In Manhattan for our Anywhere Tour, I’m lunching in Midtown with an early leader in mobile marketing, ipsh! founder and CEO Nihal Mehta. What’s on his mind? A mix of gratitude and anxiety.The gratitude comes from the steep change over the last few months in the volume of interest in mobile marketing, both from brands and from North American consumers, which Nihal attributes wryly to “American Idol.”

“Six months ago, mobile strategies were an afterthought with the big brands and their agencies. They treated it like they were trying to squeeze in dessert after a big meal. ‘Oh, we only have $50K left? Let’s just order a cupcake.’ Trivial stuff. But now that Ryan Seacrest has taught everyone’s grandmother how to text, we’re suddenly at the marketing table at the same time with other media. That makes a big difference in the type of multimedia campaign we’re able to design, which makes our campaigns more effective.”

At the same time, Nihal fears irrational exuberance will spoil the mobile marketing party. His anxiety stems from the amount of VC capital surging into anything “M,” recently awarding big chunks of cash to, for example, 80108 Media for mobile content from a social network.

That’s one more mobile exec worried about a mubble—a mobile bubble—and the implied crash of expectations and opportunities afterward. My take: Investors will always cluster around a few interesting ideas. Apologies to my VC friends, but as a group you demonstrate just as much of a herd mentality as individual investors do in the public marketplace. And the inevitable truth that follows is that there will be casualties from that excess, as well as some individuals who get lucky all out of proportion to their real contribution.

But 3G networks with reasonable data plans are engaging consumers around the world in mobile internet activities, and we are just beginning to figure out how to make that experience useful and commercially viable. The Anywhere train has left the station—no mubble ahead!

On to the next stop!