A couple of our stories over the past week have generated some interesting comments…
— In response to a post on Mobile p2p explaining why I thought the recent decision against Grokster and Streamcast would have little impact on the mobile content market Gideon Marken put up some ideas on where mobile p2p could go, and how the system could work.
The way I started explaining it to people was that you could visualize each user as a fisherman with a net casted out – trolling it around with them as they carry on with their day. While this is happening, your device would have a profile of interests, likes, what you’re looking for, etc – all wrapped up in a nice, tight, clean XML file of some sort. As you walk by another device – the profiles exchange – common interests, files, etc are compared – and if there’s a match over a certain percentage, the file will get transfered. Chances are, you could pull across a song in the time it takes to walk by someone.
He points out there is a danger of viruses spreading by this method…although unless they were well hidden they wouldn’t get very far.
— John Shay (from Head Zup) pointed out that MMS is p2p, which is true in a literal sense. However the strength of the p2p programs that are getting sued by the record labels is that they allow people who haven’t met each other share content on a p2p basis. While someone in New York would think a Jimi Hendrix wallpaper created by someone in Los Angeles is really cool, there’s no way for the New Yorker to know about the Angelic wallpaper, let alone arrange to have it sent to his phone. For east to meet west there needs to be a way to get content off strangers, hopefully after searching for desired content.
John Shay goes on to suggest why MMS hasn’t take off:
Unfortunately, users have been slow to adopt video messaging. Although the higher cost of sending an MMS is one factor, the true culprit is the fact that most users are reluctant to point a camera at themselves to record a message, and then release control of the recording by sending into a public network. The trials and tribulations of Paris Hilton and her video clips provide ample lessons on what happens to personal video when it’s shared across a public network.
While I don’t think many people have conciously thought about this, I reckon he’s hit the nail on the head. People subconciously know that all it takes is for an unknown booger to hang out of your nose in an amusing fashion to achieve celebrity of a generally unwanted kind. So they check a video before sending it, which can lead to a cycle that causes the user to think SMS is a far better option after all. Or MMS that doesn’t involve personal video, as John pointed out…
This problem is currently an issue with 3rd party people being filmed and sent, such as celebrity look-alikes in India…
— The post on ICANN approving the .mobi domain also received some comments slamming the idea of a top-level domain for mobile content.
Gideon Marken pointed out that optimization of web sites for mobile devices is a function of the developer, not the domain.
No doubt, we need different sites for phones – but the answer is to have good developers create good code that identifies the target device/screen and selects either the “Web” version of the site, or the “mobile” version. If a company or a site wants to launch a mobile site – the answer is to use the very same domain they have now – but create a sub domain like: mobile.MySite.com – or wap.MySite.com. But you don’t promote this URL – you simply promote the same url you always have. Then within the code of your site, one just needs some code that identifies if the user is viewing the site through a mobile device – if so, then the user is redirected to the mobile site – if not, the code simply displays the normal site.
Chas claims the problem is not a lack of domain names but poor business incentives offered by operators to content providers and low network speeds. He doesn’t think .mobi will be successful…
Let’s say a domain squatter beats the owners of widgets.com to purchase/acquire widgets.mobi – what is widgets.com going to do then? Acquire a different .mobi domain and try to reconcile the two? Of course not. The net result will be that people (consumers) will continue to trust .com domains, as they do today already.
He also questions why ICANN didn’t choose a top-level domain that was easier to enter on a mobile keypad than .com or .mobi…he suggested .mob — I can only assume this wasn’t considered because the word has unfortunate connatations with pitchforks and burning torches. It’s a very valid point though, why a TLD with four letters for web pages that are aimed at devices where input is an issue? Why not just .m? Would that bring the domain name system crashing down around our ears?
— In response to a post on comments by the head of Virgin Mobile USA Dave pointed out that neither labels nor carriers want music transfered from PC to mobile. “It is important that all the players involved in mobile music find a platform that is seamless and secure while attractive to the end user.”
And staying on the music theme when Verizon allowed some third-party ringtone downloads William Volk pointed out that “sales stats for ringtones are biased toward carriers that allow for off-portal sales”, and Verizon still makes money off the sales because they’re billed via premium SMS.
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