Imagine a world where we wake up and actually find our virtual life has taken over our real lives and everything we hold dear is on the one device. That dream is upon us already. With over 1 billion people online, 2007 has heralded a whole new world of concepts and channels. We now have “prosumers” instead of consumers and “communitainment” in the martini world of anytime anyplace anywhere has meant we cannot escape interaction with thousands of brands and networks on a daily basis.
The Internet has turned into one of the most successful paradigms of all times, a mechanism that triggered an evolution in how we shape our lives. It’s the 7th wonder of the world. It’s right up there with the steam engine, electricity, the automobile, the telephone, the airplane, and the computer – all dynamic technologies that transported us into new worlds of value creation and gave birth to new business models.
Just when we were getting our heads around that idea, change at the pace of light has once again thrust us into the world of almost total mobility with 3G phones, flat rate internet access for data consumption from mobile operators and more customized handsets and user experiences to ensure that our very personal connection to our mobile handsets remains so. Why wouldn’t it, with so many ring tones, wallpapers, videos and music on them? The fact is that they have become e-wallets for payment of bills or purchasing of goods and products. Now the services and content around the device probably have more emotional and financial resonance than the cost of the device itself. Be that a Blackberry Pearl, iMate, Nokia N95 or the iPhone.
By 2008, there will be another 980 million handsets produced of which 40% will be music enabled* and of course the launch of the iPhone has also not been far from the news throughout the course of 2007. But where is all this mobility leading us? When would we ever wait outside a New York store for a week to purchase a device for a mere $500? Have we totally lost the plot or are the machines taking over?
In a single decade, our rate of Internet adoption has done more to change business and society in the world than any other paradigm during the previous 100 years. We’ve embraced and exploited the Internet with an incredible curiosity and a natural ease because of the value this creates for us.
The appetite for consuming content and the accessibility of information continues to increase at a rapid pace. Access devices, with a large set of differing terminal and network capabilities, continue to evolve, having a growing impact on peoples’ lives. Additionally, these access devices possess the functionality to be used in different locations and environments: anywhere and anytime. In the past, users were not given tools to deal efficiently with all the intricacies of this new multimedia usage context. This is changing, rapidly.
Solutions with advanced multimedia functionality are becoming increasingly important as individuals are producing more and more digital media, not only for professional use but also for their personal use. All these “content providers” have many of the same concerns: management of content, re-purposing content based on consumer and device capabilities, protection of rights, protection from unauthorised access/modification, protection of privacy of providers and consumers, etc. Such developments are pushing the boundaries of existing business models for trading physical goods and require new models for distributing and trading digital content and assets electronically.
For example, it is becoming increasingly difficult for legitimate users of content to identify and interpret the different intellectual property rights that are associated with the elements of multimedia content. Additionally, there are some users who freely exchange content with disregard for the rights associated with content and rights holders are powerless to prevent them. The boundaries between the delivery of audio (music and spoken word), accompanying artwork (graphics), text (lyrics), video (visual) and synthetic spaces are becoming increasingly blurred.
New solutions are required for the access, delivery, management and protection processes of these different content types in an integrated and harmonized way, to be implemented in a manner that is entirely transparent to the many different users of multimedia services.
Certainly attendance at recent events around Europe such as DLD in Munich, Reboot in Copenhagen, MIPTV in Cannes, Mobile Mondays in Amsterdam and London Calling in the UK suggest that mobility is going to the play for many years to come. The need for technological solutions to the remaining challenges have now motivated the MPEG-21** Multimedia framework initiative that aims to enable the transparent and augmented use of multimedia resources across a wide range of networks and devices.
In the mobile world of the 21st century’s networked economy, the empowerment of each and every one of us to get involved anytime anyplace anywhere and on a device of our choosing and preference has never been so great. This is especially true with the explosion in blogging, video podcasting, citizen journalism, mash ups, social networking, Peer2Peer file sharing and co-creation of projects using wikis. And it doesn’t discriminate against age with different demographics from 18 to 25 or 35-55 ensuring they extract maximum value from their experience - be that profiles and music or videos they have created and produced on MySpace, Bebook, Facebook to how they then distribute that message across millions of websites or media portals and ultimately multiple portable devices such as iPods, games consoles or mobile phones.
On the business side of the “now media” economy, new businesses have successfully developed cross-medial marketing concepts with mobile phones in a central role. When a brand is looking for a way to carry out its corporate values of innovation, sophistication and sensitivity to trends, this consequently involves mobile communication; the perfect way to reach that specific target group with a very direct manner of communication. Traditional marketing and advertising budgets have shifted below the line with the customers and clients as many continue to stay at the cutting edge of mobile content development. Mobile marketing can add something special to the brand experience, and of course generate new customers or more turnover. This of course is key for the shareholder value obsessed world of the 21st century.
Greater personalisation will ensure that content remains king, especially the kind of short form content that video sharing and MP3 sites such as You Tube allow compared to traditional channels where we absorb our news and information and music. Naturally there will be a majority who will continue to look at other ways to get high quality, long form content onto traditional devices like TV screens. The prediction given is that 25% of the broadband bandwidth will be linked to rich content providers like the BBC.
Personally, I think there will be hybrid systems for quite a while. It will be a long time before my cable company or ADSL can provide the kind of HD bandwidth we are getting now through satellite. The types of technologies like Joost and Babelgum are therefore very interesting as one way of tackling the bandwidth crunch and companies like Premium TV will continue to monetize that content across many mediums, devices and ensure everybody in the chain of title will receive their recognition or reward for those digital assets that create audience engagement on your device of choice.
Wireless LAN and networks are making everything possible, now just as in Japan and South Korea where digital and mobility are woven into the fabric of their lives from an early age, my prediction of the future is that the experience for users and the convergent offering of IPTV, mobile and web with bundled services for music, financial services or whatever your subject of interest will drive demand and make a bridge between the real world and the virtual world. Imagine a place called Dallus where location was irrelevant and your mobility could mean you play an active role in both worlds and where the real life and the virtual morph into one.
Case Study: Dallus – A glimpse of the future
Dallus may be an online city but it also has real links to the real world. Via social mapping, users can meet and communicate with like-minded people who live close to their real-life location. They can be alerted via text message about events happening in their area. They can redeem electronic discount vouchers for stores near their real-life home. The amount of involvement is up to the user. One can also decide to remain completely anonymous – the choice is theirs.
Dallus is purpose-built to deliver location-based entertainment via 3G technology.
The Dallus community structure gives people a good starting point in terms of meeting like-minded individuals and requesting mobile content from brands that represent their community. Dallus is purpose-built for social mapping. Again using 3G technology the structure of Dallus allows members of Dallus to not only access their peer group but also people from their extended community through secret gigs, community meeting places and dating etc.
Dallus is the perfect direct marketing initiative – Dallus is built to take information gathered from users’ activities inside Dallus and interface this with a location based 3G database. This enables brands to conduct extremely targeted direct marketing campaigns and the like.
The marriage of social networks and virtual worlds such as Second Life with high quality video sharing websites has spawned a more convergent world with fewer platforms, single sign on, more relevant information and all for free or an all you can eat offering for a flat free which people build into their budgets. Content is being bought, ripped, carried, shared and in turn our behaviours are being changed to work in this changing landscape. As one famous network operator has predicted, the future is bright the future is Orange.
Now where did I put my phone? |
