Camera Phone Blogs
I've been heads down today and hadn't seen the latest... thanks to Adina whoh sent me an email pointing me to her post:
Start-up marries blogs and cellphones
Cool idea. Nasty, closed implementation -- a proprietary service from the phone company to create blogs only from its own customers, vs. software and an open API to blog pictures.
That kind of openness probably isn't possible in the closed cellphone world. Wonder what Russ Beattie thinks about it, as a mobile guy and blogger.
via Dave Winer.
Thanks Adina!
Here's what Dave has to say:
Register: Start-up marries blogs and camera phones. The right way to do this, imho, is to connect the phone-to-weblog software through the MetaWeblog API, that way existing weblog users could participate, and new users would have choice of backend software. Any cellphone service provider that buys into this proposal will have to scrap it in a few months when the general solutions come out. Maybe less than a few months. Mobile blogging, or moblogging is very hot. So is choice for users.
Yeah, I agree with Dave that his way would be much more useful (with the addition of the Blogger API as well). However, if you're looking from this from a money point of view, NewBay may have the right idea creating a service that the telecoms can add to their new offerings.
Even though the newer multimedia camera phones are much more open in their specs and not as closed off as WAP, the telecoms are still the gatekeepers to different services. Get your product endorsed or pushed by them and you'll make money. Trying to get users to sign up to an additional service and then pay for it will be hard. Hard but possible. It'll be interesting to watch to see which model prevails. The Telecoms are in a position to pick and choose right now and may use that advantage to negotiate deals that leave little to the developer. Maybe direct is the model...
We'll see what happens. I'm already heading down this road now, we'll see what I come up with.
-Russ
Later... Doh! Dave just gave me a heads up in my comments that the MetaWeblog API and the Blogger API are complimentary. I should have checked the link above first, but didn't because I was at work. Because Radio/Manilla and Blogger.com do similar things, but in different ways, I just assumed they were different APIs.