MIDs, Mobile Internet and the future of Microblogging.

Wherever they are, at any time of the day, in almost any situation, microbloggers are using the Internet alongside dedicated software, a distribution platform and pocketable hardware to post their message in a quick and concise way. They wouldnt be able to do what they do without the mobile Internet. Almost everyone I spoke to at MBC09 in the last few days had a data plan on their phone and many were using 3G on their netbooks. These fast-moving microbloggers are big consumers of the mobile Internet.

140 characters of text isn’t a lot and even the most basic of today’s mobile phones can handle it but there are a few elements to it that are pushing the mobile Internet envelope. I also see a possibility for future developments where the media creation moves over to a third device, a camera-centric device, which could be a very interesting area for MID OEM’s to look at but first, lets look at a couple of things that highlight why microbloggers are at the front-line in mobile technology and mobile internet usage.

Number one is immediacy. Microblogging tends to be something you do parallel to other jobs. You cant wait 30 seconds for a device to connect to the Internet and a web browser to start and load the m.twitter.com website. You need fast-loading or omni-present applications with well thought-out user interfaces and that’s why there were a ton of iPhones around at MBC09. It’s clearly the current winner in this department.

The second element is linked content. Microblogs are more often than not, ‘leaders.’ They lead you to a web page or other Internet-based media and this is where the full web experience and processing power comes in. If a friend sends you a recommendation, you’re going to want to look at it immediately. If you cant get to that linked website or cant see/hear the media then you’re left hanging. A powerful web browser that offers you a full web experience is absolutely key otherwise you’re going to loose that information. Some microblogging tools do allow you to mark an item for future reference but in most cases, ‘read later’ equates to ‘forget’ and even if you do go back to that item later, the nature of microblogging means that it could be too late. This is an area is where some advances are needed. This is perfect territory for MIDs. They do the mobile Internet better than any other category of device and they dont kill your phone’s battery-life in the process.

There is a small problem here though. The need to microblog can come at any time and while many microbloggers also carry a video or photo device, the current generation of MIDs haven’t focused on media generation. A third device is a hard sell, even if it smooths the micro-media process. But there could be an even better solution here.

There’s a good possibility that media-creation, thats HQ video, images and audio, could merge with mobile computing in a single device. When I was with Intel at the developer forum in San Fransisco last year I heard that Moorestown, the next-gen processing platform, would include hardware video encoding support along with even smaller component sizes. Thinner , lighter, media creation-enabled mobile web powerhouses is a real possibility and Intel aren’t just working on hardware either. There’s a huge ecosystem of software partners (including familiar Web2.0 names) that are writing dedicated software for an in-house Linux-based distribution known as Moblin. Intel know that it’s not just about silicon, it’s about efficient operating systems and applications and it’s exciting to think about how one could potentially create very high quality content, post-process it and send it out to multiple content distribution platforms all within the same system and, possibly, within the same application. Imagine one of those Kodak Z16 HD cameras being able to run Web2.0 software and a full browser!

Im really confident that i’ll be able to attend MBC10 with something that really turns some microblogging heads but in the period between now and then, how will microblogging evolve? The simple 140 character platform will remain because it’s simplicity is attractive but in parallel, I think we’ll see a multimedia version of microblogging emerge. It may take the form of a third party integration service like Friendfeed but I think its more likely to grow in the form of refined blogging platforms that keep the media under one banner. This probably wont be something that everyone will use but these near-live ‘blogstreams’ could be extremely popular with microbloggers, pro-bloggers, marketing teams and Internet journalists. The idea is that alongside your 140 character ‘leader’ you add in the media you want in near real time. There’s nothing new there as bloggers have been creating near-live media-rich postings for a long time but the exciting part of it will be that the content will be created by the same device that you edit and send the microblog from and that it would appear in high quality. Think about creating hi-res photography, post processed on the same device as you took it on, HD video content recorded simultaneously in high and low quality formats, high quality multi-channel audio recordings and each tagged with location information and linked to maps. Think about having a single UI to do all this and manage the delivery of the content through to your personal or business website along with the short ‘teaser’ to the common microblogging platforms. It would be quick, high quality and the best bonus is that you keep your own content under your own brand under your own hosted website. It’s multimedia microblogging and it fits well with the MID platform.

I’m going to keep a close eye on the microblogging community. They are already lashing-up methods to do this and listening to their experiences will be an important part of understanding the mobile Internet timeline and where it’s going in terms of multimedia.

This post written and posted from the Wibrain i1 MID on the train home from MBC09