Communication is king and presence is a prince

A long article on the Telco 2.0 blog entitled “Nokia’s dilemma: operator friend or foe?” has some interesting passages on presence and mobile devices in it. Here is an excerpt:

“At Nokia’s own internal thought leadership conference in Helsinki nearly two years ago they had Andrew Odlyzko, mathematician and Internet philosopher, explain the future dynamics of the Internet and broadband. One central part of his thesis is that communication is king; content is secondary. When I take a photo of my kids at the zoo, and share it with my parents, that’s communication, not content.

Douglas Galbi (an FCC economist) takes the model one step further, with three basic modes of communication: presence (the sensuous sense of the other person being with you, as social bonding); storytelling (which includes the narrative of a game, the lyrics and emotions of a song, or the scenes of a movie); and pure information transfer (I want a taxi! What’s tomorrow’s weather?).

“Presence” (which here includes gossiping on the phone as you drive home, not just smiley on/off icons) is what users have historically been most willing to pay for. We’re still just hairless apes with a tribal grooming instinct.

Read full story (the interesting part starts after the heading “Content is king”)

(via the blog All about Mobile Life)