Example of MMS
Russell Beattie has blogged a rant about MMS. In a blog entitled “MMS still sucks” (get off the fence on this will you, Russ?) he writes about a failed MMS to someone on the same network, when both sender and recipients have Nokia’s.
It doesn’t arrive - quelle surprise!
The only damn justification MMS has for living is the “it just works” factor. You get a new MMS enabled camera phone and MMS works just as easily as SMS. If you take that out, then MMS just doesn’t make any sense: It’s not as quick and easy as SMS, it’s not as functional as email, and it’s not as instant as Chat. It’s a freakin’ mutant. It has no fallback: if MMS doesn’t just work, it’s completely useless. Email and Chat are worth struggling a bit with settings to get working, but MMS? There’s too much infrastructure you don’t control and too much magic behind the scenes. It either works or it’s garbage.
Grrr..
I couldn’t agree more. Though I’d add that the over-pricing adds insult to injury.
Sometimes, operators are excused their shite marketing as they focus on technology and infrastructure. But when that doesn’t work either….
One of my favourite writers on technology and society in Howard Rheingold, who has written a great piece in The Feature about why mobile services fail. Nice to see that Howard agrees with much I have to say on the subject 
Designer Scott Jenson says mobile services like WAP and MMS were set up to fail because designers looked backwards at past successes instead of forward to new, untried ways to use mobile media.
Jenson, who, among other things, led the design team for Symbian’s Quartz user interface (now known as UIQ) and worked on the Apple Newton, likens the situation to the birth of motion pictures. The first moviemakers nailed cameras to stages. Cinema didn’t blossom until D.W. Griffith used close-ups and sophisticated editing to invent the language of film. Jenson thinks the same kind of thinking has prevented WAP and MMS from replicating the accidental success of texting.
“The original use of movies to capture stage plays wasn’t wrong; it just wasn’t ultimately all that exciting,” Jenson wrote in his brilliant rant on “Default Thinking.” “Something much more interesting happened as the use of the technology matured. Most likely the same will happen with photos and phones. Something far more interesting will most likely come. We should be getting used to this pattern and anticipate it.”
WAP and MMS failed to meet expectations because services were designed by what Jenson calls “default thinking,” a clichÈd and unquestioned mindset that combines “a weak collection of axioms of design, broad market visions, or rules of execution that aren’t clearly articulated. This collection exists in the background, much like the assumption that gravity exists.”
Jenson goes on to suggest 4 potential “killer apps” in mobile services:
Jenson has a hunch that gift-giving rituals could drive future uses of MMS. “It is possible to create quite a complex MMS, one that includes not only a picture but sound and text as well. This has clear value as a gift. There could be a small study in the gift giving groups to see how they would respond to photos as giftsÖ” Then he suggests a simple service that wouldn’t require any change in existing SMS and mobile handsets — enabling users to safely store messages they treat as gifts with symbolic value, a behavior uncovered by studies of adolescent use of SMS.
This gut feel is amply borne out by the fascinating research of Professor Richard Harper whose paper “The Gift of the Gab” is worth getting hold of if you can. He focused on text messaging and uncovered loads of evidence that gifting was an important ritual in youth SMS’ing:
We have attempted to illustrate this fact by focusing on the obligations associated with giftgiving.
We have demonstrated that under certain conditions and in specific contexts, mobile phones can be used in gift-giving rituals, taking on particular meanings in young peopleís daily lives. These situated and embodied understandings become intertwined with the technological constraints and possibilities of the phones and, in turn, influence further uses and understandings.
The text message, for example, provides the basic ingredients for a gift. As we have seen, between peers and in the right context it may be offered as a symbolic gesture of friendship and allegiance.
Furthermore, he found evidence that the value of such gifts increased, the more that the recipient could see that the sender had invested in the composition.
Cognima as we reported earlier in the week can also play a huge part in this area.
The product Jenson calls “Tap” would require custom software on the handset to send and receive SMS messages that convey only the time and the identity of the sender. “Although no text is sent, the message isn’t really empty of content as it has a sender and an arrival time, both of which can have meaning depending on social context. This text-free message can be thought of as the social equivalent of a tap on the shoulder” that could convey different messages, depending on context. “For a family in a theme park tapping could mean it is time for lunch. It could also mean a lover is thinking of their partner during the day.”
Hmm. Not so sure about this one. Why not include a quick text element or have a template to say “Love you, Hunky Buttocks” or whatever.
Another product would involve even more extensive software on the handset, using the simple procedure of sending SMS but substituting a brief recorded message for hand-entered text, which can be a barrier for those with less dextrous thumbs: “VoiceSMS would be sent with just 2 actions, one to start recording, and another to select a recipient, mimicking the design syntax of most SMS clients today.”
We’ve already seen this sort of thing with Push2Talk. Logically, I agree that voice messages should be big. But they’re never really taken off yet, apart from specialist uses in the US.
And going back to the gifting argument, a voice message is never going to achieve the same kudos as an SMS, as the sender hasn’t “invested” as much in its creation.
Good stuff though.
Justin Hall has written a thought-provoking piece in The Feature about the role of Mobile Entertainment in society.
We are the first generation of humans carrying powerful personal computers in our pockets. What kind of collaboration is possible? How can we find and organize our contacts and connections in an entire city? By playing together, we come to understand the shape of wireless living. It may seem as though we are connected now, with mobile phones ringing from Fargo to Falluja. But our phones today are only tangentially aware of where we are. Soon, mobile devices will have tangible context-sensitivity ñ knowing where you are, and juggling that with time of day and your activities to suggest information, or appropriate diversion.
What is mobile entertainment when youíve just left a movie theater? What is mobile entertainment when youíre touring Notre Dame in Paris? What is mobile entertainment when youíre visiting your parents? If you have a mobile device that is aware of all these places, timings and states of being, your mobile entertainment options are not going to be limited to Snake and screensavers.
Imagine being able to play a game with your friends at all times, whenever you feel like it. Friends out on the town with their mobile devices, or friends on desktop computers at work or home. Imagine virtual data objects scattered all over the real, physical world. You may have just walked over a digital pink umbrella you canít see, unless your friends tell you, or youíre gazing at your mobile phone screen. Why would you care for that umbrella? Because youíre collecting umbrellas. Or maybe your friend collects pink objects and this would make a great gift. French company Newt Games has created an intricate economy of virtual objects strewn across Tokyo. Players of their mobile game Mogi have the chance to work with players on PCs or phones, traveling the city, collecting and trading items they pick up on the way to work or out for an evening with friends.
Now imagine youíre in the city, looking for good stuff, but youíre being chased. Youíre playing a sort of game of tag with your friends, who are all cooperating together to find you according to GPS data and sightings from spies around downtown. Your virtual friends might reach out and touch you, through physical agents. This is the idea behind New York Universityís recent experimental game, PacManhattan. Players acted the part of PacMan and the four ghosts, the ghosts chasing the yellow dot-gobbler around lower Manhattan. Handlers in a remote location watching their respective team members, advising the lead character to stay take a quick turn on Broadway to stay alive, or advising the ghosts to surround him near Cooper Union.
Finally, imagine your phone beeps. You look down — a friend has sent you a picture, showing a dalmatian she just photographed with her mobile device. You check the GPS statistics on the picture, and you see she was near home. Youíre psyched by this news: the dog is a symbol, a sign you recognize — your friend has just scored a point by finding that species of dog in her particular location, at that time of day. Her dog-sighting means that your team will probably win the neighborhood for the week. Youíre playing a scavenger hunt game involving locations, pictures, media sharing. Your buddy list is the playspace: youíre collaborating with friends, and competing with neighbors. You play when you want, you keep up with the game as a way to maintain casual social relations.
Personal, Not Professional
This last scavenger hunt doesnít exist quite yet, but itís likely to have been played by the end of this year. Experiments are afoot in laboratories, universities and cities, to figure out how to use all this technology for games, for mobile entertainment.
Itís an awful lot of trouble to take for diversion! All that engineering and expense to rig up a game of tag with friends you canít see. But it makes sense — itís hard to imagine what better use we might have for GPS-enabled mobile multimedia. There may be explicitly productive uses of these technologies, but business applications are not likely to inspire the widest range of people to experiment. One look at mobile messaging and its clear that its success lies not so much in its explicit professional potential so much as its usefulness for maintaining personal relations.
Mobile entertainment is the means with which we will adapt and evolve with these technologies. We work towards them; we prepare our fingers for readiness by playing when the stakes are not so high. With mobile entertainment, weíre practicing for the empowered mobile future by playing together.
Learning through playing is a natural human activity, starting in childhood. But in technology terms, many a non-geek has got to grips with a PC for the first time by playing Solitaire.
Location services on mobiles has the potential to seriously change the way we live, work and play in ways that even now we have no idea about. And it’s not about finding your nearest ATM or pub.
Engadget reports a “crime” that would happily sit within the pages of 1984.
Warronnica Harris, a college student in Florida, definitely made a mistake when she answered a phone call from her mom while watching the opening credits to Catwoman at a local theater (though going to see that movie in the first place was probably her first mistake). An irritated police officer in the theater noticed her on the phone, shined a flashlight in her eyes, then pushed Harris and her boyfriend into the lobby where he doused them with pepper spray and arrested them for disorderly conduct, thus fulfilling the secret revenge fantasies of irate moviegoers everywhere.
Crikey.
Proving that there must be someone at 3 who knows what they’re doing, New Media Age highlights an article in The Mirror
Today’s Mirror reports that mobile network 3 has introduced full-length music videos that customers can play on their phones.
The mobile network has joined forces with record label BMG to launch their new ‘Video Jukebox’ service which will enable customers to choose from a selection of the latest and classic music videos to watch on their handsets.
BMG have provided access to full-length videos from their roster of artists including Outkast, Christina Aguilera, and Dido.
The videos will be available before singles are released, up to four to six weeks before singles appear in stores, while some videos will premier exclusively on 3, reports the paper.
Each video will cost £1.50 and will be available to stream or download to the handset.
Assuming The Mirror is right on this* it’s a great initiative for 3 - finally taking advantage of their uniqueness of being able to offer video downloads (as opposed to the insanity of focusing on video calls).
But, I also add:
1. Isn’t GBP 1.50 a little greedy fellas?
2. Why have 3 waited until now to do something sensible, with their competitors just about to launch?
3. When the hell are 3 going to offer email to their subscribers? That is the key to recruiting high APRU generating customers - the businessman.
4. I hope that downloading video is a lot quicker than it was when 3 launched. It wasn’t the downloading itself that was slow (actually it was fast). It was that every time you interacted with the server, there was a 12 second delay. It doesn’t sound very long but..
“I think I’ll watch me a 30 second video clip of last night’s goals in the United match.” Load browser (12 seconds), go to football site (12 seconds), chose match (12 seconds), hit download (12 seconds). Hmmm. Shite springs to mind.
5. Why oh why have BMG teamed up with the losers in the space - why not wait a few months for Vodafone or Orange? Or maybe it’s non-exclusive.
6. Is 3 called 3 as it’s just about to become the 3rd player in the UK market. And will they change their name to 5, after T-Mobile and O2 launch their 3G offering. Pass the cream, Mr Buckley.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens with this. The music video is the perfect sushi morsel for the mobile.
* The British tabloid isn’t known for being right all of the time. Its editor had to resign recently over faked photo’s of torture victims.
My favourite comment on British tabloids came from Jasper Carrott, a UK comedian. He said (of The Sun) “I always feel sorry for Sun readers as they can’t write in to complain.” It kind of backfired though when he alienated many of his Sun reading fans.
Engadget reports a very sad story from the UK
a 12-year old English boy attempted to scare his parents after they refused to let him get a cellphone by faking a suicide, and unfortunately only succeeded at killing himself.
But it does provide a horrible reminder of just how important the mobile is in kids’ lives these days.
Reuters carries this interesting story about a retro hybrid phone - the Pokia.
When he walks down the street trying out his nifty invention, Nicholas Roope looks just a little bit crazy.
He is, after all, talking into a heavy, black, old, Bakelite telephone handset, with a thick coiled cord leading into his pocket.
Heads turn. The faces of passers-by register surprise, disbelief, and then, almost immediately, signs of recognition as if Roope’s object were the most familiar thing in the world.
It is, essentially, an old phone handset wired up to a standard mobile phone concealed in the pocket. It may or may not become the de rigueur fashion accessory of the decade. It may or may not ever make Nicholas Roope any money.
But it has landed him on the covers of an Italian style magazine and the Home section of the New York Times, and into the pages of technology, fashion and finance sections of magazines and newspapers in Britain and Sweden.
There’s a great blog here about a Microsoft Intern’s experience of dining with the Big Man at home. Including airport level security to get in!
W2Forum (subscription needed) highlights an extraordinary article in the FT. So extraordinary that I’ve taken a couple of days to digest it. I don’t have access to the original article, but have no reason to doubt W2Forum’s interpretation.
In an Interview with the FT Sanjiv Ahuja identified a key change in the mobile Industry. Successful mass-market adoption can only be achieved through better customer understanding.
Developing technology in abstract of the consumer is unlikely to create success for the innovator. This is particularly the case within the mobile Industry, which facing saturated markets, increasing price competition and falling arpu have yet again turned to a technology to try and save them.
The current buzz-word within the Industry is customer centricity. People are increasingly understanding that it is not about the technology; yet are still to come to grips with ways of implementing a solution.
The case study evidence of 3G adoption shows that successful uptake is based on natural migration of existing customer bases. The right strategy appears to communicate the benefits of usage to the consumer and not try to differentiate upon the basis of technology.
Sorry? Isn’t this so basic, it’s like saying “the secret of life is not to die” or “the sun is pretty hot”?
You wonder what Marketing Directors have been saying in board meetings. Or is the Financial Director talking about how 2, when added to 2 generally equals 4, with the CTO fiddling around with tin cans and bits of string?
Marketing is and has always been about the customer. It’s that simple.
Now I know that operators have to be focused on lots of things and that technology and infrastructure is vital. Without a product, after all, you don’t have a business.
But the same can be said about the customer - without them, you don’t have a business either. And to imply that the operators are only just realisiing this is frankly, staggering.
But it does explain some of the silly initiatives we’ve seen, from the poorly executed MMS to the double think of 3’s focus on video calls.
For MMS, its not too late, you simply do this
1. Make sure every handset worked ìout of the boxî. I know itís not easy, but neither is this impossible.
2. Make sure that we have cross network compatibility. If youíre going to send a message, it has to arrive. No excuses.
3. Develop a range of content, readily available and FREE that people could use to quickly compose their MMS. Most operators try to ìdouble bubbleî by charging for content and then charging you to send it. Come on guys, thatís just greedy!
4. Drop the price. 35p (OK O2 have just generously introduced a 25p tariff ñ more than double what an SMS costs on the most expensive tariff). 10 ñ 15p seems reasonable for a premium content message. 25 ñ 35p is that greed thing again.
5. Give 1,000 or so handsets to the coolest kids and give them free MMS messaging.
6. Stand back and watch MMS usage take off.
For video conferencing, it’s just pure stupidity to focus your marketing on the one factor that is your Achilles Heal - you need to know someone else on your network to make a video call. And when a network is launched, what is there a scarcity of? Yep, other people on the network. Brilliant.
In Mr Ahuja’s defence, he does obviously get it. But when are we going to see real evidence of this customer-centricity?
SmartMobs has a story about a Japanese TV Show, that illustrates quite how deeply the mobile phone is embedded into society.
Literally translated as “the cell phone detective,” Keitai Deka is a weekly show on Japan’s BS-i channel wherein a teen with a super-cellphone solves crimes. “Although Westerners might find the premise implausible, in Japan, where multitasking teens can thumbtext faster than you can type, it’s practically a documentary.”
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