MIT/Stanford Venture Lab (VLAB) presented a panel discussion on The Future of Microconetent and Mobile Device Applicaiton at Stanford Graduate School of Business. David Arfin, CEO of Gloolabs gave the presentation on microcontent and mobile device applicaitons. Here are a few interesting points:
- 2 billion mobile subscribers worldwide in 2005
- 600 handsets are sold every year, and 2/3 of them are camera phones.
- 20 million digital cameras
- 7.7 billion digital impages were printed
- 82 billion SMS were sent in 2004
- 50 million MP3 players
So, what are the implications of these numbers? I guess some people smell the money, others see this as a new opportunity. Entrepreneurial spirit never dies! But what is the microcontent anyhow? Here are some characteristcs:
- user-centered
- bi-directional
- often in small clips
- come from many sources
- leverage existing networks
Examples are: short articles, micro games, Podcasts, QuickCast, screen-savers, micro-ads, SMS, MMS or LBS, music ringtones, photos, etc. There will be professional and personal applications.
The Panelists also said there will be “tornado” since big guys like Microsoft, Apple, HP, Nokia, Yahoo!, AOL, Google are already entereing the scene.
The future of microcontent is that
humanity will have to translate billions of macro content web pages into micro content web pages,because macro content is not efficient enough for human needs – it gives us more than we need. What we need is a certain amount of words that answer our curious queries – not more, not less.
See http://qtsaver.blogspot.com/2006/01/translating-www-from-macro-content.html