Tag mtv

Blog Storming!

by mobileman (09/20/2007 - 16:22)

Blog Storming!

During the past couple of years, the blogosphere has been full of mobile-application projections and predictions. I have blogged about many of these in the past months. Location-Based Services (LBS), On-Deck Portals, Off-Deck Services, microblogs, video, games, TV, chaperone services, the Iphone, the Google phone … the list goes on.

My question is, what's next? The trends that we are seeing in Web and mobile make a specific prognostication somewhat risky. But of course, here is my try:

I believe that a mobile device is fundamentally a personal communications device. We have already seen the early trend of the “type and style” of a device making a fashion statement or reflecting your inner self in some deep Madison Avenue ad manner. This was furthered by the ringtone explosion.

Consumers wanted others to hear their ringtones because it makes a statement in some psychological way about who they are. This is true even if the ringtone goes off in the middle of a bunch of strangers. It is part of self-definition. On the Web, this trend of self-definition is being carried on by the explosion of blog and networking sites.

Since I believe that the past is a good roadmap to the future – the

next big thing in wireless will center on new ways to self-define and announce yourself to the world. We have gone through the visual (what phone I have) and the audible (what ringtone I have). The connection with self-definition and the Web is inevitable. The next big wave of mobile application will involve the ability to define yourself through your mobile- application environment.

Microblogging from your phone, allowing your friends to track where you are (LBS) on your Web social network, streaming live video and audio from your live experience to your Web persona. In essence, this all equates to consumers becoming real-time publishers of their own reality-TV channel. Call it "Blog Storming." Where am I, What am I doing, What am I seeing, What am I hearing and experiencing.

The new generation of Mobile 2.0 applications will have to be self-awareness and self-reporting. It is still intrusive to stop what you are doing to send that SMS or MMS. You take yourself out of the activity to send a message about. The application must be recording your environment seamlessly.

I probably would have not predicted the popularity of reality television, but if watching people chasing each other around on some deserted island is good TV, then watching millions of people run around in their daily lives would prove irresistible. MTV is as much the reality network as it is a music network!

While I would never want to do this myself – the attraction of this type of application and society's voyeuristic side will make Blog Storming the perfect storm.