Commentary

And The Children Shall Lead Us... To Adulthood

The mobile phone's potential as a portable powerhouse of user-generated content remains more theoretical than real. As every mobile blogging vendor has pitched me for two years, the phone is the "perfect computing device." It not only connects to the Web, but it has a built-in voice recorder, a Web cam and text entry. Most PCs boast only a few of these capabilities. Yes, indeed, as a blog entry tool, or as any kind of content posting device, the cell phone is the ideal device. End of pitch. Nice try, I think to myself.

If only things really worked this way. My phone just seems to laugh at me when I try to send a photo. Even when the cryptic interface does put me in a place where I can enter a recipient's email address, the process just hangs and eventually crashes. I feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick that football or fly a kite. "Got you, again, sucka!" my phone is saying... if phones had thought balloons.

I am just too paranoid and too old, apparently. This is not a hard process for phone-addicted youth. Michael Baker, CEO of iqzone, tells me that his phone-based classified ads system is testing well with college kids who vaulted the photo-emailing hurdle long ago. "The switch point is 35-years-old," says Baker, who is surveying his test group at Arizona State University. "They have no trouble with e-mailing a picture. Every one of them has done it and there is no learning curve for them."

What really surprised even Baker was how much college-aged kids relied on the phone as a primary computing device. Initially, he planned his classified system to use the Web as the main source of interaction. Phone users could click and send images of their "for sale" items to the Web, where they could classify and describe them. After researching cell phone use at ASU, however, "obviously the students wanted to do it all from the phone. It necessitated our developing an agent to parse the ads."

The iqzone system receives an image and an SMS description, price and location of a sale item from a phone via email. The engine then classifies the ad based on the description and sends it back to the user for confirmation or editing. The ad, for anything from a car to used textbooks, gets sent to a network of online classifieds vendors for posting online, but phone users, too, can search for items.

The service is free to users, but iqzone sells targeted advertising into the regular reports it sends posters about the progress of their ads. Ads can have an embedded click-to-call link for lead generation, or just use display creative on a CPM basis.

For a generation of eBay entrepreneurs, a mobile classifieds system makes a lot of sense. They think about recycling their purchases into ready cash. For old farts like me, selling all the consumer detritus that accumulates everywhere seems like more trouble than it is worth. We think about Goodwill and the potential tax deductions. But then, we also find emailing a phone cam image a challenge.

I think one of the important lessons of iqzone's initial market research is just how willing this generation is to manage the technical failings of mobile devices in order to have a full-bore computing-cum-communications tool at hand. Baker, who already had a vested interest in his market embracing mobile, was taken aback himself at how advanced the transition to mobile has become. "For a large number [of students] it is their primary device," he found. "They are using the browser to access the Web and it is their be-all and end-all. They use laptops, too, but for instant gratification, for movies or a restaurant or to get info, they are doing it all from the phone." What seems like a hassle and an impediment to many of us in that dreaded over-35 zone is a minor speed bump to the young mobilistas. Any generation that embraced SMS as a viable one-to-one platform clearly values communication over convenience.

In fact, I am beginning to understand how little technology really means to a generation that is mastering it. The issue surrounding technology pickup is no longer a steep learning curve. It is about relevance. My 15-year-old daughter is pretty much underwhelmed by all of the cool toys I get to test-drive. She is more focused on what the tech can do for her, in expressing herself and in connecting to her friends. I look at a new mobile blog or IM tool, a whiz bang AJAX-enhanced Web site, and still feel like a kid happening upon an unopened Christmas gift. She just gives me that my-Dad-is-an-alien look and asks why this matters to her. She and her generation seem to be at a point where the technology really has become a mere tool. That evolution must have implications for the way we older (much older) engineers and tech sluts (that would be me) develop these platforms in the future.

But for now, this issue gives my daughter a special thrill. She has achieved some kind of pure teen nirvana -- making her father feel both too old and too childish at the same time.

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