An MMS would cost more that this.

And for the vast majority of MMS users (which isn’t the vast majority of phone users by any means), MMS is about sending photos. I think you’d need to be a real power user to think in these terms and then use MMS like that.

I appreciate that it’s not that hard, but then I wrote a book on MMS back in the day (and far too early). But this is way off most people’s understanding of what MMS does, let alone how to do it when they do realise.

On the other hand, assuming you remember about SlyDial in the first place and remember their number and then remember your friend’s number (because it’s in your address book, which you can’t access as you’re on the phone and who remembers numbers these days?), most would agree that it’s easier than an embedded MMS.

And calling, emailing or sending an sms is easier still.

Russell

Good post, and I mostly agree. But there’s more to the social contract than ‘ads = free stuff’ - people will still vote with their feet if the ads are intrusive, misleading, simply too frequent, or they become aware of potentially privacy-threatening targeting.

There’s another quirk to be considered, and that’s the ability to charge for a downloadable application - Apple’s AppStore is going to have a lot of imitators over the next few years. While it makes more economic sense for many (not all) of these applications to be ad-supported, I’ve personally found that in the presence of an alternative economic model, many developers are hesitant to include advertising due to its impact on the user experience.

I’m not 100% sure how this plays out over time and whether it will have a strong impact on mobile advertising in general, but it definitely informs our strategy here at Pinch Media.

Would I watch an ad for free content? We’ve all seen how fast that turned to crap, growing up remember a commercial break or two per show? Now it’s what, at least 6 and each with less and less relevant ads?

Bilal
http://buzzzword.blogspot.com/