Where are the mobile communities?
Posted by Martin on Jun 16, 2005 in MobileOver the last twelve months a lot has been written about social networks (e.g. MySpace, OurMedia) and community driven sites (e.g. Flickr, OhMyNews). Everything I see is Internet and desktop centric.
There's a world out there whose primary data terminal is or will be, a mobile phone. I don't see the mobile equivalents of these sites or well thought out mobile interfaces for them. Maybe I've missed them. There's no shortage of how to write blog entries or post photos from your phone, but very little evidence of any thought on how best to participate (rather than publish to) online communities.
Perhaps all the US, desktop centric companies and developers just don't think about such an existence. Maybe there there aren't enough handsets with good enough data and browser capabilities in circulation yet? Maybe I should stop hypothesising and start doing something about it.
Please tell me I'm wrong and that there are some great mobile centric community sites out their.
Comments
Heya,
there are a number of reasons for there not being many on handset based community sites. Far too many to mention here in fact. The main reason is that the technology isnt there yet, and also sociologically we as a disparte grouping of global cultures aren't there yet either. Watch the online community models trickle down to mobile as ubiquitous always on internet browsing and faster connections become more common.
Posted by: alfie | June 23, 2005 02:52 PM