Xellular Identity - All About Mobile Content & Marketing

Dolls' Peronalization

Idan sent me these pics from “Boyds Personalization Center” in NY (correct me if I'm wrong about the store, dear). As you can see, girls are now offered to personalize their dolls and choose from a wide selection of color and hairstyles (no need to make improvised haircuts that end up in tears), color of skin tone, color of eyes, and of course many clothes etc’… (If I was given this task of choosing as a little girl it would have taken me ages to decide which items to buy or even worse, all of my spending money; because a girl needs a wide wardrobe to select from...) ;)

I don’t know if this is influenced by the wide world of personalization that rules the world of virtual identities (MMOGs, IMs, chats, forums and even mobiles) or vice versa. Yet in both, “the user” identifies with the doll\avatar during “the playing time” and is willing to invest money in the looks of the subject of identification.

[Thanks dear! :) ]

     

Itzle - Nice but Lacking (a lot of) Sex Appeal

Tom pointed me to this social tool I wasn’t aware of. Itzle is a new tool that gives you a visual presence while visiting at a webpage “as if it were an actual, physical place”. The aim is to meet other people in the same virtual location and communicate. Tom also points out that He sees it

“as the reincarnation of Odigo's base idea: while being able to IM with your friends, how do you make new friends?

the idea was that you would see on the Odigo 'radar' people being on the same web page as you (you could further drill down to sex, age, spoken language, etc), as well as leave notes for other to see on the web page.”

My criticism is about the visual appearance: the Itzle avatar is nice yet very schematic. The personalization options are very basic and only allow you to change the colors of the hair, shirt, pants and text. The user can't even change the most basic option of all customizable web identities - determining his/her gender. Today, with a huge market of web avatars, this is just not enough. If this seems redundant, just think how would someone attract others into initiating communication while visiting the same webpage when they all look the same??! Would you just try avatars randomly? I don’t think so.

It’s nice, yet this browser add-in will have a tough time gaining popularity with the proliferation of social apps in the online neighborhood and with its avatars' low sex appeal…

Carnival of Mobilists at Mobile Active

Get ready for the best mobile writing of the week! This week Bonnie Bogle of Mobile Active is hosting the carnival. So head over and enjoy!

The Freakiest Mobile Contest

Just read this one and was amazed by the creativity (and boredom?) of people... :

"Anyone wanting to throw away their mobile phone can do it in style and may even win a medal -- at the Mobile Phone Throwing World Championship, Finland's latest contribution to offbeat athleticism.

Originally a local event in this small town close to the Russian border, the seventh annual contest on Saturday drew some 100 throwers from as far afield as Canada, Russia and Belgium."

[...]

And the read this:

"Lund (i.e. the Founder -XM) says competitors all have their favourite throwing brand. "People choose by size, by colour or by how it fits in the hand ... Some believe a heavy model will ensure a long throw, some want a light one."

[via Reuters]

Throwing a mobile to long distances?! It costs more than a month's rent! Hey finns, will you throw a Nokia N-90 towards my direction? ;-)

Free Mobilists’ Mobile RSS Reader

MobHappy teamed up a while ago with Free News to offer a mobile phone RSS reader, which allows you to follow our favorite blogs from your mobile.

And now they are extending this popular service to include all their Mobilist friends and offer a Mobilist Mobile RSS reader, consisting of the 14 most popular and active Mobilist contributors. I'm honored to be included: Go a head, try it out! :)

• C. Enrique Ortiz
• Darla Mack
• M-Trends
• MobHappy
• Mobile Enterprise Blog
• Mobile Marketing & Spam
• MoPocket
• Open Gardens
• Smart Mobs
• Textually
• The Pondering Primate
• WAP Review
• Xellular Identity

Virtual Activism

Meez, a 3-D avatar provider, is widening its activity to virtual activism, under the newly-minted "CAUZ" banner, according to the company’s PR. The CAUZ brand is the result of collaboration with 7 youth-oriented non-profit organizations: 26 Valencia, Do Something, Just Think, Music for America, Outward Bound, Summer Search and YouthNoise.

"CAUZ virtual items will include t-shirts, hoodies and backgrounds that prominently display a non-profit's brand or a message about a social concern that is important to today's youth, like the environment or AIDS."

CAUZ items will be available for free, unlike Meez branded sportswear which has a price tag.

Many teens spend more time over the web than in real life, so these NGOs decided to promote social activism in the virtual arena. Cool. Yet, Merton and Lazersfeld* would have said (if they were alive) that consuming virtual activism is a "narcotic disfunction" of mass communication. It gives users the false sense of doing/acting while actually being passive, i.e. ONLY consuming activism at home (as TV entertainment or here - as virtual content).

What do you think?

---

*Lazarsfeld, P.P., and Merton, R.K. (1948). Mass Communication, Popular Taste and Organized Social Action, in: Schramm and Robert (eds.) The Process and Effects of Mass Communication, pp. 459-480. University of Illinois Press.

SMS's New Visual Language - "Zlango"

ESC, the Israeli youth MVNO, launched a new mobile app which enables users insert graphic icons to replace words in SMSs. The new graphic ‘language’ is called Zlango and now contains 220 graphic symbols which, according to official PR, aims to add personal expression and some fun spirit to the dull SMS. All ESC users will be able to watch messages containing the Zlango icons using a link (provided in the Zlango SMS) to the company’s web portal and view the message as a pic file.

[via Ynet in Hebrew]

A few notes:

• SMS is turning to be more than 160 characters using visual signs to express more in each character (out of 160).
• Visual symbols are the shortest way to convey meaning: think about ads, banners and promotions - a pic is worth a thousand words, right? Why not leverage this characteristic in other fields where space is limited/ expensive?
• This is another step towards a “visual” mobile which doesn’t rely only on voice (bigger screens for visual caller ID, SMS, IPTV, wap portals, emails, etc…).
• Written language is being reduced into visual icons. Some are universal (like ESC's symbol for “and”) but many others are being made up by the mvno itself (like ESC's symbols for “big”, “now”, “new”). Who will be the authority to invent missing symbols and to decide on their common meaning?

Carnival of Mobilists at MOpocket

This week's Carnival of Mobilists is hosted by Justin Oberman, a very dear friend and one of the best bloggers covering the mobile arena. Head over for the BEST posts on mobile of this week in honor of Justin's parents and congrats Rudy for being picked for the best post! :)

WP: Monetizing The Blogroll

Jeff Burkett reports that a new, experimental Sponsored Blogroll Service was announced by the Washington Post:

"A very small number of blogs enjoy hundreds and hundreds of inbound links - the A-list, as it were. But almost all others have very few sites pointing to them.

Basically, all of the B-list and C-list bloggers (who may well be very talented) link to the A-list blogs in hope of getting noticed. All this accomplishes is making the A-listers more powerful, while the B's and C's stay where they are.  It is very hard to break through the clutter, as many of you know.

Some bloggers are open to putting advertising on their site, so why not strike deals with them and help them do that. The revenue gets shared (in the bloggers favor of course) and we throw in one additional component... A link to their blog on the homepage of washingtonpost.com. With the potential of 8 Million monthly visitors seeing this link, it could very well be the catalyst that them noticed.

Admittedly, right now the index box is a little small and may not be in the most prominent position on the page. Okay, so its definitely in the ghetto position, but its a start. If the blogosphere embraces this and we see a lot of interest from quality blogs we will grow the size of the index and give it better positioning on the page. We'll just have to wait and see."

[via Media Landscaping]

Besides being a great way to tighten relations between the WP and bloggers, the WP Blogroll actually helps the newspaper to put a foot in the door of bloggers' balance of power; a balance that was being kept by the blogsphere among itself until now. I wonder how will quoting a price tag for a link (i.e. for being featured in a blogroll) will affect bloggers' link exchange policies and interactions... If a newpaper with ~8M views per month can set a price tag, why can't other A-listers do just the same?

New Klonsters

We have some new blood among our graphic designing team - welcome Al! :) You can take a sneak peek to some of our new Klonsters which are coming soon. Well, what do you think?

   

Carnival of Mobilists at Abiro

Anders Borg has done a great job hosting the Carnival of Mobilists at Abiro. Go ahead  and enjoy!

The Mobile "Don'ts" List

The list of things you don't do with/over your mobile:

1. Fire en employee by SMS

2. Quit your job by SMS

3. Tell you're partner that you're pregnant (even if you were waiting for it for so long)

4. Dump your boyfriend/ girlfriend (even if it saves you the time and trouble)

5. Have a heart to heart talk with a sobbing friend

6. Answer the mobile while having a romantic dinner with your date

Can you see the common in all these situations?

And if you have some more don'ts - you're very welcome to comment :)

Carnival of Mobilists at Mobile Enterprise

Get ready for the best mobile writing of the week! This week, Daniel Taylor of the Mobile Enterprise Weblog is hosting the carnival . So head over and enjoy!

Are 1000 Words Worth A Trailer?

Off topic yet it was very interesting to read how the publishing market harnesses the visual media and the video sharing web communities like YouTube et al to promote new books with trailers.

And there's a very smart business model since:

"The Web sites run the videos as content, not advertising, so the publishers do not have to pay for every click. And, unlike ads, the videos often have an afterlife in searchable archives, long after they have left the main home page."

[via IHT]

With low production costs (according to the article), the only remaining question is would people buy a book by its trailer? Would you?

[thanks Dan for the link!]

Girls, Throw Away Your Diamonds (and Get A Plasma)

Girls, if you haven't already done so, throw away your designers shoes, diamonds and romantic vacations in favor of plasma TVs, digital cameras and personal gadgets...! Cuz these days, tech replaces diamonds as girl's best friend. Also, according to a new U.S. study, commissioned by cable television's Oxygen Network,

"the next five years women see themselves increasing their activities in six tech areas: digital cameras, cell phones, e-mail, camera phones, text messaging and instant messaging."

[via Reuters, InformationWeek]

I say this tech mania is a replacement, to a certain extension, of the fashion mania. Both are a personal statement of skills, knowledge and status; And both function as a language of signs, symbols and iconography that visually communicate meanings about their users/ owners. However, since at the internet era our communications is more mediated and less direct/ F2F, we need new  and reliable signs which would indicate (to others) our skills, knowledge and status, as fashion always has been doing.

Klonies Now Available Free

Just wanted to let you know that your beloved Klonies avatars are now FREE on Skype. Yes - free! Go ahead, express yourself and if you want to be featured here, under the "Klonie if the week" spot, send it over by email.

Enjoy!

Music To Your Ears

Mobhappy covers a new mobile self-expression trend in India - the background tones, which are music that plays in the background while you are talking on the phone.

I think it's a great idea since different conversations need different background music - so mobile users would probably change the music pretty often, I know I would...