Having a name like “Next Great Thing” we are often asked, “So… What is it?” Over the next few months, we’ll be blogging our “Top Mobile Trends” every Monday to help answer that question.
Now, we aren’t claiming we’ve discovered these (”Twitter! Eureka!!”). Rather, we’ll be presenting the prevailing themes we’ve seen emerging over the past few years, along with some examples, analysis, and projections. If you know of other examples we didn’t include, or have thoughts or comments, please share!
The Evolution of Microblogging
The age of the personal blog is coming to an end. People have finally accepted that no one was reading their Typepad page, so they got off the couch and joined the microblog party. These sites, such as Twitter, Plurk, Fanfou, and to some extent Tumblr let users share (and overshare) through short “micro” posts (and eavesdrop on the “conversations” others). To draw an analogy with Facebook, these are streams of “status updates” that can be easily logged via the web, SMS or IM.
Now people are also microblogging through visual media as well. We first saw this phenomenon on Flickr as it became a platform for people to capture and caption their lives (or just their faces). Daily Mugshot and Flickaday are both built around this desire to self-catalogue.
Lifecasting
Microblogging with video brings it closer to what we call “livestreaming” or “lifecasting” (i.e. broadcasting your life). This term originally referred to 24/7 streamers like Justin.tv, but is now essentially using video to stream your life online, in any length. This is becoming easier by the minute. Thanks mostly to the cell phone, there’s no longer a need to strap a camera to your head. Several popular services make it dead simple to “lifecast” via mobile to the web, including Juicecaster, Kyte, and Qik. It’s easy, even 50 Cent is doing it.
If you need proof that this is going mainstream, just check out this weekend’s New York Times. Also look at the number of ancillary services that have cropped up around all these sites. Summize (purchased by Twitter) FriendFeed, Yoono, and TwitBuzz, to name a few, all help aggregate feeds, search sites or track buzzworthy topics. This aggregation taps into what is called “lifestreaming,” aggregating your multimedia content from a host of sources. Robin Good boils it down well in this beginner’s guide.
Convergence: Multimedia Microblogging
As technology speeds along, though, the boundaries that define these terms are disappearing. All-in-one services are emerging, letting you microblog with multimedia i.e. post photos, video, text, music, and other content. Twixtr mashes up Twitter with photos; Twiddeo merges it with video; Seesmic is its own video microblogging community; Utterz is an emerging mobile-driven platform that uses voice, video, text and images; Zannel is quite similar, but has developed a “professional” presence (bands, studios) as well. This sort of multimedia microblogging will simplify your online life. No need to go to multiple sites, these give you all the tools you need.
Now that the technologies are synonymous, the terms can be defined by content: lifestreaming/casting is all about you, microblogging need not be. However, that seems to be everyone’s topic of choice, so they are becoming interchangeable: Zannel calls itself a “mobile blogging tool” that lets you save to your “life stream” and touts the tagline “your life in real time.” Plurk calls itself a “social journal” that put “your life, on the line.”
A New Paradigm
Whatever you call it, this is a new paradigm, one that will flourish in the hands of youth through multimedia. Just think about what young people do on their phones (texting and taking pictures), then tie this to what they are doing online (social networking) and it makes perfect sense. And pretty soon, everything will be viewable through the handset, bringing about a new level of connectedness among the next generation.
