I was out yesterday to meet a couple of friends and as is customary, we were clicking photos with our cameras AND not to forget mention, our mobiles. At this point, my friend Hrish (@dhempe, for all those who would not identify with the name 
) raised an interesting point!
Thus spake Dhempe and here I quote:
Many of us have cameras on our phones, and we click photos! But, its a very messy job to put them in a place where others can see it and also to share with friends. The mobile phone is a blackhole for its own content!
And that statement is filled with such profound truth!
Many of us, or if I may, a whole LOT of us have phones that are quite capable of generating content (Images, videos, voice recordings, etc) and we definitely do generate enough content to fill storehouses with our happy / romantic / funny / cheesey/ whatever memories for lifetimes together. Heck, this is what the mobile phone revolution is coming around to do…
For us geeks, connectivity, socializing and sharing is as basic and habitual an act as is having food. We feel the necessity to share and connect and as a result, find and utilize services to enable this! Photos go on twitpic / flickr, Videos go on Qik / youtube, Shouts / screams go on blogs / facebook / twitter… we have no end to destinations!
But, a lot of content does not make it online / publicly (atleast within friends) available. Infact, most of this content doesnt even make it outside of the mobile devices! And, mind you, the memory on the mobile is limited. And the main use of this memory, again mind you, is Ringtones and MP3 music! The photos and videos captured thus take a backseat and much of this content is to true sadness, deleted to make way for more MP3 and ringtones! And hence the reference to a black hole in the title of my post!
- In reasoning as to why people don’t share their photos or videos, the first answer that pops up is: “They dont have a computer!” And this is a very valid point across the lengtrh and breadth of this nation. Access to a computer is not everyone’s daily possibility. But with cost of mobiles going down, they do have access to multimedia devices!
- Another reason, a lot of people do not have GPRS active on their devices. Reason, it doesnt make sense… No, GPRS doesnt yet make sense for a guy working as a driver. A mobile phone with a camera does. Why? 1. He can afford it. 2. He can flaunt it! Simple!
- The third reason I can think of is the software problems that is associated with sharing content. Getting your Nokia phone (Cited Nokia because its the most common / prevalent brand in INDIA) connected to the PC with PC suite isnt really an easy job. Sometimes, you need to make use of imaginary numbers like eleventeen and the likes!!! For the blindfolded usability and seamlessness nokia gives its phones, the software it bundles with it is not quite the works!!!
- The fourth and final reason I can think of: There is only so much of sharing you can do via bluetooth with your friends and there’s only so much of showing it to friends that you can do…. Believe me, give it a try, you’ll know!
So, four reasons why content doesnt get out of the mobile!
What if a user could as and when he / she could and wanted, move and materialize the media he / she created to make place for more memories to be stored? This, my friends, is a very interesting challenge and hence an interesting prospect for a service!
We are over 400 million mobile users in India alone. I am really in a fix in figuring out a solution to get this content out of their mobiles and shared across with their friends and with the world!
The way out:
- One solution I can think of is the Kiosk model. A shop / vending machine where people could go and get their photos printed / and mailed for cheap using Bluetooth to transfer their content. Or better, transfer the photo, punch in the address where it needs to be delivered and presto, the photo + address travels via IP to the centre closest to the destination and gets printed and posted from there!
- Another amazing service I can think of with the kiosk model is one where the videos captured using the mobile can be transferred to CD’s. Come to talk of it, a CD costs you 8 Rs.
These are two solutions off the top of my mind…
The whole idea that I’m trying to propagate here is to take the complexity of the software / sharing service bit of the scenario away from the hands of the user. This effectively reduces complexity for the layman with the multimedia mobile and effectively encourages him to share the content he / she creates on the mobile with friends and hence further encourage him to generate more content and so on and so forth!
I’d really love to hear more from you all on how the black hole scenario can be averted! Sharing services are many and aplenty!
The success of a service is, in our Indian scenario, not just in holding existing users to itself, but in getting those new users from outside the regular spectrum to come in, take a look, get enthusiastic and get enabled!
Would love to have comments and discussions on this topic!
Chao!
Something that none of us have been able to come out of… It so happens that when someone shares a relationship with you thats deeper than being a friend, and suddenly, that person gets sucked out… the void is too hard to handle… neways life moves on… and so do have us…
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