Social networking and user-generated content are, without a doubt, hot topics in the mobile sector right now. The marriage of social networking and mobile phones seems logical: our mobile phones are always with us and keep us connected to our networks all day, every day. We currently use our mobile phones to create and share content to a limited degree, and as our devices become more and more sophisticated the kinds of user-generated content we create and the means by which we share them will only increase. In anticipation of this wave, Web-based social networking sites like MySpace are moving into mobile hoping to increase their reach and popularity, while the ranks of startups are swelling with developers of wireless social networks or tools that facilitate mobile social networking. 3’s See Me TV in the UK has already shown that that video created and consumed on the mobile phone can be a popular proposition.

Despite the growing numbers of players in the mobile social networking space, questions abound about what constitutes a successful mobile social networking experience. What form will social networks take in the mobile context? How will desktop-based and mobile social networks co-exist, or will they? As a San Francisco-based interface strategy, design and development consultancy with a specialization in mobile, we at Punchcut spend a great deal of time pondering these questions and envisioning future-forward solutions for our clients. In order to inform our design efforts, we recently conducted a qualitative study of the social networking behaviors of 11 young adults living in the San Francisco Bay area. The purpose of the study was to gain an understanding of why young, socially connected individuals engage in social networking behaviors and how the use of a mobile device supports and fosters these behaviors.
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Scott Weiss, the author of Handheld Usability (the book and blog), recently posted the results of a survey of over 800 New Yorkers on the importance of several factors when considering the purchase of a new phone. Weiss notes that the survey respondents value mobile ease-of-use 3 to 2 over appearance. “The finding is astounding, because it shatters the commonly-held believe that appearance is more important to consumers than usability”, he writes. After ease-of-use respondents considered appearance, internet access, MP3 player capabilities and mobile television features, in that order. Weiss adds, “the highest percentage of respondents (33%) rated Mobile Television Features and MP3 Player Capabilities as Neither Important nor Unimportant in their mobile phone purchase decisions”.

While I agree with his ultimate conclusion — that usability is a big deal and ease-of-use should be a goal of all handset manufacturers — I question drawing that conclusion based on the survey information provided.

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1// Adobe is reporting that Flash Lite will now support video.

2// Wired has posted their interview with John Maeda, who spoke at the TED Conference in Monterey, CA this week. When probed on his favorite manmade designs, he offered this:

“I like stuff designed by dead people. The old designers. They always got it right because they didn’t have to grow up with computers. All of the people that made the spoon and the dishes and the vacuum cleaner didn’t have microprocessors and stuff. You could do a good design back then.

I think if you’re a young designer now, you’ve got the internet and you’ve got screens all over the place — it’s awful hard. Technology is just so powerful now. You can do so much with so little. You can shove it into the size of a quarter. For designers to design great objects where technology is concerned, that’s hard.”

Too true. (Thanks Nancy.)

3// Last weeks’ Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, yielded some interesting discussion, like the keynote on networked mobile gaming.

4// File under: alternate desktop metaphors. Check out “BumpTop,” a desktop UI paradigm that uses physical behavior to aid organization of files. Whether or not the desktop metaphor is appropriate to mobile UI, could this type of physics and motion apply to mobile touch screens using a finger tip or thumb as the stylus?

5// Opera Mini. At most it looks like a strike against the operator content foothold. At the least it may be a reason not to have to buy a smartphone. (Thanks Christian.)

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The best mobile news and discussions for the week of 19 January, 2007.

Culture of Mobility

1// Mayor Bloomberg announced that New York will soon allow 911 (and 311) to accept digital photos and videos.

“If you see a crime in progress or a dangerous building condition, you’ll be able to transmit images to 911, or online to nyc.gov,” the mayor said in his annual State of the City address. “And we’ll start extending the same technology to 311 to allow New Yorkers to step forward and document nonemergency quality of life concerns, holding city agencies accountable for correcting them quickly and efficiently.”

2// Book, I hot mod balk. (a.k.a - Cool, I got one call.)

Kottke.org has a mention of kids in the UK using “book” as a synonym for “cool.” It’s rooted in a T9onym where the word cool and the word book both come up when you enter 2665 on a T9 keypad.

3// In the clamor of the Apple Keynote, Nokia and Visa’s announcement of mobile Visa payments in the US snuck under the radar.

Mobile technology news

4// Mainstream press picks up on Qualcomm: BusinessWeek has a feature on emerging mobile technologies primarily mentioning Qualcomm’s mobile TV offering, MediaFLO.

5// Mobileburn has a review of Samsung + Cingular’s latest sleek little smartphone — the BlackJack, a Windows Mobile handset that is slightly smaller than Motorola’s popular Q. Being skeptical about Samsung handsets doesn’t mean I don’t want one. Did I mention it’s black?

Mobile UI

6// Looks like Alltel is doing the widgets thing.

7// Mike Krisher has an interesting piece on FlashLite.

8// Mike Rowehl on Rails Dev for the Mobile web: Rails and Mobile Content

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