The Battle for Your Address Book May Involve Streaming for Social Networks
On the flip side, all of these products aggregate content from social networks, and have the potential to be context-aware as a means of unified communication—a concept raised first by telcos in the late 1990s that stumbled because the user interfaces were about as easy to use as a command line interface. Recent social network interfaces have solved many of those usability problems on the desktop, so the move to doing the same for the mobile phone is an evolution that's finally making it possible to explore unified communications once again.
Consider this example posed to one of the companies: I note, via Twitter or one of the 3 dynamic address book offerings, that I am in Barcelona. If the system is aware that I have a U.S. mobile number but use a Spanish SIM chip when I travel to Spain, the system would alert my contacts that the best way to contact me is via the Spanish phone number, or to SMS or video message me if I so choose that particular option. The same would be true if I note that I am in a meeting from 2 p.m. - 3 p.m.: the system could be aware enough to route my messages via IM rather than via phone.
Yahoo's offering made perhaps the biggest splash, winning over some of the more jaded in the European press corps with its intense focus on usability and functionality. The set of features reads like a dream list as its oneConnect is designed to include a socially-connected address book; integrated mobile messaging that offers text and video chat via IM or SMS/MMS; location-sensing technology and proximity alerts will notify consumers when a contact enters their vicinity; and an open communications platform that is slated to include corporate Microsoft Exchange email accounts and Microsoft Office documents, via Yahoo's 3.0 widget creator.
Still, small companies like Zyb—which happens to have funding from Morten Lund, one of the early investors in Skype—have the ability to play in the European market they call home. And video may be one of those features that separates the smaller companies from the larger ones: After all, if Zyb can use Skype to its full benefit, it could just leverage up a new social network that goes far beyond an online service that lets people backup, manage, and share their mobile’s data online.