Expression via texting
- 4 May 06, 11:36 AM
Much of the talk about new media and Web 2.0 by its very nature focuses on the internet. But as is becoming apparent in the We Media discussions, we should not overlook the power of the mobile phone,.
This is especially true in developing countries, where many do not have access to a PC, but do have a mobile. One suggestion during the panel discussion on India has been that the country may leap-frog the PC and go straight to mobiles.
Instead of primarily accessing text as people tend to do via a PC, the content is likely to be music, video or games. As one contributor said, in India gaming is mainly mobile.
Sunil Lulla of pointed out that the phone is also giving people a way to express their opinion. In a country where TV is the dominant media, the mobile provides a way to interact. After the first show of the Indian version of the TV show Pop Idol, Lulla said, they received 800,000 SMS votes.
This might sound like frivolous way to expression your opinion. But Lulla pointed out that there was a SMS poll on one of the 325 Indian TV channels every hour, on all sorts of issues.
At a time when politicians and activists are looking at ways of engaging with voters, there might be something we can learn from how TV is using SMS.
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In the short term the test will be if the mobile industry in emerging markets avoids the reverse billing, Jamster-gate, rip-off mistakes that have been made here. In the same way spam has made email an almost non-viable marketing platform, so does mobile marketing risk doing similar. I also think the rapid convergence to IP with technologies like WiMax will probably see a leapfrogging of sorts happening, but it won鈥檛 be from PC to mobile handset, it will be from GSM/UMTS straight into WLAN IP.
Once the technology is in place the only barrier is price, and that鈥檚 going down all the time. If bandwidth and hardware are cheap here they will be even cheaper in India.
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