Considering that 1 in every 3 Filipinos have a mobile phone (estimated close to 30 Million), I believe that one way to exponentially increase exposure and readership on blogs is to introduce a better, more convenient and cheaper way to do mobile blogging. Currently, only those mobile phones that have MMS or GPRS capabilities are able to moblog, which can be done via MMS to email or direct web browsing.
I have tried both and it’s pretty expensive. I loaded my site on my Nokia 6230, clicked on a full entry and posted a comment. After that very short period, I already spent about Php 100 for the GPRS connection alone.
I did the computation — Php 0.25/KB x 100KB/page x 4 pages = Php100.00!
Now, I wonder if it’s possible to do some moblogging using the cheaper SMS alternative. Or maybe just some blogging enhancements.
Hence, my moblogging wishlist:
- Be able to send short blog entries as asides via SMS. 160 characters may not be very long but it’s enough to send out “1,834 feet up in Mt. Apo. Wish I could describe it any better in less than 160 chars.”
- Able to subscribe to a blog and get SMS alerts when new posts are made. A title and excerpt would be enough to fit 160 characters.
- Able to send comments to blog posts via SMS (when used with feature above). Pre-authentication is done earlier via mobile phone registration.
- Geo-location. A section in your blog indicates your physical proximity — Geo-locate: 100 meters south of Tagaytay Highlands.
- Shoutbox-to-SMS. I’ve seen something like this implemented by Chikka. Much better if you can shoutback via SMS as well.
- BlogStats alert. Very usefull for those who are so engrossed with their blog stats. A daily SMS alert of how many visitors your blog had for the day may tell you how many people missed you blogging. Additional stats like pageviews, comments, shouts, and the like summarized in one SMS alert is pretty nifty. Of course, this can be turned off/on via SMS, esp. when you are away or do not have net connection within the vicinity.
- (My favorite!) AdSense Daily Revenue Alert (same concept as above).
Imagine if you can have all these features available to bloggers? Moblogging might exponentially increase blog traffic, exposure and involvement. All these at Php1.00 a pop. I hope the telcos are listening (reading). *hint*
13 comments
Stat alerts would be cool.
As for posting via mobile, I’d say email-over-WAP-over-GPRS is cheaper, since it’s lighter on the data transfer. I believe it costs PhP 0.15/kb on Globe GPRS.
I usually access my email on-the-go using Yahoo-over-WAP (wap.yahoo.com). All personal Gmails are forwarded there (sans the egroup subscriptions and of course the spam), for my convenience.
Angelo
that would be really cool. P1/msg is i think would be enough for telcos to earn much.
Well, telcos are charging on GPRS based on kb sent/received by the subscriber. And that cost of P0.25/kb is i think too much. it’s not affordable for all users. if they can turn it to P1.00 per minute on GPRS, that would be fair enough.
Most of the subscribers will be encouraged to use GPRS. Most of the mobile phones now are capable of IM or say, Instant Messaging Services is now supported on this kind of phones. More msgs can be interchanged by 2 or more users in a minute. So, goodbye SMS. 😉
Well, your wishes are possible to be granted. 😉
Moblogging!
I moblog via mobile e-mail. It costs me around Php1-2 for a full-length post (around 3-8kb sent at P.25 per kb).
PLDT’s cubeblog ( http://www.cubeblog.com ) has SMS posting but at P2.50. You can even upload MMS pics to cubeblog.
My moblogging wishlist:
* being able to surf blogs at low-cost.
* comments alerts
* SMS to shoutbox + shoutbox to SMS (just like abe’s wish)
* audio blogging via mobile phone!
isip pa tayo iba ….
ka edong
The problem with feed-to-mobile is that you can end up paying too much. The telcos require that for these services, the recipient is charged PhP 2.50.
I’ll just wait for 3G to arrive and get cheap. Haha.
(It looks like I’ll be waiting for quite a while for that to happen here.)
bit,
and when do you think it will happen? it seems that a lot of people are getting bored with gsm.
😛
I read an article in the Manila Bulletin (I think?) in which a rep from Globe or Smart or PLDT or Nokia was saying that 3G is going to come to the Philippines sooner than most people would think. Now, I’m thinking that 3G would arrive in about 3-5 years, so if it suddenly arrived in 2 years, then a big woohoo; it would arrive sooner than I expected. Pfft. C’mon.
Even if arrived next month, it’ll still be more expensive than the majority of the cellphone-using population will be able to pay for.
I don’t know much about our telecom industry but I’d say that we get 3G in about 3-5 years, and it’ll only become affordable and widespread within another 3-5 after it arrives. Call me pessimistic, but I really do think that… but I’m still hoping against hope that I’m not right.
Here I am with a shameless plug. i.PH supports email-to-post. 🙂
And we’re now a free service.
angelo
one solution is for webdevelopers to develop sites that can be viewed with lesser KB’s for mobile phones… if we develop sites in I-mode we can create webapps that can dial numbers for us as well as do higher level transactions. I know that 3g phones can parse XHTMl sites easily, but the main purpose is to go back to basics and develop faster loading/accessible sites for mobile phones. i-mode has been used in Japan for years now.
What for, when even GPRS+WAP is slow?
why not??? plus… imode is mostly for 3g phones… going at least 200kbs. its a good way to develop apps to dynamically check weather, do searches, check your bank accounts, WAP and GPRS are so 90’s… pang 2G ba.