After some frustrating searching for SoMoLo, I think the earliest reference I could find is in 2010. Keys-by-Tearn claims to have coined the term in 2009, but I cannot find verification for that online. (A prize will be given for the earliest verifiable mention found in 2010 or earlier and posted to the comments by end of year.)
SoMoLo is a contraction for “Social, Mobile, Local” and was coined and is current because of the confluence of Social Networks, Mobile Devices and Local (or Location based) intelligence driving new forms of consumer behavior. We use Facebook to tell friends what we have bought (and follow their recommendations). We use our smartphones to check for better prices than what we see in the store in front of us, and we check for other local stores that are open and have the item in stock. This term is a catchy one because it captures and points to marketing strategies being adopted in many segments where smartphone users are a desirable demographic. Search for SoMoLo on twitter and see what people are saying.
Before SoMoLo has really caught on outside the cognoscenti, let me elbow it aside and introduce SoMoLoClo – for social, mobile, local, cloud. This is more of a techies term, which I first noticed should be introduced last month, and tweeted about it for the first time last week when David Skok presented a great overview of the current Application Development landscape at a MassTLC event. He brought the use of cloud computing into sharp focus as an innovation driver alongside the SoMoLo facets. SoMoLoClo might not be a nifty marketing strategy that everyone understands, but by adding ready-to-run, on-demand, sophisticated capabilities based in the cloud to SoMoLo architectures, you get a very powerful technical platform. Kinvey, from the Techstars Boston class of 2011, is a great example of how a cloud capability can turn an merely interesting app, into something much more multi-dimensional.
So goodbye SoMoLo, hello SoMoLoClo! And remember, you read about it here first!
