Mobile Happenings
Posted by Lucinda Barlow Wed, 05 Apr 2006 09:02:00 GMT
After a little time away on maternity leave, I return to mobile. I was invited by Ian Kirk to speak to the Interactive MA group at Goldsmiths College on "What's happening in Mobile?". It was a great opportunity to get back into business.
I'm impressed. It sort of seems to be coming together. For the first time device technology, network capability and user willingness are getting in sync. Previously the technology has been in the devices, but there weren't enough of them out there to make a substantial difference, or the network operators didn't have the infrastructure in place to support them. We now have 2 billion mobile phones in the world: way more phones in use than any other consumer electronic device and the phones are smaller, better, faster, cheaper.
Operators are still going hoopla piloting advanced services such as mobile TV and music download, which they hope will give them some return on their network investments. Advertisers are attempting to jump on the band-wagon.
But are advanced services where it's at? The mobile world is increasingly looking to the tidal wave of commentary on Web 2.0 to bring a new outlook to the "how do we make money from data" debate.
Enter Mobile Web 2.0
I went to Mobile Monday London this week which was on this very topic. It was early days for the mobile crowd and some people couldn't figure out whether this new brand should be "Mobile Web" 2.0 – a new generation for mobile or Mobile "Web 2.0" – bringing a mobile ingredient all things Web 2.0.
I did find the evening interesting not least for the smatterings of the ridiculous which surround this new brand. Tony Fish gave the first presentation. I admired his brazen opportunism: when Tony O'Reilly wrote that article last year, Tony registered the URL mobileweb20.com, started a blog, and is now writing a book. God I hope it contains more insight than this. Let there be more to Mobile Web 2.0 than every mobile buzzword in a tag cloud (he didn't even get the bit about the different sized fonts).
Tony did make one very clear point and that is that in Mobile Web 2.0, entertainment is creation, not consumption.
I agree. We're seeing examples of how popular this is everywhere. E.g. SeeMeTV from 3, karaoke ringtones, moblogging, flickr updates (great review of apps here).
