Content-ment

Google has been rumored for some time to be pursuing a mobile phone strategy of sorts. Word this week on the CNET News Blog is that a Taiwanese manufacturer is getting started on the production of an alleged unit that uses a Google operating system.

Many other handsets/operating systems utilize some Google apps [like the iPhone and Google Maps] but none have a complete OS from the search giant.

How this will play into the announcement earlier this week of Steve Jobs opening the iPhone up for developers remains to be seen.

All of this is infinitely complicated by the nature of mobile devices. When people design software for computers, there are three primary platforms to which they cater: Windows, Mac, or Linux. The same goes for designers of websites; they encounter MS Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Opera. If you take the number of mobile devices and multiply that by the number of mobile service providers, and you can begin to see why companies like Apple and Google have waited this long to jump into the game.

The content is getting better, and the computing power of the devices are on the increase, but the fact still remains that there are about 1,500 different handsets in use worldwide. [!]
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This delightful image from Paul J. Thompson on Flickr shows a bubble bursting in a mudpot at Yellowstone National Park. Here, gases flow up from the ground and percolate through the mud. Like many bubbles, they are intermittent, unpredictable, and quick to burst. The ones at Yellowstone are often caused by hydrogen sulfide; when the bubbles burst, they stink!

I have been to Yellowstone to see these stinking bubbles burst, and I was a part of another bubble burst that stank — the Great Internet Bubble Burst of 2000. My employer, once flush with venture capital, was forced to downsize and I was left without a gig. After that, things leveled out for teh Internets, and I found gainful employment once again.

Ever since folks have been chattering about Web 2.0, there have been murmurs of “here are the makings for yet another burst-bubble situation.” This sentiment has been echoed in a recent article from the NY Times. It explicitly calls out the signs of an impending burst — tons of venture capital, funny company names, and questionable or non-existent business plans. From the article:

“We are almost going back to year 2000 types of errors,” said Aaron Kessler, an Internet analyst at Piper Jaffray. Internet companies “are buying users instead of revenue and profitability,” he said.

Speculation is no new concept, and no one is asking it to cease. The thing that might set this apart from other business analysis situations is the concept of the ghost user. Best described as the registered yet non-participating member of a site/service/community, these users are often curious [as a result of reading an article in the NY Times or WSJ]. A username is selected, password entered, and ghost user is now officially considered another hash mark on the all-important tally of “total registered users.” Of the seven Second Life users I know, I am aware of at least six of them are ghost users, not including myself. I did configure that avatar, after all…

Forgive me for yet another post about Facebook. The rest of the media / blogosphere has not given me a respite on the ‘Book, so I must continue to comment upon it.

The media that sparks this entry was the old-school format of teh magazine. The New Yorker from September 17th, to be specific. I read it on my electronics-free commute today. [Normally, I am tethered to my iPod for the duration.]

I don’t mean to be the nay-sayer, but I think the overwhelming waves of praise of the ‘Book could use a small bit of tempering. Not because of what is can do, but rather, what it cannot. The article spoke specifically about NYU students and a seminar offered as a part of orientation titled, “Facebook in the Flesh.”

Author Michael Schulman begins with the observation that many students now arrive at campus with many “friends” in place. Friends in the I-have-added-you-to-my-Facebook sense of the word. These Freshmen may have some familiarity with each other in the pixelated sense, but the face-to-face interactions and the resulting awkwardness must still be overcome. Oh, how well I remember it…

The fact that this interaction comes at a time when people are first making a go of it alone for the first time makes this seminar all the more relevant, and maybe even representative of the population at large.

Social media in its still-evolving form serves to enhance communication & relationships, not to obsolesce. It simplifies and enriches, connects and enlivens these connections to others. As with other social media, it does not fuel itself, regardless of the sophistication of the application.

Facebook and other social media bring the relationship back to the fore; now replete with widgets, tweets and sundry.

Brandweek reports that automaker Toyota’s youth-oriented brand, Scion, has launched their own branded radio player on their website.

The term radio should be interpreted loosely here, as there is far more than just audio here. Videos of Scion owners’ gatherings, races, short independent films, live music performances, and more traditional “radio stations.”

These stations are of interest as they were created with some real underground partners. For example, they partnered with Wax Poetics, the UK magazine devoted to soul, reggae, jazz, and hiphop. That is going to have a certain amount of cred with a portion of their target audience. Wax Poetics is not one of those glossy, advert filled mags that cater to the chart-topping performers. It is more of a journal. The fact that Scion sought them out shows how in tune they really are. [No pun intended.]

Scion impressed me from the start with their marketing savvy that reached beyond glossy flyers. At the annual auto show here in town three years ago, they handed out CD samplers featuring two quite underground record labels as the source for the songs.

When it comes to hitting that age group that everyone is aiming at, Scion does a good job. Does it sell cars? At least a few…

Radio 2.0 blogger Mark Ramsey highlights today an announcement from Philadelphia’s WXPN; they will be gathering the 885 Most Memorable Musical Moments. [885 corresponds with WXPN’s FM frequency 88.5 — clever.]

He posits that which may be on other people’s minds as they see more and more social media vehicles emerge: “One of the toughest parts of integrating social media tools into a radio station website is plugging in those tools which listeners actually want to use on a radio station site as opposed to wherever they’re accustomed to using them now.”

As some major media companies spread themselves thin over all platforms to little effect, this becomes more apparent. Separate YouTube & Flickr accounts, Facebook and MySpace pages go only as far as the effort put in will take them. The decline in corporate interest in Second Life presence, both fiscally and in actual presence, points to a collective realization that perhaps the wrong tactics were used. The “L.A. Times” recently featured an article about this exodus.

Presence is not the only factor; being at the cool party doesn’t necessarily make you cool. Being able to make use of social media in a manner apropos the community and tool itself is key.

The PRPD blog [Public Radio Program Directors, for those unfamiliar] features a post about the phenomenon of Twitter. As you may know, Twitter is the latest efficiency for posting content to the web. Users sign up, and they are offered a space of 140 characters to explain what they are doing right then and there. These little entries are archived in a linear manner, and are out there for all to see. The social media aspect comes into play here when users get friends to join the site to “tweet” along with them [they have made a verb of it, already].

I learned about this over the shoulder of a fellow attendee of the Beyond Broadcast meetings at MIT this past February. I jotted down the url and signed up. Much like MySpace, this concept doesn’t have much excitement without a few friends to make it more than just a sub-140 character chronicle of existence. It gives users a chance to be quirky and off-the-wall and ironic, and it could possibly yield one second’s worth of fame via mashups like twittervision. Widgets allow your twitterings to be fed onto your blog, and you can tweet from your mobile–they are 100% web 2.0 compatible.

The PRPD post points out the fact that NPR is now set to tweet. They are tweeting as I type, likely. NPR has set it to tweet their new blog posts. Something that their RSS feeds seem to do just fine already. The NY Times is guilty of the same.

Barak Obama tweets, but John Edwards does more frequently. So do the folks at the fun internet newscast Rocketboom. Even I do it. Look over on the left-hand side for that widget on this blog!

The appeal to the tweeters is in the instant posting of your own life and seeing what others are up to, for fun. When major communication companies do so just to thrust out in front of users with little other sensitivity or effort, I must say the end result falls flat.