Say hello to Adam Zawel, the chief collaboration officer for INmobile.org, a social networking center for wireless industry professionals.

Can you tell us a bit about INmobile.org? What makes INmobile different from LinkedIn and other social networking services that are focused on the workplace?

INmobile is a community for executives in the wireless industry. We have almost 700 members right now. Most of the activities are in two areas of the website. The first is the Profiles area, which is a way for executives to stay in touch and reach out to each other. It's kind of like a LinkedIn, but for senior executives in wireless.

The other side is the message board area; one member calls it a "demilitarized zone." Especially in the wireless media arena, as you know, they have so much they need to figure out. They tend to share a bit more than they would at conferences, and there's some confidence that what's said there will stay there. It's different [from other sites] in that there are also vibrant discussions going on. It's not just about networking; there's a lot of information sharing.

Can you give us an example of a situation where it would help to be an INmobile member?

Executives wonder about not only how to do business in mobile, but a specific issue about accountability; how they look at the books for their mobile content sales. This is one issue when a big media company is selling over wireless. It's not just figuring out how to sell, but how to track their sales and all the bookkeeping that goes with it. It's a good way to ask a question: how do you do this? Has anyone else done it? You get input from everyone around the ecosystem: the carriers, other companies in the middle, and large media companies that have done it before.

Because they're all senior execs, they share the same set of problems on a high level. If you put lower-level people and more senior people together, there tends to be different problems, so the discussions don't gel.

Where do mobile data services fit in?

We launched a year and a half ago. At the beginning it was all online. But then the members asked to have in-person meetings, so we had receptions at CTIA and 3GSM [the top two wireless industry conferences] this year. About 200 of our members showed up. We also have monthly conference calls on different topics. It has expanded beyond just being online.

That's an interesting thing: the integration between the online and the real world environment. You see this with consumer online networking, such as MySpace. People go seamlessly from the real world to the online world. With mobile this is happening as well. You're all tied into physical conferences where members start to discuss the topic before they get there. They sort out some of the real issues, so that when they meet in person, they've already broken the ice and now they can dive right into it. There's also the online follow-up; [before INmobile] you could hit on an issue at the conference, but then it's goodbye and good luck. Here, there's that continuity.

Where do you see the mobile landscape in two years?

So many aspects - location based services, voice enabled services, search or advertising on a mobile phone - are in the first inning. What I suspect to happen is that in two years the business models for a lot of these will be sorted out. There will be a lot of companies that won't survive, other companies will stand out, and it will be business as usual. The advertising world will be able to integrate wireless into their mix. A lot of the hype will have died down.

We're also going to see whether the core wireless voice business is sustainable. Will people still pay $50 a month for wireless voice, or is there going to be some major disruption? Everyone is looking at VoIP on a wireless device [such as Skype], at WiMAX [a next-generation wireless technology that works over long distances], and so forth.

CBS just split from the rest of the industry on the Web, and will now be syndicating their shows on different sites, instead of operating a portal. Do you see that happening on mobile?

In wireless and mobile, that probably makes sense. There's so little real estate on the phones, that whether it's a CBS or an ABC, it's not as significant. If you look in the music category, for example, people are not going to want to go to narrow application categories. When you get down to a two inch screen, even something as big as CBS is somewhat narrow. You don't want to have to click on CBS, then TV, then the show. You have to reduce the number of clicks. Even something like Disney may look for alternative ways to get in front of the customer. They all have to move into the first couple of clicks.

Thanks for your time.