Archive for November, 2007
by Darla Mack
November 30, 2007 at 7:45 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, mobile social networking, Facebook
Social media megaspot, Facebook has some limits that I’m just not happy with. Ironically it has to do with providers. I enjoy receiving text alerts to my mobile whenever someone pokes me or leaves me a message. But for some reason T-Mobile isn’t listed as one of the providers that this works with.
With social media being among the most popular channel of networking, why is my provider not listed?
Now the reason that I’m being choosy is this… I have unlimited messaging with T-Mobile and limited messaging with AT&T. Facebook users know that at some points alot of messages pop through, some to which are not of any importance. But I consider myself an avid Facebook user and I like to be in the know of what’s going on.
For AT&T users, you might have noticed that Facebook is listed in the MediaNet menu. I cannot speak for the other providers. But not having T-Mobile listed kind of bothers me.
And it isn’t just the US. The only UK provider is O2. No T-Mobile there either. Maybe its just a personal gripe on my part, but for something so advancing as social media, shouldn’t all avenues of providers be covered?
by Russell Shaw
November 30, 2007 at 6:24 pm · Filed under User Interface, Usage + Usability
I spent much of last weekend’s Thanksgiving holiday at the home of my girlfriend’s 75 year-old mother and dear 82-year-old Dad.
Over the weekend, my girlfriend’s sister and brother-in-law bought their (and my girlfriend’s) Mom a cell phone.
After unboxing the phone and playing with it awhile, my girlfriend’s Mom complained loudly to all within shout of her voice that the phone keys were too small for her arthritic hands.
That comment then got me thinking: are these tiny new cellphones making it even more difficult for seniors with motion, mobility and vision problems to text?
What about arthritis, Parkinson’s, macular degeneration? Kind of ironic here that the people who need cell phones the most- for emergency purposes- would have to be subject to these kinds of usability issues?
Not only text, but make phone calls as well? I mean, well duh, that’s what you are supposed to do with a phone, right?
Maybe the answer is larger keyboard phones that would be simpler to type on. Ready-made analogy- large-type books for the visually impaired.
Hey, our seniors raised us. Don’t we owe them?
by Russell Shaw
November 30, 2007 at 10:27 am · Filed under SMS, Studies + Research, News, mobile data statistics, Instant Messaging, Messaging
According to an M: Metrics Survey released earlier this week, 44.10% of U.S. cell users sent a text message over the three-month period ending September 30.
That three-month moving average climbed 2.20% over the previous three month calculation. That would have been June-August.
What’s even more interesting, as gleaned from the facts in the canvass (reproduced in screencap at the top of this post)
Texting is more than six times as popular as mobile IM (7.00% of users) which I take to mean using one or more of those popular IM programs on your handset. So we’d rather text than IM.
Texting is more than four times as popular as sending emails via your phone (9.50%). No surprise there, since composing an actual email message on a cell can be a kludgy process. Plus, why take the time to compose an email if all you want to do is write a few words? Isn’t that easier to do via text?
Is mobile gaming declining? Check the chart. Downloads of mobile games are the only category that’s down. Although I’d have to see more of an ongoing pattern to draw a conclusion, it does appear to me that the market could be temporarily saturated. Mobile gamers have all the games (pre-loaded and chosen) that they want for now, and not a lot of new mobile gamers are being added to the mix.
Maybe both groups are waiting for more common 3G?
by Ewan Spence
November 29, 2007 at 12:45 pm · Filed under Facebook, Advertising
There’s a lot of discussion going at the moment in blogging and social network circles around Facebook and their advertising strategy, namely the Beacon project. This is where your purchases made in certain online stores are shared with other Facebook users in an almost “celebrity endorsement†style ‘Ewan just bought this’ river of news alert.
It’s fair to say that Facebook haven’t exactly taken the purest white route in this project. Yes you can opt out of it (on an advertiser by advertiser basis) and you do get an on screen option per purchase (but only for a short period of time before it vanishes and your consent is assumed); but this project seems designed with more in favour to the advertiser than the user of Facebook. There’s always a certain give and take in the balance a site maintains between the members and the revenue streams, and I’m confident over the next month Facebook are going to alter the Beacon project to bring this balance back. And there’ll probably be a pres release at some point about ‘how “user power†made them think twice and isn’t it great we listen to then?’
I still think that the easiest solution won’t be taken up. Whatever route Zuckerberg’s Behemoth goes down, I doubt it would be as simple as my route… a rev-share on the money that Facebook makes from each endorsement/Beacon advert.
After all, if they want to use my face to sell a pair of trainers, at least give me my percentage.
by Imran Ali
November 28, 2007 at 9:40 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0
In October 2002, during a visit to MIT’s Media Lab, I had the pleasure of playing with student Joan Morris DiMicco’s Conductive Chat demo.
Using a device called the Galvactivator (designed by another student), an IM user’s emotional state is measured - based on their skin conductivity. This reading, in turn alters the size and colour of text in a chat application - in real time.
Just over five years later, Antonio Arico’s concept design, Moody Sensiblog, seeks to use similar methods to create a stream of mood data - as Yanko Design points out - ‘It’s Like Biological Twitter’.
Both projects, along with my own thoughts on haptic messaging and haptic phones, hint at possible futures in mobile sensing and messaging. The iPhone has already brought us intuitive touch-based interfaces, yet as sensing technologies improve and find there way into mobile handsets, I wonder what kinds of meaning and emotion we’ll be able to convey - intuitively - in the messaging applications that will supersede concepts such as Conductive Chat and Moody Sensiblog.
by Ewan Spence
November 27, 2007 at 7:03 pm · Filed under Platforms, Twitter, Instant Messaging, Communication, Convergence, Jaiku, Messaging, seesmic
Many years ago, back in the dark days when I studied Artificial Intelligence at Edinburgh University I was a heavy user of the Usenet reading application TIN. This of course was in the fun days when all access was through 80×24 VT100 terminals. And I remember that TIN was a great improvement over RN and NN, and the main advantage was it used threaded messaging.
And I think that’s where Seesmic, Loic Le Meur’s play to get into the instant message + stream of conscious + video space which could (could) prove profitable in the future. I’ve been on the service for some time, and using it in anger over the last week, and while it is incredibly rough around the edges (and everyone is screaming for threaded messages - making it more Jaiku than Twitter?) there is something going on here that needs exploring.
Seesmic is not the final answer. It’s simply the opening shot, like a ranging shell in a naval battle. If any of the other presence services add video, the bloated Flash app of Seesmic will have a tough battle early on it’s career. TIN caught my imagination, but it was a News client on Windows 3.11 that really pulled me into Usenet. So the question is, will Seesmic’s TIN become lead or gold?
by Russell Shaw
November 27, 2007 at 12:50 pm · Filed under Messaging
I’m just back from a Thanksgiving weekend visit to my girlfriend’s parents in Palo Alto, California.
If you must know, that’s in the heart of Silicon Valley, just a short drive from Apple CEO Steve Jobs house.
While there, I participated in two conversations that focused on texting’s difficulties for young and old.
I asked my girlfriend’s eight year-old niece if she knew how to text. “Yes,” came the self-assured reply.
It was at that point that her mother cut in and said, “but we won’t let her.”
Given that the eight year-old’s parents are progressive, I knew the reason for texting prohibitions wasn’t because they were afraid that their daughter might text rather than keep her mind on more serious things.
It’s just that they know that she is at an age where she is quite talkative, and loves to participate (and in some cases) dominate conversations.
She also has lots of friends… know where I am going with this?
Not letting her text is her parent’s way of avoiding sticker shock and ensuring that their brilliant polymath/highly social being of a daughter stays focused.
And who could argue with that?
by Russell Shaw
November 27, 2007 at 12:37 pm · Filed under News, mobile social networking, Yahoo
We learn from Silicon Valley-based news and gossip site Valleywag that Yahoo has plans to launch a social messaging service it is calling MyM.
“From what we’ve heard, MyM sounds a lot like Meebo, the website which allows users to access multiple instant-messaging clients at once. MyM will actually hook into Meebo, as well as Friendster, MySpace, LiveJournal, AIM, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo’s own IM software,” Valleywag reports.
No reason that MyM can’t be mobile.
Yet befitting Valleywag’s strong gossip and debunking self-awareness, the site also quotes unidentified internal Yahoo! types as feeling MyM is “awkward,” and that competitors are likely to block the service.
If competitors try to block this thing, I can promise you there will be very loud rumblings in Commentstan (my term for blog Comment fields).
Right now, the service is in pre-beta invitation mode. Don’t you hate that? Now you know how those folks who were denied admittance to trendy discos in the late 1970s felt when the bouncers told them not to darken their doorways.
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