Innovating Mobile Technologies

From the Many-to-Many blog (Corante) by danah boyd.

"The next step in social technologies is mobile. Duh. Yet, a set of factors have made innovation in this space near impossible. First, carriers want to control everything. They control what goes on a handset, how much you pay for it and who else you can communicate with. Next, you have hella diverse handsets. Even if you can put an application on a phone, there's no standard. Developers have to make a bazillion different versions of an app. To make matters worse, installing on a phone sucks and most users don't want to do it. Plus, to make their lives easier, developers often go for Java apps and web apps which are atrociously slow and painful. All around, it's a terrible experience for innovators, designers and users.

This headaches have a detrimental effect on the development of mobile social software. Successful social technologies requires cluster effects. Cluster effects require everyone within a particular social cluster to be able to play. If 20% of your friends can't play because their phone/carrier won't let them, the end result is often that NO ONE plays. Of course, there's a tipping point where people buy a new phone or switch carriers, but that tipping point is hefty and right now, it's for things like SMS not neuvo apps. Switching carriers is even uglier - it requires a huge drop in price."

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