Is this Viral?

I've had two contacts recently with what may be described as ‘viral marketing.’

Continuing the discussion on viral marketing...
http://socialmedia.groups.vox.com/library/post/6a00cdf3a28cf0cb8f00d4141a52166a47.html

First up, there was a pleasant comment left by Eric from Shoutfit on an item that I posted earlier...
I find it interesting that one ‘social network’ site has a presence on another.

I cross-posted this Shoutfit item over at 360, and got a bit more feedback. Here are the comments...

Siri
Where is the individuality?
How boring is this!??
Wednesday February 14, 2007 - 11:56am

hotcl…
It was like paper dolls on the computer. Hey that'd be fun if we could alter the images and re-dress the folks on there?
Wednesday February 14, 2007 - 11:58am

~Gypsy~
Wow... I never knew...
Wednesday February 14, 2007 - 01:57pm

Sean
I like Hotclaw's idea.
Also, I am very disturbed that a majority of people seem to find being fashionable requires one to be headless. Is this really the price we want to pay to look good? Even if it is really, really, really good-looking?
That was my Zoolander impersonation by the way. Blue steel!
Wednesday February 14, 2007 - 06:03pm

Adrii06
"I want to be different… So I dress the same as all these other people"
Monday February 19, 2007 - 10:03pm

A broad spread of opinion, and I'm pretty sure that Shoutfit and the other sites listed probably got more then a couple of hits.

Speaking of which, have you guys seen this search engine...
http://www.like.com

If I were these ‘social network’ sites I’d be following Vox and going mobile.
Girls + Mobile phone + fashion blogging = Wow

Imagine the traffic generated if people could take a photo of clothing they liked on someone walking past.
Upload it to a ‘social networking’ site where friends would comment.
Then a search engine seeks out the best price for this item.

The second example of the subtlety that I feel is the mark of successful ‘viral campaign’ is an invitation to be 'a friend' I received on YouTube.

I pretty certain that this invitation was in response to someone seeing the videos posted on my YouTube channel, of a holiday that I took last year on a dolphin research vessel.
After receiving this invitation I followed the link back to a web site run by a whale research program here in Oz (called iWhales, cute!)

These people were looking for volunteers and must have searched out 'Dolphin' tags amongst the YouTube videos and sent out invitations.
Nice work. No pressure to look at the site or buy anything. They must be relying on people’s curiosity to draw eyeballs to their site.
It worked, cause I sent off the cheque to book a place for later in the year.

This could potentially backfire on them as if I have a bad time, I might post uncomplimentary things in my blog :-)
But they will have made a sale.

Reality Virtualised

In an earlier post I mentioned kids playing games on their
phones that mesh with the real world.

 http://nokian95.groups.vox.com

 

Nokia have an article discussing the technologies here…

PDF

Personal Cell networks.

I’ve been thinking about the entry I made earlier in the week…

http://nokian95.groups.vox.com

Why wouldn’t it be possible to set up a ‘localised cell network’ using the phones themselves as base stations, repeaters, etc?

For example:
At work we all tote phones around.
All have Bluetooth, and within the next couple of years, all will have Wifi.
We could potentially activate a piece of software…
Which activates a local Wifi based network linking the phones…
We all log onto this network...
And this allows us to talk to each other.
An SMS has to bounce through the Cell net, even if I’m sitting three meters away from the person I want to message.

Why couldn't my phone, recognise their phone if it is within range, and bypass the Cell net completely?

The same system could work for kids at schools, building lots of mini networks during lunch breaks.
Imagine games of schoolyard tag, where all the participants have software (hooked into GPS and the other phones) that mimics the ‘Alien 2’ style scanners which beep with greater intensity as the person who is ‘it’ gets closer.
A thousand kids, all linked by Net and tracked by GPS could map out the boundaries of the school grounds and classes in half an hour. Software could construct a real life Doom style game. The horror creatures only appearing on the screens of the children’s phones, mapped with the phones cameras over real life locations. This location data would be passed onto younger brothers and sisters when they start school. The more kids travel these locations, the denser the data becomes.
Kid’s could ‘tag’ locations with schoolyard lore.

Emergency workers could establish a mini network at a crash site, just by turning on their phones. Hell, the crash survivors might have already established a local net, just to find each other.

Imagine the bandwidth potential of a Soccer match. Each phone could link up, with a low range radio standard such as Wibree, register its position in the stadium with GPS, and graphic data could be pumped through the network, producing an enormous TV screen.
Instead of waving candles at rock concerts, everyone waves their phones and the huge composite picture would shimmer and flow.

I wonder if it’s possible to logon on all the phone cameras? Record a thousand different angles, a thousand different personal experiences of the one event.

One super antenna isn’t needed to suck up each phone individually.
Just small ones around the edge of the arena, sipping data from the huge net linked people filled cup of shared experience.

What would be the difficulties in getting the phones to recognise each other, with one of these radio standards?

Nokia is already fooling around with P2P networks running on phones.
The network would log phones on and off as units come into, and fall out of range.
The more dense the population of phone units become, the greater the data transmission.
Laptops could be used to boost range.
Along with the list of personal contact details my phone would carry, there would be a list of ‘localised cell nets’ that my phone had permission to log onto.

for example:
At school the phone would log onto my friends in the class room.
Travelling home the phone would log onto the Cell network.
Once home the phone would log onto my families phone network, and all re-establish the ‘friends from school’ network if one of my mates came over to study.

We’ve been playing around with Bluetooth at work, and these concepts seem to be possible.
Our PC Bluetooth adaptors came packaged with the facility to build a wireless net between units.
All that is needed is for the phones to recognise this localised Network and each other.

 

 

Mobile devices become the ultimate social network?

Interesting this Nokia/YouTube hook up.

Nokia press release…
http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1104222

Nokia have had a love/hate relationship with the ‘carriers’ for a while now…
http://nokian95.groups.vox.com/library/post/6a00ccff84be77985d00cd970d0e234cd5.html

This deal parallels the ones YouTube have made with carriers such as Verizon Wireless.
http://www.youtube.com/press_room_entry?entry=MfvRjkWLxgk

The main difference seems to be that Nokia won’t be pruning the selection of videos that are downloaded.

Nokia and other mobile phone companies are neatly bypassing the ‘carriers’ by providing a wide variety of potential wireless access nodes (2G, 3G, Wifi, Bluetooth) onto the Internet.
The ‘carriers’ should love Nokia for making it so easy for the user to chew though bandwidth.
Unfortunately, the ‘carriers’ don’t see themselves as a utility such as water or electricity.
They see themselves as media companies.

Users want control over the media they consume.
Users are not interested in the ‘carriers’ censoring media.
Users want tools (mobile ones in this case) to find and access the media and human contacts they desire.
What Users don’t want is an ‘old school media channel’ dolling out teaspoons of sanitised bits and bytes, and controlling who the User can communicate with.

Life could be so easy for the ‘carriers.’ Give the Users a cheap, wide, fast flowing river of bits, and then sit back and let the cash roll in.

One day, we may find mobile phones talking to each other in a huge fluid mobile web (each phone would be its own ‘base station’ and function much as a P2P network would) dipping into household WiMax stations when access is available.
This would completely bypass the ‘carriers’ and would make the function of mobile phones much like the Net itself.