Social Networking ... on a mobile phone!
So I have been in the mobile industry for way too long! I have seen many companies come and go (including my own). I remember when I spoke to mobile carriers with a straight face "Mobile Email via WAP is your killer application ..." boy did that experience SUCK!
Then came smart phones ... remember this one Treo180 >
So I changed my pitch (but not too much)
"Mobile Email via PDA's is your killer application ..." you get the picture.
FAST Forward >> Today you have Facebook, Bebo, MySpace etc and they are all very well established internet based entities. Have you tried their mobile functioinality ... Yikes! it reminds me of the good old wap days. I suppose if you have figured out what works on the Net (by design or by accident, this does not translate into a winning proposition for the user on mobile). Mobile is hard, there are many moving parts and the devices still suck and guess what they have really small screens ...
So I hear you say, just use Mig33 or Velvet Puffin, or UiActive or blah, blah, blah ... well I don't want another social network or have to create and maintain yet another profile. I want to hear from entreprenures that have a technology to roll up all the Soc Networks I currently belong to and allow me to access them using my mobile phones without a crappy experience! Is some out there?!
What do you guys think?
Comments
Look forward to working with you on these very same issues. In moving from my previous job to Nokia, I am a living use case for storing your social address book in the cloud so that it can be transported to my new environment. I look forward to a world where it doesn't matter what device you use to access your social graph, where everything is there, in context, no matter which site, mobile device, or computer you use. Am I a dreamer?
Ian Kennedy
http://everwas.com