Last week I read a story on British Telecom getting into creating podcasts, with their users sending in their best/worst musical performances for shows delivered via a new internet service (more here). It got me thinking on a similar theme - Vodafone and Telecom spend vast sums of money on providing content for their mobile users. They seek to control exactly what a mobile user can get thru their phones. Why? How about they flip that content model, and open it up?
Make MySpace available via mobiles - that way, the user generates the content, costing the cellphone provider nothing. Or use MySpace as a template, and create their own blog/friend site, accessible via your mobile phone. One thing tho - the beauty of using MySpace is that you could access it from either Vodafone or Telecom - if the cellphone providers set up their own MySpace-styled site, they would need to make them compatible on their competitors phones as well. Remember when you couldn't text someone if they didn't have the same cellphone provider as you?
ADDED Sept 28 - Just saw this story... in the Dom Post... "Vodafone will launch its own version of MySpace on mobile phones by mid October. Though the telco is coy on the details, the service will likely be similar to existing websites such as MySpace and Bebo, but designed for the small screens of mobiles." More here.
