Mobile apps are all the rage, right? Yet the reality of the situation is that the majority of people don’t use them, yet. Apps are spectacularly useful when they make life easier – quickly, regularly, efficiently – but for owners of the more popular handsets, this simply isn’t the experience. Just finding and downloading them can often be too much hassle for starters. And the minefield of data plan charges and different operating systems are enough to scare off most people anyway.

Therefore it was good to see a consortium of seven mobile phone manufacturers and networks coming together to announce a new standard system for apps at the Mobile World Congress last week.

As far as we’re concerned this kind of initiative can’t happen fast enough. The average person has no interest in why the technology can’t deliver them a good media experience on their phone, but as soon as it does, they are going to wonder how they ever did without it. In the meantime we’re in the frustrating position where an amazing range of new content, tools and services are only really available to those who own an iPhone.

Despite all the buzz about mobile apps, designing a service that can be enjoyed across all the mobile platforms is still fraught with barriers and expenses. Mobile will only really take off when the focus changes from ‘how’ services are delivered to ‘what’ goes onto them, from the technical to the editorial.

Apple run a restrictive, closed system in an era when pretty much everyone else is working to principles of compatibility, yet theirs remains the platform of choice because they have streamlined the whole experience. Google’s more open, Android system is slowly gaining ground, but it will take a lot more cooperation to bring the overall mobile app/online experience up to the level that people will want to use it on all handsets.

We’re on the right path, but the progress of mobile media has been far too slow. Protectionism still reigns. Now Apple have generated all the interest, perhaps this latest announcement of cooperation will bring forward mobile media’s ‘broadband moment’ of mass adoption, and kickstart the technology/content revolution that is currently only enjoyed by a lucky minority of phone users…

Forget the latest social media trends, communications fads and all those lofty opinions on the future of Twitter. The one thing that has emerged as a modern essential (one I believe we will soon consider on a par with having a phone number, or a listed postal or email address), is the status update.

It makes perfect sense in an age dominated by information, that we all provide a short ‘headline’ about what we are up to as part of our contemporary suite of work and social tools. We’re fast approaching a time when not to have a status update of some sort will feel as socially awkward as not having a mobile became in the late 1990s. And for businesses, it will be unthinkable.

It’s interesting to see the mobile operators and device manufacturers rushing into this space now (see the Vodaphone video below). The range of options they offer shows that this isn’t exclusively about Twitter, Facebook or any other brand. It’s also not about celebrity, or society’s obsession with self-importance, or an invasion of privacy, or a time consuming distraction. It’s a maturing of how we all use real-time social media in a way that isn’t overwhelming. It’s a practical method of communicating now we are all so instantly, permanently connected. An inevitable evolution of communication, no less. Ok, so it’s one that hasn’t featured in much sci-fi so makes us feel odd about our ideas of the future, but is ultimately very human.

Train Your Brain

The headline feed, whether this be news, marketing messages, blog posts or a public SMS from a friend’s mobile are the ultimate way to cope with and condense a torrent of real time information. Excellent free tools like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite help us to make sense of this as the feeds themselves become a flood. The mobile app and the personal website become important again as aggregators of particular feeds.

Our brains need to get to grips with this new way of receiving information, and its rapid advance is causing plenty of friction and resistance… of course. But the technology is guiding the way. Limiting the text characters (originally down to the basic restrictions of SMS) forces us to be brief and trains our minds to express ourselves in the concise way necessary today.

As society becomes more comfortable with sending and consuming information in this way, as yet unthought-of possibilities become apparent, both good and bad. Witness last week’s #trafigura and #janmoir outrage incidents (Twitter mobs could become a real problem, even if they can be mobilized for good), or the innovative #beatcancer charity drive. The best advice can only be that we all embrace the coming of the status update and train ourselves to be savvy as its cultural importance grows. What’s clear is that the pace of change isn’t going to stop, so those who remain resistant put themselves at an increasing disadvantage.

Such topics are to be discussed from a brand perspective at Media140 London on 26th October, a one-day conference on the impact of real-time media. Alchemy Content will be there, and we have a discount code for £40 off the ticket price for the first five people to buy a Media140 ticket using our exclusive promo code: E8NZAHJH. That makes it a very affordable £95.

Video for Vodaphone’s new 360 service, that is heavily geared towards the importance of status updates…

We’re proud to say that Alchemy Content was a winner at the Mobile Content Awards 09 on Thursday night. Our work on the Ministry of Sound Clubbers Guide to Ibiza iPhone app saw us take the Silver Award for ‘Best Handset Application’, with the Financial Times taking the Gold.

This was great recognition from the mobile industry that our custom editorial production and management services are exactly the kind of innovation they wish to see more of on handsets in the future. As providers of all kinds of digital content and proponents of an editorial ‘feed culture’ this couldn’t be a more appropriate accolade, so we were very pleased to collect our award with Tom Bulwer representing MSHK/Ministry of Sound.

The final winners in the Best Handset Application category were:
Gold – Financial Times for FT iPhone App
Silver – Alchemy Content / MSHK for Ministry of Sound Clubbers Guide to Ibiza iPhone App
Bronze – Airborne Mobile for Homes on Mobile Phones Real Estate App

Great Feedback

While we’re banging the drum for the app, we’ve been particularly pleased with the feedback from users too. Here’s a sample of the kind of emails we’ve received:

“The app is brilliant. I used it in July and check it most days over here in the UK too. And these competitions are excellent!” Isla

“The iPhone app has been REALLY useful even in the run up to the holiday and I am sure it will be even more useful once we are out there.” Mark

And a couple from the iTunes App Store reviews, where the average rating is 4 out of 5 stars:

“This app is SO good! Totally essential if you are on your way out there, you lucky git!” banarydan

“I don’t normally ever write reviews but I got this 2 weeks before I’m due to go, was a bit apprehensive whilst downloading but it’s well worth it. Tells u all that is going on in the main clubs and how to get there too, and other studff like news and what’s on tonight… seriously get this.” Mamba man

Thanks go to Patrick Hagenaar for the original commission and Elliot Bowes at Active Guru for the development. If you’d like to speak to Alchemy Content about managing a content based mobile project like this then we’re ready to help and full of new ideas. Here’s to more awards and content innovation…

More details on the Clubbers Guide to Ibiza iPhone app.

The app is up for ‘Best Handset Application’, facing some healthy competition from the other nominees in the category including the Financial Times, Mobile Money Services, Airborne Mobile Inc and UMU Limited.

Feedback on the app has been overwhelmingly positive and the live feeds of news, special offers and over 50 free guestlist places a week have really captured the users imaginations.
The nomination is a great result for one of our key projects in this, our first year of operation.

Check out the promo video and download the app if you’ve got an iPhone. There’s still plenty of time to fly over for the Closing parties in September!

It’s all too inevitable that the coming of Google’s Street View to the UK would stir up ‘fury’ and ‘outrage’, even if most people in the country clearly think it’s an amazing development.

Privacy rights are well worth fighting for, but have the irate commentators really thought about what they are so up-in-arms about on this occasion? If they were paying attention to the advantages of digital media rather than automatically resisting it, they might see that having photos of totally public areas online is far, far down the scale of threats to our privacy. Censoring the taking of photos in public places should be more of a concern.

Wouldn’t it be nice if a group like Privacy International were at the cutting edge of the digital debate, acknowledging the central role of such technology to improving all of our lives and working to make sure its develops with a strong moral code. However today’s news that they are attempting to shut down street view only goes to show they are hopelessly out of touch.

The fuss over the few people/vehicles/dogs that can be identified misses the point too. They can simply be removed if requested. Web media works best when it is collaborative, therefore Google naturally relies on the input of its map users to improve its content all the time.

The irony is that only in such a connected, digital world can such fearful hot air be blown up into the sort of instant fuss that we’ve seen in the last few days. Do you think Google expected the severity of it? Probably. And there’s going to be plenty more hot air to come. It’s all part of the process of such huge cultural change. Ho hum, on we go.

Just wait until those people who are kicking up a stink right now get used to the shear usefulness of Street View on a mobile phone when they are trying to find their way to a job interview, buy a new house or make it to a dinner party on time. The conversation that night will be about how earth we ever lived without such a valuable free service.

One look at the papers tells you that our favourite micro-blogging service has well and truly been picked up as the ‘trend du jour’ by the UK press.

From freesheets to broad ones, vast columns are currently stuffed full of Twitter related chatter. Be it lazy reporting on yesterday’s celebrity tweets, or repeated discussions of whether the platform ‘has become mainstream’ yet, it’s difficult to escape.

This obviously rubs some people up the wrong way. Witness the haters deriding Twestival on the Guardian PDA blog. And all that bile aimed at a charity event!

It actually really excites me when an emerging communications medium gets slagged off. Then you know it’s already challenging the status quo. Twitter is now so completely mainstream (how edgy can something that Phillip Schofield is using on This Morning really be?), but because the gulf between those who accept and use social media and those who don’t, or won’t, is so sharp, you can get the false feeling that using things like Twitter is still the preserve of a clued-up few.

It reminds me of when I owned a mobile phone back at college in 1995. I was hardly an early adopter, yet among my fellow students at the time, having it was considered totally bizarre. “But what on earth do you need it for?” was the regular question, along with sniggering about looking like a drug dealer or city slicker. And this was on a media and communications degree.

Sure the volume of bandwagon-jumping press stories and the cutesy twlingo is annoying. And as the experience of platforms from Friends Reunited to MySpace has shown, an explosion of up-take is no guarantee that your system is about to replace email just yet.

However it’s fairly safe to say that Twitter has proved that micro updates have a huge role to play in the future of how we communicate. (Way beyond having slightly weird ‘relationships’ with celebrities and being bombarded with impersonal PR messages, too.)

Fierce resistance is all part of the process these new tools undergo in becoming an essential part of our lives, but it will be quickly forgotten. After all, who thinks having a mobile phone is ridiculous today?