Mobile 2.0

Mobile 2.0.

Definition 1

Concept developed by Oliver Starr of Mobhappy at http://mobhappy.com/blog1/2006/02/06/mobile-20-is-not-web-20/

"The poorer a region is - both technologically and economically, the greater the impact mobile phones have on society, and in a few scattered places around the world where mobile phones have been adopted enterprising individuals have quite literally capitalized on their acquisition of a phone to vault themselves upwards economically by creating businesses out of letting their less fortunate contemporaries rent the phones - in essence becoming a one man, one phone telco. . . .

Mobile 2.0 is not device dependent. There is no measuring stick of functionality that is a determinant as to whether or not a mobile phone is or is not a Mobile 2.0 device. All functioning phones today are Mobile 2.0. It isn’t what the phone does, so much as what is being done with the phone that has lead us to Mobile 2.0. This definition has the advantage of extensibility - a developing country experiences Mobile 2.0 by virtue of the changing socio economic status of those that own phones. In Japan or Korea Mobile 2.0 can be seen in the development of entirely new forms of entertainment oriented content for display on mobile devices and in the US we can see the birth of Mobile 2.0 in the roll-out of presence enabled services and phone-based navigational services.

Unlike Web 2.0 or its extension to the mobile web, perhaps properly called WAP 2.0 or 2.0 Micro, Mobile 2.0 is almost as much about the end user as it is about the device or the service whereas Web 2.0 doesn’t exist with out the combination of the two. In a similar vein, Mobile 2.0 is morphologically amorphous - the form of the device is constantly changing and shifting. As Walter Mossberg said at a keynote last year, Mobile is the most important new technology but we have no idea what it is going to become."

Definition 2

Mobile 2.0 = the application of Web 2.0 collective intelligence features to Restricted Devices such as the mobile phone.

From http://web2.sys-con.com/read/251673.htm

"Web 2.0 is about 'harnessing collective intelligence via the web'. When we extend this definition to 'mobile Web 2.0' – there are two implications:

a) The web does not necessarily extend to mobile devices

b) Even though the web does not extend to mobile devices, intelligence can still be captured from mobile devices." (http://web2.sys-con.com/read/251673.htm)

Characteristics

"Thus, the characteristics(distinguishing principles) of mobile Web 2.0 are:

a) Harnessing collective intelligence through restricted devices i.e. a two way flow where people carrying devices become reporters rather than mere consumers

b) Driven by the web backbone – but not necessarily based on the web protocols end to end

c) Use of the PC as a local cache/configuration mechanism where the service will be selected and configured." (http://web2.sys-con.com/read/251673.htm)