IMS or IP Multimedia Subsystem represents a 3GPP and 3GPP2 effort to define an all IP based wireless network as compared to the historically disparate voice, data, signaling, and control network elements. In plainspeak, IMS is supposed to make seamless multimedia (audio, video, live cast, etc.) experience practical to the mobile phone users.
Although there may be many potential IMS applications, key applications are:
Video Calls
Unified Messaging
Push-to-Talk
Wireless/Wireline Convergence
Online Gaming
Video-on-Demand
Presence
Consumer and Business VoIP
IPTV
Online Addressbook
IMS opens communication options that seamlessly combine ongoing voice sessions with multimedia elements (sharing video while talking, for example) or enrich shared applications with voice communication (for instance, talking while playing a multiplayer game). It will also be possible to change the communication mode smoothly during an ongoing session, in contrast to today’s more or less ‘fixed’ communication modes.
“Access from multiple devices and network access. Coupled with IPTV and Femto cells, as an example, you will be able to receive SMS, IM or calls on your TV screen or on your PC, even if you have been called on you cellular. With Femto cells, your presence info could be automatically updated when you reach home. Other services bundled with IPTV would include video conference from the TV, or having a voice, video or chat session open with friends on TV while watching the Super Bowl.”
IMS can provide new person-to-person multimedia communication services going beyond those available on today’s 3G networks. Because IMS is IP based, it will blend telecommunication and data services, keeping the best of both the circuit-switched and packet worlds.
In a previous post Social Networking and the Mobile Phone, I had written about the values mobile phone brings to a social network. Social networking, by definition, is about people that want to keep in touch with their friends and share info among them by the hour. Now, you can’t expect someone to roam around with a laptop all the time and this is where mobile phone comes into the picture. With the ability of mobile devices to operate in many different social spaces, both virtual and real world, the expectation that mobile will be the future of social networking is not as far fetched as it seemed only one year ago.
A growing number of global mobile phone users are accessing social networks over the mobile internet, according to research from Nielsen Mobile.
Kent Ferguson, Client Services Manager, Nielsen Mobile had this to say about the data: “Social networking is already a global phenomenon, and mobile could be the next big thing in the space. Large numbers of people are interacting with their social networking profiles while they’re on the move. There could be increased consumer demand for mobile social networking driven by the flat fee price plans offered by the leading operators that give subscribers unlimited mobile Internet access.”
eMarketer is predicting that mobile social networks will rise from 82 million users in 2007 to 800 million worldwide by 2012.
This growth will primarily come from existing social networks shifting their coverage to the mobile, however, mobile-only social networks will also play a part.
Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst and co-author of the report says “Along with the rapidly growing audience, marketers are drawn to mobile social networking because it creates a unique context in which to promote their goods and services, It goes beyond simply linking people with digital content by adding the immediacy of sharing with friends—a very powerful marketing proposition.”
Laurel Papworth captures the evolution and trends in a wonderful presentation
Usability is marginalized in many organizations owing to time constraints, lack of a clear definition, ignorance and more. But the greatest obstacle to usability is that too many decision makers aren’t interested in it. A study of marketing directors by e-consultancy found that most of them had no idea about usability or its importance in ensuring that their websites actually delivered business benefit.
Tom Stewart highlights the trap we’re getting into.
Easy is good but it is not enough. Focusing on ‘easy’ tends to marginalize it.
In today’s competitive times, I can see an IT project manager saying “we would have liked to make the new billing system a bit easier but we really didn’t have time and we did not want to delay it”.
I can see a hard pressed business manager saying “ok, it would have been nice but we didn’t want to wait”.
However, if you use the ISO 9241-11 definition, the picture changes. Can you honestly imagine the project manager saying (out loud) “We know the system is not going to work but we wanted to be able to tick the ‘delivered on time’ box?”
And can you imagine the customer saying, “Ok, it would have been nice if it had worked but we’d rather pay for a failed system than take a bit longer getting it right?” No, of course you can’t!
Similarly, the ISO concept of usability allows aesthetic issues to be addressed, if they are important to the user.
There is a strong need educate the people who take decisions on what usability brings to fore and promote it within the organization.
Articles listed below analyze the business case for Usability (important to convince the big wigs on ROI) and dig down deeper into promoting usability in organizations
Social Media is fairly new and there’s no ’sure win’ strategy. Social media doesn’t really work with a grand strategy and campaign launch. It is somewhat organic. It’s not selling or spying. It’s about understanding people, potential users, being a friend, finding some truth on thoughts and perception. It’s not an online survey where you stand to win a prize after completing it. Its raw, simple and all about people.
The key is ‘to listen’, you have to listen to what people are saying and contribute to the conversation in a way that is appropriate and adds value.
Here’s how I would go about it.
1. Find out where the online ‘passion’ for the product/service is residing, community groups, sites, social media platforms that have a high traffic, strong opinions (good and bad)
2. Keep doing nothing except listening until you’ve worked out the reasoning and motivation behind those conversations, what it is customers really want, what types of customers hang around in your social media markets, who the most important or vociferous ones are and what makes them passionate about your product/service.
3. Ask around / Snoop around and see who the good writers, interesting personalities and Social Media engaged individuals are and start enlisting them to be a part of the strategy, especially as internal evangelists. This is also good to see who has the comfort level at being a “face” or “connection” through social media to the outside world / and as a part of the strategy.
4. Encourage internal evangelists to start blogging, twittering, and socializing online - about anything… preferably, their personal passions. This will give them the vocabulary and intimate reference to know how to tap into their customers online.
5. Start dropping in some interesting comments to help people out with easier problems and, gently, start participating with the social conversation equivalent of ‘hmmm…ahh..that’s interesting…good idea…perhaps you would like to expand on that…’
6. Start producing content that answers customers’ questions (the deeper rooted and more hidden the motivations that produce those problems, the better) and start participating in the conversation from their point of view with ideas and products they’re going to genuinely like.
When I first came across Twitter, I couldn’t understand it. So I can put 140 characters on a web site to tell the world what I am doing at the moment… Who cares? And why would I want to know what others happen to be doing at the exact moment they decide to share it with the world?
I was bewildered by the Twitter phenomenon sweeping the world. There are 100s of twitter apps in web, mobile, desktop. It’s everywhere. ReadWriteWeb recently wrote about which clients people use most to Tweet. Twitter addiction has moved to the physical world, people are going about wearing Twitter T-shirts.
I thought I may have judged Twitter to quickly and decided to dig a little deeper. Read research reports, added people and followed them, went over various blogs that talk about twitter, poured through the comments. Posted questions on various discussions forums and followed responses to questions posted by others. I’ve been doing this for past 2 months and I think I’ve come to some understanding on why we tweet.
Twitter’s power really comes from the feeling of intimacy with people as we get a glimpse into their lives. The beauty of Twitter is that it enables different types of conversations over a very simple medium without getting caught up in the technical intricacies of transports.
I believe twittering phenomenon is time/space agnostic. Twitter is just re-enabling needs that have not been satisfactorily met since humans moved out ofthe village town hall, pub etc. “where everyone knows your name”. As in a physical village, you’re more connected or more involved with some people than with others. Similarly in Twitter you’ll find that you talk or share with some people more often than others. To some degree, there is a behavioral difference, in that we have to consciously push updates at Twitter.
According to a research report, following are the main categories of users on Twitter:
Information Source An information source is also a hub and has a large number of followers. This user may post updates on regular intervals or infrequently. Despite infrequent updates, certain users have a large number of followers due to the valuable nature of their updates. Some of the information sources were also found to be automated tools posting news and other useful information on Twitter.
Friends Most relationships fall into this broad category. There are many sub-categories of friendships on Twitter. For example a user may have friends, family and co-workers on their friend or follower lists. Sometimes unfamiliar users may also add someone as a friend.
Information Seeker An information seeker is a person who might post rarely, but follows other users regularly.
Reasons for Twittering
I’ve compiled various reasons for which people use Twitter which I came across while poring through comments/responses to blogs and questions
Self-promotion - create personal brand awareness on some level
Share and gather information that is pertinent to one’s interests
Sharing useful resources
Track on a much closer to realtime basis what people are thinking and doing. At the same time, one can then have a choice to participate in the thread.
Stay in touch with your close ones
See what’s happening with your friends
As an educational and conversational tool
Live event sharing– esp. for people who are not there, but even among attendees
Closed groups such as a task-specific team or attendees of a conference
Ideas — asking and sharing
Learning about news before it spreads far and wide, for both industry and general news items. News spread faster on Twitter than on blogs
Standard networking and communications with peers
Creating much closer links with people despite not often physically meeting very often if at all
Brainstorming
Polling
Discovering new interesting people and networking with them
Using the search box to find others interested in similar issue
Research - by subscribing to feeds of smart people in the field
As a targeted communication platform - Send responses @ a person or D (Direct to a person)
Keeping up with tech - All the big names on the internet use Twitter. Subscribe to them and see what’s new and exciting.
Tracking topics - enter ‘track SOA’ and anyone that posts a twitter message about SOA gets sent to you. A great way to hear what people are saying about a topic. To remove it just ‘untrack SOA’
Emergency - just see what happened with the wildfires. San Diego fire department broadcasted alerts on twitter
Television - watch TV together and react on it through Twitter
Stalking - Strange as it may sound, this post by Laurel unveils this trend
Twitter as a business tool
Drawing attention to/promoting products/content. Sending out special offers
Viral marketing, and for pre-release product announcements
News websites deliver information and updates using it
Spreading the word about stuff we’re working on (announcements, etc)
Gathering feedback from the community (asking questions)
Customer service (subscribing to mentions of our company, responding to people personally)
Getting pitched and communicating with PR agencies
For project updates - send a quick one-liner and you can see all in one place / timeline
Ask the expert - fling your question from wherever you are -up to the twitter network / global water cooler and get an answer.
reach out by cross-posting information from regular blog
Business bloggers are finding that tools like Twitter help draw traffic to their blog posts and give them a way to stay connected without the commitment of writing lengthy blog posts.
Twitter is not for everyone
Twitter can be sensory overload due to a high degree of micro information the user will need to self-parse. A lot of Twitter skeptics are put off by the banal nature of some of the discussion. This is really a limitation of the current Twitter clients, though. Twitter will become even more valuable when clients are available that let you intelligently filter through tweets for content that you’re interested in.
Conclusion
Love it or hate it Twitter is a force to be reckoned with, and provides a great many opportunities beyond simply telling the world what you ate for breakfast. By making it easy for people to send out short (140 characters or less) messages to their personal webpage, friends and followers, and even the Twitter community at large, the service makes for a compelling way to get the word out fast.
Whereas blog posts and emails tend to be longer-winded affairs, Twitter posts are closer in form to the SMS messages you send from your mobile phone, and in fact it is possible to access Twitter in this very way, in addition to using the Twitter website, Instant Messaging or one of the growing number of desktop applications available.
With international favorites like Facebook, Orkut (yes, it’s back) and MySpace gaining traction in Indian markets, it’ll be really difficult for the “me too” websites with a “follow the leader” mentality to hold out in this space. In a product where the content is 100% user created, a country specific product seems out of place.
Big multinational players are capable of investing vast sums to innovate and provide free services sustained by advertising networks such as Google. Any local company which takes these guys head-on in doomed to fail. Unless they innovate and come up with out-of-the-box solutions by playing to their local strengths which will be difficult for the international giants to pursue, they are bound to fizzle out or “at best” get acquired for local user base (which again is something some of the sites may be praying for).
Stumbled upon this interesting response to a question posted on LinkedIn
“It is really hard to define exactly what Web 2.0 is about, isn’t it? It can be about creating online content or about social applications or about collaboration or about AJAX or about reusing existing services in order to create brand new services. That’s why I call it the bag of unrelated concepts. Just because someone wants to call them Web 2.0 doesn’t suddenly make them related. Web 2.0 is nothing technical, it’s just a marketing spectacle. If anything, we should concentrate on service orientation with Web Services or creating richer Web clients with AJAX (which is another hype generator at the moment) or blogging or using Wikipedia without calling them Web 2.0. They already have names.
* Web 2.0 is about making things simpler.
* It is a step away from a thick client world to a thin client world.
* It is a step away from being techy & geeky to being more universally accessible.
* its about using the web to do things that you used to use your computer to do. ( Gmail, flikr, blogger)
* Its key enabler is widespread availability of broadband.
* The proximate driver of web2.0 is companies trying (still) to figure out how to make money from the web
* The strategic driver is to deliver services via the web to make it more attractive to non-technical people.
This means providing services that are, to the layman
- easy to use (delicious is, GMail is not, Skype is)
- easy to understand (GMail is, delicious is not, Skype is, kinda, RSS is completely incomprehensible)
- COMPELLING FOR NON-TECHIES (Gmail is not, delicious is definitely not, Skype is possibly, RSS may be if it can be integrated more seamlessly)
Gmail, Delicious, digg, blogger, flikr, are all steps in these directions.”
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