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From: "Rob Shavell" <rob@mobiusvc.com>
To: "'Mike Masnick'" <mike@techdirt.com>
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Subject: RE: sprint delivers the next big thing??
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right Mike,

i will agree to disagree but i take your comments to heart.  my opinion is
only that this is one of the last frontiers of communications ('instant
show') that we cross easily (though you are right as rain on pricing).  i am
mildly amused at the level of skepticism and innatention it is getting.

my premise is that the world will change in dramatic and unexpected ways
once there are a billion 'eye's' which can instantly share what they see
amongst each other.  that doesn't mean that people will stop talking on
their phones, or that people will spend more time w/images than voice.  just
that it is fundamental.  from news to crime to privacy to dating to family
life to bloopers and practical jokes, i believe there will be an explosion
of images unleashed specifically by cell phone integrated lenses because of
their utter ubiquity that dwarfs all pictures taken in the history of
photography by orders of magnitude and in short order. and yes, changes
things 'big time'.

rgds,
rob


-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Masnick [mailto:mike@techdirt.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 20, 2002 11:58 PM
To: Rob Shavell
Cc: fork@example.com
Subject: RE: sprint delivers the next big thing??


Not to keep harping on this, but...

At 11:36 PM 8/20/02 -0700, Rob Shavell wrote:

>content: who cares about content?  that no one can think of 'useful'
content
>is always the business persons mistake. the content is the users
>communications.  its anything and everything.  avg person could easily send
>half dozen pics to a dozen people a day.  mainly humorous i'd guess. who
>cares if content is trivial in nature. picture speaks a thousand words.

This does nothing to answer my question.  I *do* care about content.  Hell,
if I could be convinced that people would send stupid pics back and forth
all day, I'd have a different opinion of this.  I just am not convinced
that they will (stupid or not).

While a picture may be worth a thousand words (and this is the same
argument the guy who works for me made), how many people do you know who
communicate by pictures?  Sure, it sounds nice to say that a picture is
such an efficient messaging mechanism, but how often do you actually find
yourself drawing someone a picture to explain something?

I don't buy it.

For most messages, text works fine and is the most efficient
mechanism.  For some messages, pictures do the job, but I would say not
nearly as often as words.  Why do you think Pictionary and Charades and
such are games?  Because images are usually not the most efficient way to
get a message across.

>misc ramblings: i suppose you skeptical forkers would have said the same
>thing about '1 hour photo' processing.  trivial, who needs it, i get better
>resultion elswhere.  and yet, it had great decentralizing impact - the
plant
>had to be downsized and pushed to the retail operation - the digital
camera,
>and finally the integrated digital camera phone brings this cycle of
>decentralization in photography to a logical conclusion (which will put the
>photo giants to bed) and change the world in a meaningful way.  also, SMS
>didn't take off because its easy, it took off because it costs less.  its
>greatly ironic the carriers often trumpet the 'profitabilty' of their SMS
>traffic over others because of its ratio of cost to bandwidth.  in reality,
>SMS cannibilizes the voice rev's they bought their networks to handle.

Again, this is the same argument my colleague made (along with "you just
don't understand kids today, and they'll run with this").  I wasn't saying
that MMS wouldn't take off because it wasn't high quality or that it wasn't
easy.  I was saying that I couldn't see why people would use it in a way
that "changed the face of communications".

I'm looking for the compelling reason (even if it's a stupid one) why
people would want to do this.  Sure, if they integrate cameras into the
phone, and the quality improves (even only marginally) I can certainly see
people taking pictures with their cameras and occasionally sending them to
other people.  But, mostly, I don't see what the benefit is to this over
sending them to someone's email address, or putting together an online (or
offline) photoalbum.

I don't think 1 hour photos are trivial.  People want to see their own pics
right away, and the quality is plenty good enough for snapshots.  That's
one of the main reasons why digital cameras are catching on.  The instant
view part.  I'm guessing your argument is that people not only want
"instant view", but also "instant show".  Which is what this service
offers.  I'm not convinced that most people want "instant show".  I think
people like to package their pictures and show them.  That's why people put
together fancy albums, and sit there and force you to go through them while
they explain every picture.  Sure, occasionally "instant show" is nice, but
it's just "nice" on occasion.  I still can't see how it becomes a integral
messaging method.

What's the specific benefit of taking a picture and immediately sending it
from one phone to another?  There has to be *some* benefit, even if it's
silly if people are going to flock to it.

I'm searching... no one has given me a straight answer yet.

The *only* really intriguing idea I've heard about things like MMS lately
are Dan Gillmor's assertion that one day in the near future some news event
will happen, and a bunch of people will snap pictures with their mobile
phones, from all different angles, and those photos tell the real story of
what happened - before the press even gets there.

Willing to be proven wrong,
Mike

PS If the wireless carriers continue to price these services as stupidly as
they currently are, then MMS is *never* going to catch on.

http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork

