100 Mobile Product Ideas...#3...

Calling all operators and mobile device manufacturers...
Here's how to generate more revenue and spark more interest in "mobile data services"...

Operators want to increase their messaging revenues. Operators want to spark interest and demand in multimedia messaging, which so far they have failed to do.

Here's my two-penneth worth of advice on this topic.

Step 1. Join the Atom initiative to develop what is effectively going to be a standard API for blogging.

Step 2. Enable all mobile content on devices to be postable via Atom...and that's all content, including text, video, images and sound.

Step 3. Make sure that "Send to blog" is a one-click (that's ONE CLICK) option on all content production on the device, not an obscure option buried in the nth click menu and called something daft like "Uplink via Atom". See any decent treatise on usability (and don't tell me you have your own usability experts, as we've all seen what they come up with...see my post on how to ruin a WAP experience.) Read Nielsen or hire someone like Barbara Ballard.

Step 4. Make sure that the mobile device is able to AUTOMATICALLY either find blogs that the user is already generating, be they podcasts, blogs, vblogs, or bla-dee-bla-blogs, but THEIR blog, not your behind-the-iron-curtain operator's portal blog.

[NB...don't be tempted to gloss over this step as it will LESSEN your messaging revenue opportunity from mobile blogging.]
[NNB...the finding blogs automatically might be tricky, but it is do-able if you put your minds to it, or ask me how.]

Step 5. IF...and only IF...the user, by some freak one-in-a-zillion chance does not have a blog by the time you get around to implementing this feature (a long while from now) then offer them an option to "create blog", which should be a complete no-brainer, no-need-to-register-via-your-PC-later option.

[NB...please don't attempt your own we-needed-a-special-tweek mobile blog platform or buy a massively expensive one from some "mobile apps house" with a flashy brochure. Talk to the guys who know about blogging (see the list on the Atom site).]

Step 6. Start a marketing revolution around mobile blogging. Promote it like it is going out of fashion, or, as Tom Peters says, "blog like your life depended on it" (ditto social life too...). Talk to Seth Godin about viral marketing, if you have to, assuming that adding that SINGLE CLICK "SEND TO BLOG" isn't going to create a viral explosion. JUST WATCH AND SEE!!!

Here endeth the idea.....(for now...lot's more to say about this topic...)