Archive for Communication
by Ewan Spence
April 7, 2008 at 6:14 am · Filed under Google, Communication, Convergence, Email, Gmail, Android
Remind me again what use Google Android is? I mean, I know what the party line is, to create an open platform, to have a standard approach, to let it run on lots of handsets, to give the Linux community another White Knight OS running on standard phone hardware (as opposed to OpenMoko, or Sava JE, or whatever Motorola’s Strategy department liked using last month), there may be another useful side effect.
While it will be good news if Google succeeds in getting a foothold into the Handheld OS market, it won’t be because they have a standard platform. With all the best will in the world, Apple’s market hare of mobile phones in the US could not be described as a standard; a foothold, yes. Even Symbian’s worldwide share of the total mobile market (and not just the ‘smart’ section) has a long term goal to reach 10% (2007 sa their share rise to 7%). So I just don’t see how Google can manage to make any ground selling handsets.
Maybe they have something else in mind? After all, Google’s strength is in advertsing. What they need is eyeballs over their sites and properties. It is leveraging the mobile search space with browser tie ins and plug in search widgets – all driving browser footfall back to Mountain View. If the fragmentation in the mobile space continues, then one of the key applications is going to be using the phone as a think client, via the web or small Java applets, back to destinations such as Google Maps and Google Mail.
If Google can keep the tech elite switching between devices like the iPhone, the Nokia NSeries, and now Android, then these cross platform properties become more and more useful to the users, they gain more presence and become even more sticky. So people can squabble all they like over the Operating System. Google will keep gathering knowledge via the Android project, but the real value comes from keeping everyone arguing over a lot of systems, while the tools used continue to stay with Google.
by Imran Ali
March 25, 2008 at 4:36 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, SMS, Usage + Usability, iPhone, Twitter, mobile social networking, Openmoko, Communication, Android
Late last year I wrote about the Mobility of Messages and how the tools for archiving our ‘emotional bits’ are crudely shortsighted, lacking the means for durable longevity and personal curation.
So I was recently very pleased to discover Treasuremytext, a startup - based in Liverpool and Amsterdam - that’s been helping users archive and preserve precious text messages for the best part of five years!
Treasuremytext’s founders - Katie Lips and Paul Stringer - were motivated by issues similar to those described in my earlier post; the very personal desire to treasure those evocative, poignant, sexy, cheeky and deeply personal messages at a time when handset inboxes were often limited to just 10-15 messages.
Katie and Paul very much saw their mission as one of liberating valuable messages from mobile handsets - presaging the currently in-vogue openness of Android, Openmoko and LiPS (no pun intended!) - and placing them in a web-based archive.
The web elements of the service came about due to the company’s frustrations at trying to work with mobile operators and technologies (SyncML, SIM readers etc.) - the web was simply the best medium for personalising and manipulating treasured messages. Treasuremytext’s strategy has enabled them to maneuver around cellcos, whilst still providing value to end users; a strategy that when multiplied across many service providers rightly deepeds the commoditisation of mobile operators.
Curiously, Treasuremytext has been a bigger hit with people in their 20s, 30s and 40s and messages largely focusing on relationships - indicating that SMS is a more disposable medium for younger users and romantic messages are likely to be the most treasured. Indeed, the service is almost inadvertently aggregating unique analytics and ethnographic data of the usage of SMS over time.
The service works well - with users simply needing to forward their messages to a specific number, via SMS; though it seems some meta information can be lost (original time, date stamp, sender name). This may simply be the vagaries of SMS infrastructure and handset software, but some simple tools to manually adjust metadata for each message (sender, time, date, tag) would be useful, particularly tags - with some users saving thousands of messages, folders will no longer be flexible enough tools for storage.
The more social features of the service are actually quite reminiscent of Twitter - but that’s no bad thing, Treasuremytext has a different emphasis and, as such, will be well positioned to evolve alongside other messaging services; indeed, they’re already experimenting with iPhone clients.
As my friend Ross notes, some operators are beginning to offer similar features as part of their suite of bundled services - notably O2’s Bluebook. However, operator services are notoriously, um, *crap* and generally closed like a nun’s knickers. By adopting open data principles, Treasuremytext could again maneuver around cellcos and deepen their claim on their philosophy of openness. New platforms such as Android and Openmoko could also help to provide wider distribution and I believe there’s a strong analytics and ethnographics opportunity for them too…
In the meantime, it’s worth spending a few minutes with co-founder Katie’s BarCamp session on 12 mistakes not to make when launching your startup!
by Ewan Spence
January 28, 2008 at 9:24 am · Filed under SMS, Communication, Acquisitions/Mergers, Crowdsourcing
How do you tell an influential group of people that something really important is happening? Well the traditional way of getting your message out is the press release – and there’s a certain amount of legal requirements for trading companies that mean the press release will always be with us in the future – but as Web 2.0 and technology continues to become entwined with grass roots marketing and news, the landscape ois going to thorw up some interesting ways to look at communication.
One f those was last week’s announcement by English Football team Newcastle United. They’ve been looking for a new manager for some time, and announced their signing last week. The normal way would be the press release from above. Not this time. What were the main stages to the announcement? Well the press conference/press release was third. Before that, news went up on the website.
But before all of that, the first official news was blasted out to all the Fan Club members by an SMS text message.
I love the fact that the people that care most about the club were the first to be told; and that anyone who got that text message was very likely to jump up and tell everyone else close by that Kevin Keegan was coming back to the club. Not only have you continued to develop a superb relationship with the fans (Newcastle United are probably second in terms of rabid supporters in England, just behind Manchester United), but you’ve created a little viral message bomb all on your own.
Being able to harness people power to get your message out is going to become ever more relevant in the Web 2.0 world of tomorrow. Companies are going to be looking to make their users into evangelists – which in turn not only drives up the user base of the project, but also reduces the money spent on traditional advertising. The recent Le Web conference in Paris is a prime example of this. Everyone in the tech.conference circles was aware the event was happening – and over 1500 delegates proved the marketing worked. Total amount spent on advertising and marketing the event? $0.00.
Mobile Messaging 2.0 is not just about how the message is delivered, but how people react to that message. With a bit of planning and fore-thought, web 2.0 can not only complement the traditional methods of B2C communication, but enhance and increase the effectiveness of the message. There’s going to be a lot of innovation in this space as well, watch out for it!
by Imran Ali
January 27, 2008 at 8:02 pm · Filed under SMS, News, Communication
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the portability and mobility of messages - for archiving and longevity when changing handsets, applications or devices.
As I wrote about The Mobility of Messages last month, I’d largely considered scenarios which were quite personal and largely about personal archiving. However, Wired’s recently published Most Text Messages Are Saved Only Briefly explores the flipside of this issue - legality, retention and privacy. The story describes how pager messages between Detroit’s Mayor and his Chief of Staff revealed infidelity and potential perjury.
Beatty: “And, did you miss me, sexually?”
Kilpatrick: “Hell yeah! You couldn’t tell. I want some more. ”
Though the parties in this scenario were largely incriminated by the use of an arcane paging infrastructure, national security legislation around issues of data retention means most of need to consider mobile messaging as less ephemeral than we thought.
As usage of email fragments in favour of more immediate and synchronous media such as SMS, there will be increasing pressure on mobile network operators to retain communications for legal discovery, forensics and as potential evidence in criminal and civil cases.
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by Ewan Spence
January 14, 2008 at 10:19 am · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, Funny, Communication, Convergence
Good news! Readers in Glasgow will be the first in the UK able to use their mobile phone and get a signal on their metro. The Glasgow Underground is on course to deploy a combined Wi-Fi and 2G/3G service by this February. It should be noted that coverage, as yet, is only for the stations, and not in the tunnels between the stations.
But already I can hear the cries and howls of protest as ‘the last bastion of peace and quiet is breached,’ or similar sentiments (cf MocoNews’ “is nothing sacredâ€). You know, we’ve been here before. Go right back to the invention of the telephone and it has been slowly moving into more public spaces. Take the start of the 80’s, you would not have walked out on the street to make a call, where everyone could hear your side of the conversation. Nowadays that’s a common occurrence.
As technology has changed, so has social acceptance. We’re seeing it in the field not just of mobile communication (for example are we at the point where it is polite to at least read an SMS at dinner, if not quite the done thing to take the time to reply?) but in all areas of the internet – the most obvious change is the attitude towards copyright and the rewarding of artists but more and more steps in mobile phone etiquette are under way. The next big area, I feel, is in airline travel – and with Air France to start trials of its in-flight call system in the first half of 2008 the airline cabin during flight could be the next step.
Does this all matter though? Are those people who are crying Cassandra at the changes doing the right thing, relics of a more polite past, or will they come around when the rest of the crowd is doing it?
by Ewan Spence
December 31, 2007 at 10:45 am · Filed under MMS, Carriers, Instant Messaging, Communication
And so it begins.
My phone is already beeping at me with text’s from all my friends wishing me a Happy New Year – of course being Scottish Hogmanay (December the 31st) is effectively the start of a three day national holiday which is know for drinking vile drinks, eating vile animals, and generally enjoying life as much as possible.
But it also coincides with one of the busiest times for the UK mobile networks in terms of traffic not of voice calls, but in texts. The New Year message, as midnight strikes, invariably sees a significant number of subscribers on every network send an SMS wishing them all the best for 2008. And it’s not just to one person, it’s to a significant proportion, if not all, of their address book.
Now take the average address book, multiply that out by the number of people looking to send such a batch of messages, and there’s no doubt that come Jan 2nd, I’m sure the PR departments will warm-up the “written on Dec 14th minus the number†press release with “the biggest year for texts yet in the United Kingdom.†And I’m also sure we’ll hear the stories of texts taking hours to get through, network saturation at the centre of street parties, a log-jam of data and calls in networks that struggle to cope.
Make no bones, this is one of the biggest nights of the year for mobile messaging, certainly in the UK. Yes there has been localised pressure over the last months and years (case in point being the London Underground bombings) but this is both predictable, and nationwide (and I’m sure a wodge of international traffic in and out as well).
So do you design your network for the peak of the busiest night, or do you aim somewhere below that because the spare capacity isn’t needed for the other 354 days? My guess is probably the later, but knowing that the networks are constantly expanding, I suspect the capacity that is filled tonight would have easily coped with the traffic from last year, and capacity 12 months down the line would cope with tonight. This increase in bandwidth, capacity and handling goes on behind the scenes without the subscriber even realising, and for all that we complain about the big bad networks, take a moment to think just how many texts will get shuffled around tonight, even if there is a ten-fifteen minute delay on some of them.
Happy New Year!!!
Update: While coverage was spotty in Edinburgh, there were no real delays on voice - only took three rings to get through mobile to mobile at about ten past midnight. Txts seemed to flow freely, as they also did for Ewan McLeod. How did your messages get through?
by Ewan Spence
December 28, 2007 at 5:45 pm · Filed under Communication, Convergence, Advertising
There are some who hope that the mobile message in 2008 will simply read “Vote Bush for President 2008.†(Un)fortunately term limits take care of that one, but there are a lot of names who want to be there come November 2008, and getting their message out is their goal.
Now, being based in the UK, and in a constituency that is pretty much solid for one party, I’m not going to preach here about the benefits or problems with one US Presidential Candidate over another; what I am interested in is how they’re going to use Web 2.0 and Mobile Messaging to find, mobilise and use their supporters.
Ewan MacLeod pointed this out over the festive seasons with a post on Obama’s use of SMS shortcodes (in his case OBAMA, or 62262). It didn’t take long for the supporter of another candidate to point out their shortcode – Hilary Clinton using 442008 (the 44th President will be elected in 2008). It’s not the first time MacLeod has pointed out Obama’s use of technology, with his use of text messaging to gain an audience for his show with TV host Oprah Winfrey, but I’m sure we’ll see more and more of this in the next few weeks and months (during Primary season) and then onwards with the chosen candidates towards the main event.
It says a lot about the power of Web 2.0 to reach the younger votes, a group that is generally regarded as being hard to both reach and motivate – interacting with them on platforms such as Facebook, having Twitter accounts is going to become the norm for candidates in many elections, not just the bigger US versions. It might take time, but the blogging politician has an opportunity to make a connection for life with his or her constituents; something especially important where there are no term limits (such as Capitol Hill in the US and the United Kingdom House of Commons).
What’s been the most unusual political outreach online you’ve seen?
by Imran Ali
December 27, 2007 at 4:28 am · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, Devices, Studies + Research, On Blogs and Blogging, Ethnography, Communication, Convergence, Email
In the last couple of weeks, the various contributors to Mobile Messaging 2.0 have been holding an open debate on what the definition of a mobile message should be; with some insightful and thought provoking contributions from Debi, Darla, Ewan, Paul and Russell…almost the entire team!
From my own perspective as a user, cognitively, I don’t think I’ve ever made distinctions between mobile messaging or ‘fixed’ messaging. In fact the means of transmission is pretty much meaningless to me, with a focus on where I am, what I’m doing, what I’m talking about and with whom I’m communicating.
Every day I expect 100-150 incoming emails, around a 1000 blogposts at Bloglines, maybe 50-75 Twitters, an average of 5 voice calls, 5-10 Facebook messages and the odd notification from a blog comment, Facebook event, YouTube, Upcoming, Last.fm or eBay. Every now and again, I might even receive an MMS!
They’re all just messages - some land in my mailbox, others in various web application inboxes, some on my mobile phone. I might see a Facebook notification email arrive in my N95’s inbox and reply using the mobile web UI for Facebook. I may receive a direct Twitter on my phone as an SMS and reply using Twitterific on my Mac. Sometimes I wander around the house firing off replies from an iPod touch.
Conversations and communications start in one application, end in another and meander through various fixed and mobile networks…it’s all communication, driven by context and situation.
Perhaps there’s a meta-question we need to address collectively. Rather than exploring definition of mobile messaging, we perhaps need to understand why this definition is important. Are we more interested in the mobile portions of a conversation’s journey or in the multi-modal nature of that conversation?
I would argue that the latter question is perhaps more significant, simply because this is an area in which the industry lacks knowledge. Classifying messages by network or device is relatively easy to comprehend, but doesn’t reflect the reality of usage most of us now experience.
We can perhaps learn much more about the design and usage of communication by delving deep into the motivations we have when switching contexts between services, devices, location, time and relationship…
by Imran Ali
December 26, 2007 at 2:04 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, Devices, Studies + Research, Usage + Usability, Events + Conferences, iPhone, Twitter, Video Conferencing, Openmoko, Communication, Voice, Research
With the sad cancellation of O’Reilly’s Emerging Telephony conferences, it seemed that the unique melting pot of traditional telcos, cellcos and bleeding-edge disruptive innovators, hackers and entrepreneurs would dissipate.
Thanks to the efforts of one of the former ETel advisory board members, Lee Dryburgh, the unique conversation between these communities will move beyond telephony into ‘communication’ in all its forms - social media, telephony, ethnographics and - of course - mobility.
Lee is hosting the inaugural Emerging Communications 2008, conference next Spring in Mountain View at the Computer History Museum. The conference wil also be accompanied by an unconference day, providing a mix of traditional conferences with the energy of a parallel BarCamp-style event.
Though the lineup isn’t finalised yet, there are some interesting speakers lined up already, including sessions on Building Twitter from Blaine Cook, Emerging & Usage Patterns from Intel’s Dawn Nafus, OpenMoko’s Michael Shiloh and thought leaders such as Norman Lewis and Sheldon Renan.
One of the underlying implicit themes from the current programme of speakers seems to be the potential in the intersection of telephony and social networks - issues which speak to the future of mobile messaging, a topic covered by MM2.0 contributors just recently.
Though not focussed exclusively on the mobile industry, eComm 2008 promises to surface some interesting directions for messaging and communication. As such it’s a community that we need to watch closely, listening for the weak signals that’ll give clues as to what happens next in the industry…
{ Disclosure: I’m a member of the voluntary eComm 2008 advisory board. }
by Imran Ali
December 26, 2007 at 12:53 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, Voicemail, Facebook, Communication, Email, Gmail
Recently, here at Mobile Messaging 2.0, there’s been much discussion as to the definition of a ‘mobile message’.
There’s been some great commentary and debate with a focus on context, usage, the means of transmission, however there’s a parallel question which I believe to be of some importance - our messages exist in various places, how can we ensure that those messages have mobility?
More specifically, as messaging usage fragments across many services and devices, how do we make sure that those messages - the emotional and professional fragments of our lives - can move with us when we switch services or devices.
Voice messages, text messages, email, photomessages, Twitters, RSS posts and Facebook messages aren’t simply dry digital constructs, but the ‘emotional bits‘ that comprise a large part of our individual and collective memories, yet our tools for archiving and mobilising them are crudely shortsighted.
- The last voice message from a recently deceased relative is a precious memory, yet voicemail is treated ephemerally often disappearing after just a few days, with no way to archive.
- People often keep precious text messages from loved for long periods of time on their handsets, yet when they switch phones, there are no consistent mechanisms to port messages from one phone to another.
- I’ve been a Hotmail user since 1999 - after 8 years I’d love to switch to Gmail, but Microsoft offer me no mechanism to export eight years of deeply personal content to another service. Damn, I’d even pay them for such a feature.
Google’s recent adoption of IMAP for Gmail is one of the first clear moves by a major messaging provider to support such needs. In a recent interview, Gmail Product Manager, Keith Coleman, stated that:
Millions of people start using Gmail each month, and many of them tell us how hard it can be to switch email accounts, particularly when switching from a service that doesn’t offer POP, IMAP or forwarding. We didn’t want Gmail users to have to go through that if they ever wanted to move away.
Thought Google’s intentions are noble, IMAP doesn’t go far enough in providing the level of openness that is neccessary; Google’s own support documents illustrate that Gmail’s innovative message labelling doesn’t map directly onto the antiquated IMAP folder structure…also, it’s only good for email!
What’s needed is an open data format supported by all messaging applications such that mailboxes can be imported, exported or synced - preserving the message metadata and content, whether text, video or audio.
For service providers concerned about user retention, adding such capabilities may even add further value. I don’t mind keeping my voicemail with O2, as long as I can archive it to Gmail, or leaving photomessages on my mobile handset as long as my Flickr account can pull them into a longer term archive.
Perhaps a combination of embedded microformats, IMAP and mbox could provide the technological framework of a new Open Message Box standard for mobilising our messages.
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