Whilst I'm neatly balanced between flu and pharmaceuticals and enjoying some fading lucidity, one parting thought for today.
I can't name my accomplice, 'cos it busts his girl's privacy without her permission. But he tells me that his tweenage daughter has taken to a new form of social communications media (reproduced with permission, though):
one little strange thing my daughter and her friends do with skype is they put their best friend's picture instead of their own in the profile, strange huh? It seems that part of their identity is their best friend and they advertise who this is to each other.
Wowee. Cool! The users will always re-invent your products in unexpected ways.
Funnily enough, some telcos did great with "family plan" products. Some even managed minor product innovation as well as billing changes. But none seem to have produced group-centric products. You don't have to be a business genius to see that the social group dominates the life of tweens and teens. Admittedly, it's a back-office nightmare with current systems to build such products, because identity management isn't up to scratch. (Lots of dirty telco secrets, but it takes good wine to extract them.) Then again, that isn't a problem for those aiming to win the whole schebang from scratch.
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