移动世界中的社交网络

苏公雨

转载自《Wireless Week》

Generating Content Mobility
By Brad Smith
WirelessWeek - April 01, 2008

Social networking and the content shared among their users is coming to the mobile world.

Withthe proliferation of 3G networks globally, it’s possible now to take avideo on your phone and send it to a social networking site likeYouTube, Facebook or MySpace. As video-capable phones increase innumber and wireless broadband networks expand, analysts believeuser-generated content also will expand.

In fact, within thenext five years, nearly 1 billion people could be using their mobilephones to send and receive user-generated content to each other andsocial networking sites on the Internet, according to estimates byPyramid Research. The analyst firm estimates mobile social networkingwill start to take off in 2009, and by 2010 will reach 300 millionusers. By 2012, 18% of all mobile subscribers will be using phones toaccess a social network, or about 950 million people.
Socialnetworking sites and user-generated content (UGC) are intrinsicallytied together, with members of YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and theirbrethren posting blogs, photos, videos and music clips.

“Videois where it’s at,” says Nick Desai, CEO of Juice Wireless, which islaunching JuiceCaster 6.0 at the CTIA Wireless 2008 show. JuiceCasteris a mobile social-networking application and service that allows phoneusers to share videos, images and messages between devices and toonline social networking sites. The upgrade allows users to createcontent like videos on their phones and send it as a status update totheir friends.
Desai says people who belong to social networksexpect to be able to use their phones to access them. Since the mobilephone is becoming the primary communications device, he says, it onlymakes sense to use it and take advantage of its real-time, andlocation, capabilities.
Publishing Videos
Oneof the main reasons people sign up for JuiceCaster is because they wantto be able to use their phones to capture video or photos and publishthem instantly to their social networking site (SNS). “We make that aneasy, 1-click process,” he says, because JuiceCaster works within thecamera application on the phone.
JuiceCaster is offered throughCricket, Midwest Cellular, U.S. Cellular, T-Mobile USA and two PuertoRican operators. Other deals with Tier 1 operators are expected to beannounced soon. Desai says the service has 70,000 users, some of whomhave a free WAP version and others who subscribe to be able to use theintegrated camera feature.
Juice also has a mobile video search service which allows members to search the JuiceCaster network for videos by subject.
ACalifornia company named eMotive Communications also is eyeing themobile UGC space. It already offers push services including songs,images and video through a deal with Skype, but CEO Anthony Stonefieldsays it will get into mobile uses soon.
eMotive is developing theability to provide user-generated content as a kind of ringtone, whichcould include text that vibrates the phone, animation, video, a songclip or a voice recording. The service is most appropriate for 3G or 4Gnetworks because of the bandwidth needed and because it works in an IPMultimedia Subsystem (IMS) architecture.
“We have more carriertrials requested than we can keep up with,” says Stonefield, becauseringtone sales revenue has flattened. Personalized, user-generatedcontent can change that, he says.
User-generated tones
User-generatedand commercial ringback tones are part of the portfolio of LiveWireMobile, a division of NMS Communications. LiveWire’s service provides10,000 songs as part of Virgin Mobile USA’s ringback service, which has100,000 subscribers.

How to create and upload ringback tones using LiveWire’s service. (Click on image to view larger)

JohnOrlando, marketing vice president for LiveWire, says the next step forringback tones will be to make it possible for users to create theirown tones. “We have operators asking for it, and we believe that we candeliver it by the end of the year or the first quarter of 2009,” hesays. Yospace, a British company, developed a user-generatedcontent site called SeeMeTv which is available through the carrier 3U.K. SeeMeTv lets users upload their own video clips and gain revenuewhen someone downloads it. Orlando says LiveWire is looking at doingmuch the same thing for user-created ringback tones.
All of thesocial networking sites have some ability to link to mobile phones. Asan example, YouTube launched a mobile interface last June, althoughonly a small portion of the YouTube videos were available on phones.YouTube also has made select videos available through Verizon Wireless’V CAST service. It recently opened its access even wider and nowestimates more than 100 million mobile subscribers can access YouTube.Users also can upload videos from their phones but only through a 3Gnetwork.
“People want to participate in the YouTube community ina way that fits their individual lifestyles, so to that end, we’vebuilt a mobile service that will allow partners to seamlessly integrateYouTube videos into their offerings,” a spokesperson says. “Our goal isto support users being able to access their media from wherever theyare. We want to extend the social aspects of YouTube to mobile devices- sharing, rating and interacting with content.”
The YouTubespokesperson says most mobile phones, even those with videocapabilities, still don’t provide an optimal experience because oflatency issue. Consumers also often don’t realize their phone’scapabilities.
Ryan Burke, an analyst with Compete, says the HolyGrail for most social networking sites is the ability to use locationinformation, so friends can share location-based content in real time.That’s the big attraction that mobile UGC can offer, he says, so hebelieves mobile social networking and UGC will take off when locationis built into the content that is shared.
“User-generated contentand social networking are proven models [on the Internet],” he says.“Consumers like to create their own content and share it with theirfriends. There’s no reason mobile user-generated content won’t takeoff.”

wave1

Thank you very much,that's good.