Communicating worlds – context

What makes an application like Dialplus a favorite among innovation judges and public? One of the answers is I believe context.

Recently I was at the Mobile Monday London event with several panels of highly competent people from the mobile industry (operators, vendors, service providers) having lively exchanges with the audience on the subject of mobile social networking. One of the things I think most of us were agreed on is that social networking provides the context for communication.
For that reason, mobile social networking cannot simply be addressed with the words ‘hype’ and ‘no business model’, as I have heard.

When I am on the Stockholm public transport (which has great GSM coverage even in the tunnels) it is amusing to overhear people open a conversation with a friend or family with the words “I’m just passing …..” or “I’m soon at …..”. Context, in other words.

This is why the text besides the red/green figure in a presence service is often much more important than whether the figure is red or green. Let’s call it “application presence”, whatever.
Red/Green, Busy/available is often less valuable than ‘baking Christmas buns with the kids’ even though the baking was eight hours ago, because the bun baking elicits responses from two or three continents ‘Send me one, please!’

Facebook and other social network sites do this well; a couple of weeks ago I got notified that a colleague had changed his phone number in Facebook long before I would have ‘discovered’ it through other channels. I have said earlier that 3’s INQ1 phone, with its tight integration of Facebook and phonebook, underlines an important trend. I believe it is a trend because I hear the industry buzz around a ‘social phonebook’ or ‘active phonebook’. Maybe ‘context phonebook’?
 

Previous columns

About Mark Jefford-Baker


The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author, and in no way represent Ericsson AB's official or implied position on the issues discussed.