Engagement, and Enhancement Engagement.

Engagement is a huge problem in mobile.  Think about it -- how many apps do you have on your phone that you never open? 

And the problem is only going to get worse.  That's why I say that there's a mobile engagement crush coming and that a number of Fortune 1000 CEOs will be fired for missing it.

So let's talk about inherent vs. enhancement engagement:

Inherent Engagement:

The core function of an app has to provide some value on its own.  Trish's Home Depot app bolt sizing mechanism is an example of this.  It's a core function of the app.  There are other things the app does that are also inherently engaging, such as being able to use augmented reality to see how an item in the store would look in your living room before you buy it.  

Another example of inherent engagement is a banking app that lets you deposit your check just by taking a picture of it.

Or the Contour HD Camera app, which lets me start recording video on the camera just by tapping a 'record' button on the app.

Or the startup Automatic, which is liberating data from the car dashboard with its app in ways that humans really care about.

Inherent engagement is a very business-specific thing.  A business has to really think about how it can add value to its customer base.  And if you don't think your business is mobile, you're wrong.  Every business is mobile, because every user will want to interact with you through a mobile device.  If you can't think of ways to inherently engage your customer base, then you just haven't thought about it enough.  

Enhancement Engagement:

Enhancement engagement, on the other hand, is very different.  It's like an overlay that is not business-specific.  Examples of enhancement engagement include:

• Gamify the app.  Turn something boring into a competition for users that keeps them coming back.  Leaderboards are a similar example of gamification in an app.
• Add a social overlay to the app.  This is exactly what my startup Socialize does.  Adding this social overlay can double engagement in an app and increase organic downloads significantly.
• Enable targeted notifications in an app.  This ties into social above, for example, with Socialize's MicroTargeting and SmartAlert functionality.
• Personalize the experience in the app.  It's crazy that everyone has the exact same experience in an app when they open it up.  The app should be personalized to each user's interests.

There's a ton of opportunity for platforms in the 'enhancement engagement' space, because it isn't app-specific, but rather it's human-specific.  I.e., we're all social creatures.  

Isaac gave a great presentation on inherent vs. enhancement engagement at a recent conference for CMOs.  Here's a video of his talk.  You can find his full slides here.

More from Trish, the CMO of The Home Depot:

Back to Trish's presentation today:  Hopefully I'll be able to post here full slide deck here, but below are some highlights she provided about how The Home Depot (THD) is approaching mobile:

• Trish views mobile as Personal, Adaptive and Valuable.  She mentioned a few times how intimate a connection it is with the userbase; how it creates a "one-on-one connection".
• 1/3 of THD's traffic in 2012 came from mobile, which is incredible, but even more incredible is that 60% of traffic was mobile during Black Friday last year. (!!!)
  
• During hurricaine Sandy,  THD sent notices to customers in affected areas on how to prepare their homes.  This is a great example of enhancement engagement mentioned above.  She mentioned that push notifications increased traffic by 60%.
  
• THD views both mobile web and mobile apps as equally important.
• Every single store layout is mapped out and can tell you where an item is in the store. A scannable bar / qr code tells you more about product.  
  
• Mobile search converts more than desktop - BUT they convert in the store!  This means that from a strict mobile ROI perspective, the numbers can be misleading because users search on their phones then buy in the store -- they don't buy on their phones as much as they go to the store, but mobile drives both behaviors and must be accounted for as such.

That's Barg wearing Google Glass above and also below

A DC-based startup called dSky9 is creating some super interesting apps for Google Glass.  At yesterday's Mobile Outlook 2013 event, the founders Barg & Greg showed off a Glass Simulator they've created to develop apps for Google Glass.

A few interesting things about Glass:

• There's no documented SDK for Glass, but it's easy enough to connect and put into debug mode to start developing for it.  So technically, you're hacking glass, but it's something Google sanctions (even if unofficially, for now)
• Glass is running a modified version of Android.  Building an app for Glass means you're actually dropping an .apk directly into Glass -- not the paired Android phone.  
• There are lots of incredibly sexy things that could be done with Glass, especially since it's facial gesture-sensitive.  One developer, for example, made an app that snaps a photo every time the wearer blinks.

Here's the video of their talk:

Here's another picture of Barg:

If you've never heard of or seen Glass, here's a great video that describes the experience of wearing it:

Paul Sherman, the editor of Pototmac Tech Wire, puts on an awesome Mobile Outlook panel every year.  I participated in 2010 and 2011 and again this year at USA Today's Gannett HQ in McLean, VA.  It's funny to go back and watch the older panels when we asked for a show of hands -- back then, everyone was using Blackberry phones and only a few early adopters had Android phones.  Oh, how quickly things change -- at this year's panel the ratio was reversed.  And interestingly, nobody was using a WindowsPhone device.

As I get into angel investing, I'm creating a framework with which to evaluate potential opportunities, which I presented as a keynote at the event.  My main message:  Find the good ideas that are masquerading as bad ideas -- therein lie the billion dollar exits.  This is a tip I picked up from Paul Graham's excellent Black Swan Farming essay.  Here's a Venn diagram of what these "good ideas in hiding" look like:

This is super counter-intuitive, because we all tend to look for the good ideas, both as entrepreneurs and as investors.  In the slides below, you'll see that the framework I'm developing focuses on teams that can prototype & iterate quickly, are doing something in a meaningfully large market, and can "dump the poop," or pivot quickly when it turns out that a bad idea is actually just that:  A bad idea, and not a good idea in hiding.

Here are the slides from my keynote:

Here are pictures of some of the slides: (you can find a full gallery of pics here)

After the keynote, I did a panel on the mobile outlook for 2013 with:

Jon Jackson, CEO of MobilePosse: Jon is the Founder and CEO of Mobile Posse.  He is a recovering Internet guy from the early 90's who stumbled into mobile in 2003.  Mobile Posse has built a rich-media messaging platform for mobile.  Think of it as what MMS should have been.  They partner with operators like Verizon Wireless, AT&T, USCellular and MetroPCS to rollout the platform.  Today is embedded on over 500 different device models  In the last four years the distribution has grown from 1 million monthly active users (MAUs) to 19 million MAUs today.

DP Venkatesh, founder and CEO of mPortal: DP has been doing mobile before it became "hip." mPortal is a leader in the connected device space and has been enabling connected experiences for mobile, tablet and Smart TV platforms since 2000. As an early entrant into the mobile space DP and his team have had the opportunity to build a cloud based platform that delivers compelling experiences across millions of devices for leading mobile, cable and web players such as Time Warner Cable, AT&T, Comcast and Telus. In addition to their thriving prodcut business DP has also branched out into building user experience focused rich media apps such as launching this years Oscars app for ABC/Disney.

Pete Johnson, CEO of Apollo Matrix: Apollo is a design-driven mobile software product development firm. All of Apollo's work is for clients ranging from startups to Fortune 1000s. Before Apollo Pete was president of professional services for  me at PointAbout.  Earlier he built Virtualogic, a successful enterprise IT consulting firm.  The aquisition of Virtualogic formed the start of Hitachi Consulting. 

Jeff Musa, VP of Mobile Strategy at Gravy: Jeff is the guy behind Quickoffice.He started that mobile project back in 1996 for Palm OS and was acquired by a public company in 2002. The product has gone on to be acquired by Google and now it comes preinstalled on most Android phones.  Since then, in addition to consulting, he's done another mobile startup that launched Star Player Live for real time stats and scoring targeting amateur sports and today he is with Gravy heading their mobile strategy.

Bennett Richardson, CMO of Hinge: Hinge is a social dating app based in DC that connects friends of friends. Hinge launched their iPhone app in February and has 10,000 users in DC and just launched their Android app. Before Hinge, Bennett worked in digital marketing & social media consulting for clients like Intel, Lenovo, Google, CEA and RIM.

In the panel, I asked questions like:

• Jon, you've been doing mobile since before it was cool.  I remember I came into your office to ask you for advice in 2008 when we were first starting PointAbout, and you told me to 'stay as far away from mobile as possible' back then.  Do you still feel the same way?  You're one of the few companies I've seen build a model where you work with carriers and thrive.  How do you feel about their walled gardens today?  What's changed in the past 5 years?

• DP, you've been focusing on 'social TV' lately, with mobile platforms being a big part of that.  Will OTT crush the traditional network model?  Over what timeframe does a traditional model go away?

•Jeff, your company Gravy has a consumer facing product.  I know it's really hard to get noticed and build a user community in mobile.  What are your thoughts in general, and more specifically with your experience at Gravy?

• Bennett, dating seems like a crowded space with a lot of established players. Why do you believe that Hinge can uniquely disrupt the dating industry, and why is mobile the best way to do it?

• Pete, you've been building apps for some of the biggest brands on the planet, like Disney, Kellogs and PBS.  What are these big brands trying to accomplish in mobile?  What are big brands typically doing wrong when they approach mobile?

• What will we be talking about at next year's Mobile Outlook event?

Here's a video of the panel:

Later that evening, Pete Johnson, the CEO of Apollo Matrix hosted a happy hour to celebrate the acquisition of Socialize by ShareThis.

It was an incredible turnout.  Interestingly (and awesomely), SideCar's East Coast office is in the same 1410Q building, fulfilling a vision we had for 1410Q back in 2009 as an innovation space.  Thanks to everyone who showed up -- especially those of you who came from up & down the East Coast to attend.  My co-founders Sean and Isaac are out in SF and weren't able to join, so I created a video for them of the event:

And here are a few pictures from the event -- you can find a full gallery of photos here.

Priceonomics just posted a fascinating story mulling over the future of journalism.  Here's one eye opening stat from the story:

"The journalism industry seems to be in trouble. Newspaper revenue has shrunkfrom $57.4 billion in 2003 to $38.6 billion in 2012. All of their traditional sources of revenue are falling. Magazine circulation is down sharply. Publishers have laid off their staff en masse or shut down entirely. It is harder than ever to make a living as a journalist."

Wow -- that's shrinkage of over 30% in less than a decade.  

But the most interesting part of the post was a thought experiment that Rohin Dhar did -- an interesting twist on the business models for journalism, which was this:  Instead of paying for what's already been written, what if we paid to influence what's written next?

Or to put it another way, what if we turned Journalists into proverbial hitmen?

Pen & paper gunslingers that would pursue stories sold off to the highest bidder?

It's fascinating and scary all at the same time.  And the fact that it makes me uncomfortable tells me there's definitely something interesting here.

What if they New York Times did an investigative story into a presidential candidate because the opposition paid the most money for the reporter's time and won the auction?

I love the disruption inherent in the idea while at the same time hating the influence of money that crosses a traditional barrier of journalistic integrity.

Is there a way to pull it off with a model that doesn't just degenerate into a bidding war with no journalistic morals?

I'd love to hear what you think.

I decided to give the experiment a try, and I chose to donate, as per the instructions on the blog.  What I realized was that:

• I couldn't believe only 12 people had donated (I probably wouldn't show that number)
• Seeing that the average donation amount really influenced how much I decided to give
• Seeing the max donation also really influenced how much I was willing to give (a bit of a gamification opportunity there)

Jazz Tigan, the creator of Hugalopes (a "fuzzy Mr. Potato Head" plush toy) and I sat down to discuss entrepreneurism, knowledge sharing, hyper efficiency on a computer, the Socialize acquisition and many other topics in this wide ranging chat.

But the most incredible moment of our talk happened in the last 10 minutes.

In fact, it's so significant that I created a separate sub-video below to capture this moment.

Here's the back-story:

Two years ago, Jazz had the idea of Hugalopes.  Last year, he launched a successful kickstarter campaign and signed a deal with a toy manufacturer to produce the toys.  The Hugalope I had on my head in this interview was one of the first in production from the Kickstarter campaign.

However, as is often (always?) the case in entrepreneurism, things haven't been 100% smooth sailing for Jazz.  Things are really hard for his startup right now.  We talk about what the process is like of actually creating value, of creating something from nothing, and how incredibly difficult that is.  In the last 10 minutes of the video, I make a bet with Jazz for $20 to encourage him to take the optimal next step in his journey.  It's a poignant moment -- and I really appreciate Jazz being willing to let me capture it on camera.  If you've ever thought "hey, I have an idea" and wanted to turn it into reality, I encourage you to watch the clip below.

I pushed Jazz really hard in the video to prioritize the most important thing in his business right now.  At minute 2:45 in the video below, I challenge Jazz by asking him if he's doing that most important thing now.  And we end up having a really, really honest and productive conversation around it.  This is raw entrepreneurism at its most vulnerable.  

I know Jazz can do this -- he's so passionate about his product, and even though it's hard right now, it's often hardest right before a big breakthrough.  Keep believing in the Hugalopes, Jazz.  They're awesome.

Here are the last 10 minutes of our talk:

Here's our full, wide ranging discussion on being an entrepreneur: 

Here are a few Hugalopes pictures -- click here for a full gallery:

• Is being an entrepreneur influenced by nature, or nurture?
  
• Tips for finding/seeing opportunities
  
• Start-up financing & finding partners
  
• Building the business: Iterating on a product & why managers should learn to code
  
• Many other topics of interest to entrepreneurs

Here's the video of our chat about being an entrepreneur:

In the video I reference a few links:

• Hacking a Vegas Cab Line
• The startup Automatic
• Making every morning a deadline

Facebook's Home initiative is the latest salvo in the mobile engagement battle, which has been looming since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, although most are just becoming aware of it now.  In fact, the 'engagement crush' is just beginning and will get much worse in the next few years.

This issue is so significant that CEOs and CMOs of Fortune 500 companies are going to find their jobs in jeopardy if they don't take immediate and decisive action to launch a meaningful mobile strategy for their companies.  Many companies mistakenly think their businesses do not have anything to do with mobile, but that's incorrect:  Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets are the way consumers and businesses will interact with brands and each other. This means that every business needs to have a coherent mobile strategy that at its core considers how its customer base will want to interact with it using mobile devices.

So how does engagement play into the importance of mobile?  Before we examine the issue in detail, we first need to highlight the difference between mobile apps and the mobile web.  

Mobile websites use a browser on a smartphone, which functions for all intents and purposes just like the browser on a regular computer.  And it's called the "browser" for a reason, as a user can easily browse a company's content just by entering a URL.  We're all very used to this process, but if you step back and think about it, it's actually quite kludgy.  First, you have to know the URL of the website you want to visit.  If you don't remember the URL, you have to go somewhere else, like Google, to find it.  This process of searching for content and then navigating to it is very familiar to all of us since most of us grew up with the early Internet.  But if you take a fresh look at things, you'll realize that there's no reason to have such a convoluted process for finding and accessing the content you care about.  You should be able to easily access it whenever you want to, without having to remember a long string of characters (the URL) or going somewhere else to find it. 

Additionally, the experience with a browser is not very deep.  It's called "browsing" for a reason. The relationship between the content owner and the user is transient.  Users come and users go on a browser.

An app is very different.  An app is a container for branded content, and that container can do lots of interesting things:  It can be monetized, it can be distributed as a package, it is geo aware, but most importantly, it allows a user to establish a deep and meaningful relationship with its content.  For example, when a user downloads an app to their phone, what they're really getting is a package of content that always "just works”.  It's a compartmentalization of content in a way that intuitively makes sense to humans.  It also happens to be a much better business proposition since apps act as a monetizable container, whereas browser based content has proven exceedingly difficult to monetize.

So that's the good side of apps.  Apps create a very meaningful and intimate bond between the content publisher and the user.

The problem is that there are way more apps than a user can possibly download, and the industry is just getting started.  That's why it’s an "engagement crush" because there is a virtual avalanche of apps rushing down the mobile mountain.  And as any of us who have smartphones know, just because you download an app doesn't mean that you actually open the app.  Think about it:  How many apps have you installed on your phone that you never open?

This is already a really big problem for marketers.  And it's about to get much bigger.  This is where a strategy like Facebook Home comes into play.  Facebook knows that users are searching less because they're using apps more.  And it also knows that it's going to become really easy to get lost in the avalanche of apps that are coming -- in fact, according to TechCrunch, app downloads are increasing almost 50 fold from two billion in 2008 to 98 billion in 2015.

Facebook has made the determination that to own the user experience, it wants to control the user's primary screen.  They're not the only ones.  Everyone who's caught onto this looming engagement crush is working to find ways to get users to open their apps more than other's apps. As a result, CMOs should focus on making apps more social, which can triple engagement in an app by unleashing the community of users that's typically hidden from each other in the app.

Getting users to actually engage with apps they've downloaded will be the big challenge in mobile, because without engagement, the app is irrelevant, and therefore the connection between the brand and the user is nonexistent.  The spoils of the mobile mountain will go to the CMOs that engage their users best on mobile.