This week we have a special focus on mobile communications, under the rubric 'the future of online communities,' featuring MobiTV's CEO and Founder Charlie Nooney. MobiTV provides reasonable high-quality cable TV and other TV-like programming for cell phones. We have also read the Aspen Institute's research on the 'mobile generation.' Already, both of these fairly recent entries to the market and today's discussion forums appear to be somewhat antiquated models of the coming changes brought on by mobile communications.
Clearly there will be a niche in the television transmission business as with MobiTV's business model and apparently superior video codec technology for mobile devices. Similarly, the Aspen Institute's research on how youth is using mobile technology makes some important points about how this technology is being used. As with Mimi Ito's research (Personal, Portable, Pedestrian; 2005) including her earlier research with Howard Rheingold (Smart Mobs; 2002), the emphasis on youth and the practices amongst youth point to a transformational device that has both personal associations (identity, style/fashion, aesthetics, taste, etc.) and functional tools (voice, web access, calendaring, SMS/texting, even GPS). Mobile devices are used by primarily youth, the research shows. Devices are used both for social and general communications, and for micro managing the day's activities and social calendar.
With the success of Twitter, which relies on the social network for its success as a tool; it should become increasingly obvious that the 'killer app' for mobile communications will likely be similar to the 'killer app' for the Web -- email. Mobile technology is wholly unique in that it is built on very rich two-way communications in the form of voice; and then adds to this the text and even graphical capabilities of the Web and all of the Web's affordances. This 'Webification' of cell phones is epitomized by the Apple iPhone. And while the iPhone is not as 'open' perhaps as Google and others supporting platform and device-neutral broadband networks aka 'open networks'; the iPhone is really the device to capture the imagination of the consumer and that demonstrates the shift from phones as extensions of proprietary telecommunications systems to extensions of an increasingly mobilized web.
Just in these past months we have seen the opening up of the wireless spaces as the 700 MHz auctions raised over $13 billion for the US Treasury; but much more importantly, it has created a real likelihood that the top bidder, Verizon, will create a new set of broadband spaces that will allow for non-Verizon devices (with a service fee; but device neutral). This will lead, according to Lawrence Lessig and others, a kind of explosion in innovation around devices as companies compete to create the most efficient devices.
At this time, we are at a point in time that is wholly unique regarding broadband mobile, and ubiquitous mobile technologies: global growth in mobile technology exceeds that of the Web. And the spread of the practices around mobile technology are diffusing rapidly throughout society, not only youth. The possibilities for content sharing and distribution, micro and regular transactions, and even identity management are intriguing, and therefore gaining a lot of attention.
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1 comment:
thx for the Mimi references. I've been really wanting to ck out her work and you've given me the shortcuts!
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