Mobile Phones need an Enablement Layer

Yep, a nice easy way to create content on mobiles other than fotos. I said that already. If you want to create a community in the mobile space that generates content in a MySpace way, make it easy. Which segues me into this article about a potential MySpaceMobile-type environment.

What’s needed for the perfect mobile MySpace.

Why is MySpace such a runaway success? Because it’s a jack of all trades, apparently. This, at least, was the message from Frederick Ghahramani of technology firm AirG, speaking at today’s MEX conference in London.
He was talking about mobile communities, but took time to explain why MySpace is such a hit, so that mobile companies can figure out how to emulate it. It’s all down to the way it combines features of several other sites – Blogger’s blogging, Photobucket’s image-sharing, Match.com’s dating features, topped off with a little bit of Napster’s music preferences.
MySpace isn’t better at any of these things than those sites, but the important thing is that it brought them all together in one service. “It’s played the combination game of combining all these key building blocks, so there’s a real multiplier effect which is what makes it sticky and successful,” said Ghahramani.

He does discuss screen size challenge and regulations but nothing on the ease of creating content that is not a mobfoto. Maybe I’m wrong – do we need an enablement tool? Or you happy thumb-texting an epic?

After all, MySpace has already signed deals in the US to be on handsets sold by MVNO operator Helio. Well, maybe, but as Ghahramani pointed out, these online firms face serious challenges making the leap to mobile. “For them, it’s a challenge of simplification,” he said. “They’ve already figured out that consolidation makes success, but they’ll also have to focus on user interface innovation to make this work on mobile.”

Do we have a ‘MySpace’ on mobiles that is focusses on an Aussie swarm?

On mobile, the operators are so worried about complaints (think angry parents) that they impose a lot of restrictions. So often anything posted or uploaded to a mobile community has to be moderated before it appears by a computer, a human or both. Ghahramani said that the online communities have to decide whether they only offer a sanitized pre-filtered version of their content to mobile users, or whether they go back and re-moderate everything from scratch. Ouch.

That kinda moderating is not sustainable. So, is it possible to implement a SlashDot style moderation system that would work easily and intelligently on a mobile phone? See what I mean about enablement?

If this all sounds a bit high falutin’, rest assured that it’s evidence that the mobile industry is grappling with these issues to make it completely seamless if you’re accessing one of your existing communities – whether it’s MySpace, Yahoo 360 or MSN Spaces – through your phone, you don’t get fed up with the experience.

Enjoy the full TechDigest article here.

Technorati tags: Online Community, Frederick Ghahramani, TechDigest, MySpace, Mobile