Xellular Identity - All About Mobile Content & Marketing

Carnival of Mobilists at Mopocket

This week's Carnival of Mobilists is hosted by Justin Oberman, who is one of the most promising young mobilists and a good friend. Head over for the BEST posts on mobile of this week.

Mobile Elections?

Yesterday it’s was one of the most interesting Election Days in Israel. In general, for those who haven’t visited Israel, I can honestly say that Israelis are very hot blooded and politically involved people. Everywhere you go you always hear people arguing about politics and security issues. Many times it sums up in giving hot compliments about each other’s mamas…

Knowing my people, I was very surprised to learn that only 63.2% of voters have voted on current elections. In contrast, the final round of the local version of the famous “American Idol” has generated so much more voting, emotional involvement and participation. The voting was held via SMS, yet each viewer could vote only once.

Politics isn’t a singing contest (though you can see so many politicians trying thir best to dictate the tone to the choir), so it’s hard to compare the two. But maybe if we could vote through SMS the voting rates would grow… I searched the internet to see if it has already been done, and it seems like there was a trial in the UK back on 2002 that aims

“To boost the proportion of people who bothered to vote in elections. […] There would be an "ever more extensive" programme of pilots to open the possibility for an "e-enabled" general election some time after 2006.  In some wards in Liverpool and Sheffield, electors will be able to vote by digital television as well as via mobile phones.

There will be a touch-tone phone voting system, […] and pilot elections where people can only cast postal ballots.  A variety of other measures include extended voting hours and mobile voting kiosks. The whole package is designed to get more people to "re-engage" with politics in the wake of tumbling turnouts at recent elections. The text messaging system will work by voters being given PIN numbers to use if they want to vote by text message.”
[via Cellular]

I think it would be great to be able to vote digitally, and not having to drag my self to the ballot so I could spend the entire day-off having fun. Yet there’s always the little fear from the George Orwell’s apocalyptic vision of “Big Brother’s inspecting eye”… If you have more info if and  how this has been done you can e-mail me or leave a comment. Thanks :)

Technorati Tags: elections, mobile, mobile + elections, voting

Carnival of Mobilists at Silicon Valley Himalayan Expedition

This week's Carnival of Mobilists hosted by Dorrian Porter's Silicon Valley Himalayan Expedition. Head over for the BEST posts on mobile of this week.

Confused? Don't Be

How much time would be reasonable to wait for a reply to an SMS? How long can I wait with replying on an e-mail? Evidently, we’re a bit confused, or so says a study called “Digital Etiquette” held among office workers. Most interesting is the fact that we all agree that firing a worker over any kind of means of communication, instead of over a private meeting, is totally rude. However, regarding the time intervals between getting an SMS, IM or email and replying the sender may vary.

Putting stats on the ice for a moment, it is a great opportunity to look at the 24-7 connectivity’s etiquette. We all rant about being always connected, online, reachable, in range… It usually sounds like this: “how the !@#$@#!! did they manage when there was NO mobile\ internet?! They had no other choice but handle the crisis without me. So they can manage it again!”** But, if we do a reality check, we actually have found the golden path between the 24-7 connectivity’s social demands and our own pace of doing things and our privacy.

At the beginning we felt obliged to answer every incoming call on the mobile or apologize for being unable to answer. The technology was new and there wasn’t a clear convention on the subject. With time, etiquette has evolved: we know we can turn off the mobile when we need to, get the voicemail later on and reply when convenient. From total presence it turned to be “when I choose to be available” kind of presence. It looks like other means of communication like SMS and IM are walking on the same path. While it is rude to disappear in the middle of an ongoing conversation, it is very common to have an online status like “be right back”, “on the phone”, “not at my desk” or “busy”… this is the golden path between total connectivity and our needs and our boundaries (“I’m not answering now, need to do something else”).

BTW, It looks like apps like RSS will push it further to optimize the different kinds of “presence” and our accessibility through different means of communication.

So if you’re confused it’s because social norms regarding these new technologies haven’t totally evolved yet, but good news - it's in process.

**There are various phrasing options here, so you can help me. Try to remember the little voice in your head saying it the last time you were ranting on it. And... write a comment. Thanks :)

Human Visual Stories

As you probably got to know me by now, I’m really fascinated by the online culture that is growing and developing, and especially fascinated by one of its biggest phenomena, the Avatars.

Once in a while I look for new content on avatars, posts, discussions, apps… whatever my hand reaches – or better said - whatever my RSS aggregator reaches… :) This time, I came across a conversation over WrongPlanet.com forums, asking the community whether “avatars strongly affect how you read a person's posts?”

Before posting here a few answers which I liked, I’ll give you my answer. Of course avatars affect the way you read a person’s post! Over the web, this is the first visual impression we have on a certain community member\ blogger. As a first impression, it plays a major role in managing our impression in the eyes of the other. In everyday life, we need just one look on a person on the street or in the subway to hold an opinion regarding who is he\she, what is his\her lifestyle, economic status and even some notion regarding some personal traits (we can observe aggression, tenderness, exhaustion, suspicion, shyness…).

I’ll confide here and tell you about a little game I’ve had since I was a little girl with big eyes and shy character hiding behind pink plastic glasses… One of my favorite things, especially when I’m on train or waiting to a doctor’s appointment is the people around me. I’ve always liked to examine people and guess who they are, where are they rushing to, gather as much as possible info to learn their story…  (everyone has an interesting story to tell, you just need to look\ listen close enough). I know it isn’t polite to stare, so I try to keep my inquisitive looks invisible… Sometimes I play the little game with a variation: I try to guess who lives in a certain building or house, especially those very very very old ruined buildings with high and narrow windows and rusted blinds. To me the most interesting is the tension between things that are emphasized and things that leak from the side, exposing deeper layers… like a very tidy man, looking like he’s on his way to a job interview, straightening his tie, combing his hair. Everything about him says tension and order but his shoes are powdered with dust… that say it all – he’s trying to make an impression of a tidy man but he doesn’t really have a pedant soul :)

Well, enough with those nonsense and back to the Avatars… :) So, as I said, the visual appearance of things helps us gather so much information on the object of reference (no matter if it’s a human being or an artifact). It has a crucial part in determining our approach and opinion on a given object (is it safe? Can I trust? Am I in danger? Do I believe? Am I repulsed by something?). Especially when it comes to the web and we need to establish our approach and are given so little solid info we can rely on.

NeantHumain: “have noticed someone using a different avatar now (don't remember the old one, just know it's different), and it changes how I read the tone of their messages and how I perceive them as people, too. I often don't even remember someone if they change their avatar or think they're a whole new person. I was just wondering the perennial question: Is anyone else like this?”

Baby: “my avatar is a picture of one of my tattoos, so it’s me whether it reflects badly on me or not.”

aspiesmom1: “Many people's nicknames are confusing to me, or maybe mean something to the person but not to the community as a whole, and so I associate people with their avatars. When they change them it throws me off completely. The avatar itself however, doesn't affect how I view the person.”

Theman: “Well, the answer is yes. That's why we pick them, they say something about who we are, and consciously or unconsciously everyone is influenced, to what degree is debatable but it is impossible not to be.”

As an ending note, I’ll ask for forgiveness if someone got offended by what was supposed to be an invisible harmless investigating look… it’s just for the sake of the human story lying there that fascinates me. A great human story which sometimes I get carried away with… hey, life is the best show you can get around town! :)

Your Xellular Xen

Blogs - THE Stage of our Lives

It was very interesting to read a techie guy like Stowe Boyd writing about life and Philosophy… :) for a Theatre groupie like me, the greatest thing was to read his views on our theatrical personas in blogging and in everyday lives. Stowe writes that:

“By becoming bloggers and writing […], our self can become larger than life. Some magic that is buried in the human psyche makes the figures leaping about on the stage a representative of something larger than that single person. The actor, writer, poet, or artist is a sort of shaman, responding to a higher calling. And, as such, I believe we lose something of ourselves in exchange for the experience. Our personas are not our own, truly; we are part of something larger. And that larger thing includes both dark and light sides.“

Not just the blogger, actor, writer, poet or artist… I think we All have a persona\ a role\ a character that “leaps about on the stage” and is presented to the world. This persona is built from several roles we hold in life (a blogger, a woman, a student, a daughter…) which build our self esteem and the sense of who we are. For example, if you’ll ask me at university: “who are you?” I’ll probably answer: “an M.A. student at the department of Theatre Arts”; asking me the same at my hometown neighborhood will get me to say: “I’m Dr. Mendelsohn’s oldest daughter”. Both answers are right, accurate, and different. Both are parts of my persona, among other roles.

When it comes to famous people, it’s easier for us to assume that they have a ‘public’ persona in contrary of a ‘private’ persona. We know that a celebrity has a different “face” when getting in front of the public or when talking with a close friend. (And what is more interesting than getting a glimpse of the private persona, like on a paparazzi pic?!) But if you think of it for a moment, we all have “different” personas: we act differently when we are at work, at the supermarket, at the movies or at home… Even at home, far away from the public’s eye, we might act (i.e. behave and play a role) differently in front of our parents or in front of our naughty kids. (“Not in front of the children” rings any bells? BTW, that is basically a theatrical ACT…)

As for the blog-sphere:

“People know us through our personas, and they expect us to stay in our roles, and to play our parts. If we have done a good job of portraying ourselves, up here in the limelight, then they will be surprised -- maybe angry -- when we step out of character: and I mean character in both the theatrical sense and the sense of 'person of good character'. And sometimes they will be angry when we do things in character, because the role we are playing is not always the hero in the story. […]”

Stowe describes the response of the readers to the public persona. Readers get angry when the blogger’s persona isn’t linear\ coherent\ consistent, when bloggers “step out of character” or step out of the desired theatrical plot. The interesting question here is why? How come there’s a difference between our acceptances of the multiple celebrity’s personas and our refusal to treat the A-list blogger (like Robert Scoble, Dave Winer and others mentioned by Stowe) the same way?

The difference is the medium itself. A blog, or better said a Weblog, is first of all a kind of a public diary. So it gives the reader a sense of intimacy and closeness to the blogger. A closeness which he\she doesn’t get when watching a movie star getting interviewed (on TV, magazine etc…). So we assume we’re getting to know the blogger’s private persona. We don’t realize, or maybe don’t want to realize, that a blog is a ‘public diary’, a stage. As a stage, it is a place to present a role, a mask, a character. It always brings inner truths with it, as an actor brings his experiences and his feelings to the role. At the same time, it is an act. That is why it can be criticized by the public, or better written by Stowe Boyd, that is why

“it's not us that define the character we are playing: it's the larger group, the world beyond the footlights”, “so they become public property, not the possession of the bloggers.” “Whatever we bring into the role, into the role, becomes a prop. Even it is 'ours' in some sense -- like a personal relationship, or a project, or some idea -- once we bring it on stage, it is no longer personal.”

Realizing that blogs are the new theatrical stage would make it easier to maintain our blogging relationships and to synch our expectations as bloggers and readers.

Carnival of Mobilists at C. Enrique Ortiz' Mobility Weblog

This week's Carnival of Mobilists is at

C. Enrique Ortiz' Mobility Weblog. So check it out! Enrique has done a GREAT job - go for it!

Relaxation Here I Come!!

I just got a call inviting me to the college of alternative medicine to participate in 3 sessions as a guinea pig. That means I'm going to get the best massage ever for FREE and at the best time ever - at the end of Thursday, just before the weekend starts! And three times! It sounds soooooooo relaxing, ha?

To match the spiritual environment, I’m putting a yogi Klonie. Ommmmmmmmmmmmmm :)

MobFashion

Well guys, you probably remember the last post on men and their mobiles... I know that some of you were a bit mad (and even pinged me about it).So to be fair, I'm gonna write about women's mobile fashion from as well… :)

What you can see here is C'Élégance (pronounced cell-egance), a jewelry for your cell phone. With  this cute thing we can all personalize our mobile to better express who we are... (and you now the rest...) :)

[via the Mobile Diva - Darla Mack]

***

People gather information when deciding with whom to pair up to prevent investing time and genes with a bad-genes partner; or in Darwin's words - sexual selection. I know I know… people don't present to the public our health charts and medical prescriptions, so how do we do that? Health condition and fitness are demonstrated by visual cues and behavior (remember the men and their luxury gadgets?).

I'll get to the mobiles in a sec, don't worry, but before that let me say another word... To complicate things a bit, there are fake signals which we all use, like make up, push-up bras, wigs... I'm sure you can come up with dozens of exapmles. So the natural tendency, when selecting, would be to rely on hard to fake signals. Genuine signals are signals which ONLY fittest women could communicate. And here's where FASHION comes in the picture.

How a woman dresses and what mobile she owns are more than a successful self representation. Fashion forces a woman to look good while sending signals of her knowledge of the rules of fashion. That is a real signal because being always in fashion requires qualifications that are much harder to fake: being alert to social conventions and being well equipped with financial resourced to achieve it. [If she makes money or comes from a rich family means she is has good genes for survival in the modern era.]

Fashion is changing rapidly while introducing so many new accessories in so many fields. We don't only have cosmetics, hair style, clothes and shoes, we also have jewelary, bags and all kind of mobiles and personal gadgets as well. This makes it even harder to be always up-to-date. Harder means a sincere cue for sexual selection, and it causes a wide scale of accomplishments: from a fashion pro with the latest mobile to the fashion beginner without it.

So fashionable girls, this is the new mobile fashion... go and grab some! Present it to the guys... hopefully it'll make wonders! :)

Correction

Thanks to the reader Penny, I realized that my last post was all messed up. The order of the paragraphs was going backwards, from the end to the beginning (I really don't know why this things happen, but it happened in the past with the Carnival of mobilists post).

So, thanks again Penny, and now you can read it without guessing "what on earth she was trying to say here". :)

Xen

Big Little Helpers

A bit late, but I just had to comment on something I’ve read on Ad Age. The recent post of “Media Morph” covers the phenomena of Avatars, from marketing point of view. Yet it did that only to a very poorly extent, the concept was so reduced and badly presented…

First, Avatars are a visual mean of self representation in a limited environment, where we can’t use our physicality as our representation. The environments vary from virtual games, to chats, instant messengers, forums, different social softwares and they have even reached the mobile sphere.

Avatars can be used also for interacting with friends, like in more evolved instant messengers (IMVU for example), or like in virtual societies (“Second Life” for example). On these platforms, avatars can have all kinds of interactions with other people’s avatars: they can go on a date over a cup of coffee, shake hands, hug or kiss... Avatars can have formal interactions like buying or selling stuff too. Whatever comes to your mind – your avatar could interact for you!

And to the marketing perspective: Since avatars are our representation, we want them to be as close as possible to the way we are, as close as possible to what we wish to be. That is why from consumer’s perspective, there is no difference between branded content for  avatars to other branded merchandise (clothes, gadgets, cars… you name it). Whatever brands we own in real life we’ll probably want to have for our avatars as well. Here lies the big benefit to marketers - make branded content to be used in the virtual sphere. This can advertise and promote the consumer brand in real life. But it could be another major route for revenues.

So, don't just go underestimating Avatras (or you'll get me writing another post about it! ;-))

Carnival of Mobilists at Martin's Mobile Technology Page

This week's Carnival of Mobilists is at Martin's Mobile Technology Page. Don't waste more time - head over for the BEST posts on mobile of this week. 

My Feedburner

Thanks to Marshall Kirkpatrick now I'm using Feedburner for my RSS feeds, and it's so much better! If you wish to sign up for my feeds - all you have to do is press the orange button on left sidebar. To get the full benefits of Feedburner for your blog - just follow the link to Marshall's post to get the instructions. It is really worth the effort!

Thanks Marshall!

Update: Self Portrait Tuesday

I wasn't aware of it, but every month has a challenge, a theme for the self portraits. March is all about time.

Thanks SPT guys for updating me on this one! :)

Technorati Tags: self portrait tuesday

Self Portrait Tuesday

I was playing around and found a very interesting web community – The Self-Portrait Tuesday. Each member posts a self portrait on his\ her blog on Tuesdays (as often as wanted) and sends a trackback to the Self Portrait Tuesday Blog. There is also a Flickr group filed under the same title.

I watched dozens of self portraits and I felt admiration for the self exposure that people are willing to have. Yet it should be noted that on the process of taking pictures we stage ourselves (lighting, angles, colors, compositions, etc…). So the outcome is less invasive than a spontaneous paparazzi photo taken on your worst bad hair day. Moreover, there is also the "editing decision", i.e. which pic to upload or to destroy. It’s like willing put up an act on stage – the actor reveals something private about himself (his pain, his joy…) and he puts a mask, a role, a character at the same time. In this duality of hide-reveal, we express ourselves in a very genuine way.

I decided to publish an avatar, a Klonie of myself. Your first thought might be – “she’s hiding, this isn’t a self portrait”. But if you really think about it – every decision we make says something about us. Oscar Wilde phrased it (so much better): "Give a man a mask, and he'll tell you the truth." the mask lets us loosen up and expose hidden parts of the personality. Because we’re putting up an act\ a role we allow ourselves to unleash some inner restrains and express ourselves (“that’s not Xen, that’s Hamlet”). I'll say it allows more libidinal materials to come upon surface and become less hidden. So, next time you change your Avatar into a sexy diva or a Manga worrier think what kind of emotions are you restraining in your life. Or you might consider taking some martial art lessons…

Technorati Tags: self portrait tuesday, exposure, avatras, Oscar Wilde, Flickr Group

Theatre, Peacocks and Mobiles

Yesterday the spring semester has started and I spent the entire day at university. It was so great! The huge library (always gives me perspective…), the classes, the cafeteria and the so WEIRD people of the faculty of arts (especially the eccentric acting students)…

While changing classes and buying coffee I was talking with a new class mate. Naturally, conversations always reach topics like fields of interest and career. And you probably guessed right - I found myself talking about (mobiles and) the need for self-expression, which btw I thought is a basic term in the field of arts…

My classmate argued that the need to externalize one’s identity is only a male need. The purpose is to get mating partners. And it can be examined in theatrical terms. The spectacle is the display of male strength and quality, i.e. his manhood, i.e. his financial power and status. The audience is mixed and contains both genders - potential female mates and rival males. The stage is the stage of his life. The actor is a male playing himself on the role of his life. Instead of walking around with his bank account balance, the male has the best props to convey the same message: he carries (and displays to the audience) as often as possible (without loosing credibility and looking ridiculous) his electronic consumer goods (you name them…), expensive watches, tie pins, lucrative fountain pens or mobile phones. All of these are elements in a coherent message about himself, about who he is and about his male qualities. But this act isn’t put up together for the sake of art. There is no fashion statement either. It is merely a good ol’ animal like behavior, like the peacock displays his feathers to communicate, to declare his male quality.

A little note before continuing - even though the mobile is a mean of audio communication, its visual appearance is what communicates in the example here. Carrying a Nokia N-90, a Mobile ESPN or a Nokia 3100 says different things about the character on stage.

Nice observations, yet I argued… we all use different props to say something about our nature, taste, character, life-style and economic status. Yet we don’t need to treat this visual communication as “primitive”. That is the essence of visual communication, and it can be used to gather information and\ or to convey a message to a potential mate but not only; Think of all those circumstances in life where we gather visual information regarding the counterpart (selling\buying, job interviews…). And these “props” aren’t any different than other means of visual communication, like body language, or fashion statements etc. So, next time you're shopping for a mobile - think what it says about you! :)

Carnival of Mobilists at Textually

This week's Carnival of Mobilists is at Emily Turettini's Textually. So don't forget to head over to see THE best postings about mobile from all over the Blogosphere!

Update: Emily, thanks for the compliment! :)

[I usually write these "invitations to the Carnival" early in the morning, way before the Carnival is up at the host's blog... ]

Name-Expression...

Hi everyone,

As you probably noticed - the scenery has changed here, and for those of you who usually notice little details, there’s more than meets the eye, a lot MORE than new colors and templates…

Friends, I decided to share with you something personal that happened very recently in my life. My husband and I are getting a divorce. I know that it is very sudden, and it came as a huge surprise to all the people who got to know us as couple… and yet, the decision has been made, the procedures are in process, and this is the right thing to do.

On Saturday, the morning after the decision to break up was made, I felt the extreme urge to change everything here, at my blog. First, there was the name issue. I realized that I’m no longer “Xen Dolev”. But until I’ll have the official papers I can’t officially change my name back to my maiden name “Xen Mendelsohn”. So, for now it’ll be just “Xen”. It’s not that bad actually. But then, I noticed that my name is writen all around (!), so I started changing it everywhere I could... Yet there's a major problem with my blog’s URL since it contains my "old" name in it: “http://XenDolev.typepad.com”. If that is not enough, everyone in the blog sphere knows me by that name and URL...! [For the URL problem, I really need a “redirect link” - If someone knows how to make one, please leave me a comment or an e-mail (thanks!)].

I realized that a name says something about us too – it’s not just something we use as a username or as part of an e-mail address. Think of a social gathering where people mingle: it really makes a different statement if I introduce myself with an academic title (B.A.? Dr? MD?) civil title (Mrs.? Miss?), first and last (last name by marriage? maiden name?) or just by my first name “Xen”. Thinking about it, my beloved Klonie has a very big advantage not having a last name… :)

Well, if I can’t just personalize my name yet, I would then personalize my blog to better express myself! Suddenly my life and my work blend into one another and I really FEEL the extreme desire\ need\ urge to reinvestigate my identity and to express myself as the genuine Xen, as I know she really is. At this moment, my Klonie here really expresses the way I feel now… :(