Mobile devices become the ultimate social network?
Interesting this Nokia/YouTube hook up.
Nokia press release…
http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1104222
Nokia have had a love/hate relationship with the ‘carriers’ for a while now…
http://nokian95.groups.vox.com/library/post/6a00ccff84be77985d00cd970d0e234cd5.html
This deal parallels the ones YouTube have made with carriers such as Verizon Wireless.
http://www.youtube.com/press_room_entry?entry=MfvRjkWLxgk
The main difference seems to be that Nokia won’t be pruning the selection of videos that are downloaded.
Nokia and other mobile phone companies are neatly bypassing the ‘carriers’ by providing a wide variety of potential wireless access nodes (2G, 3G, Wifi, Bluetooth) onto the Internet.
The ‘carriers’ should love Nokia for making it so easy for the user to chew though bandwidth.
Unfortunately, the ‘carriers’ don’t see themselves as a utility such as water or electricity.
They see themselves as media companies.
Users want control over the media they consume.
Users are not interested in the ‘carriers’ censoring media.
Users want tools (mobile ones in this case) to find and access the media and human contacts they desire.
What Users don’t want is an ‘old school media channel’ dolling out teaspoons of sanitised bits and bytes, and controlling who the User can communicate with.
Life could be so easy for the ‘carriers.’ Give the Users a cheap, wide, fast flowing river of bits, and then sit back and let the cash roll in.
One day, we may find mobile phones talking to each other in a huge fluid mobile web (each phone would be its own ‘base station’ and function much as a P2P network would) dipping into household WiMax stations when access is available.
This would completely bypass the ‘carriers’ and would make the function of mobile phones much like the Net itself.
Comments
I feel that as soon as the 'carriers' margins are being affected by other wireless standards, connection prices will fall, and allot more people will take up this tech.
The 'human contact' aspect defiantly seems to be the clincher.
Lot's of Net commentary points out that the main kicker for Flickr was the communities it allowed people to establish and participate in.
This is one of the reasons I don't think cinemas will ever completely die out.
I like the idea of Web 2.0 allowing Users to establish mini radios stations, or art galleries.
Combined with the sharing and commenting aspect that the Web brings to these activities.
The interesting things with phones, is that we will be able to share content and experience 'on site.'
Speaking of anthropology, I believe it's all about humanity becoming one tribe again.
http://socialmedia.groups.vox.com
To succeed beyond that of a cheaper but less reliable alternative communicationschannel any transportmethod for internet should be able to assign transport priorities to the different stateful and stateless dataconnections. I.e. calling 911 or 112 should be a priority. Either bij VoIP or GSM.
Open source and a open internet has shown that it can and will quickly form new and stable constructs that then should be supported and strenghted by regulations and infrastructure instead of obstructed. In a way I enjoy the way the carriers obstruct the new 'age'. The growth of the internet in France was held back compared to other countries because of the goverment sponsored minitel. In a way the carriers are encouraging the switch to new communication constructs (protocols and artifacts) and allowing the best to rise from a viable potluc of possibilities. Consider me a BSD-license advocate.