Take it Personally! The Mobile Viewing Experience

The guy Robert Redford called on in the back was passionate. At least he sounded passionate, but truthfully almost all European accents sound passionate to me. I was the only one attending the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona who didn’t have an accent – drawls don’t count.

“But it won’t be the same. Sitting in a dark cinema we are all together. We are sharing,” he said standing and sweeping his arms around to include all of us in the audience. “When you put the movie on a small screen we are all alone. It just can’t be the same.” Then he sat down looking almost hurt.

Mr. Redford smiled his best Sundance Kid smile. “It won’t be the same. It will be something different.”

That exchange in a panel entitled “An Epic Opportunity” referring to the potential for mobile “film” has me thinking about how the mobile video experience will be different.

There must have been the same type of discussion when televisions started showing up in people’s living rooms. Viewing on a small screen in front of your couch could never be the same as watching a movie in a darkened theatre. We developed a new relationship with this new medium. New genres emerged. New types of connections with the content and the characters took hold. There was no confusing episodes of “All My Children” or “I Love Lucy” with “Citizen Kane” or “Gone With the Wind.” They were clearly different and they spoke to us in different ways.

What will the mobile viewing experience be? What type of connection will we forge with mobile content? How will we relate to the video we view on devices that we carry in our pockets, palms, packs, and purses?

Mobile takes personal to a new level. The cell phone is already embedded in our lives as a device for personal communication. It is through our phone that we communicate with our lovers, family, and friends. We take pictures on these phones turning them into our own miniature photo albums. Our personal network is stored in our device’s contact lists and our speed dial is the prioritization of who matters the most. Our phone is for us, and only at great risk do we allow others to use it. Many relationships have stumbled on the “recent calls” feature.

I think mobile video will assume a patina of the personal. The messages that come through this most intimate of media will speak to us in a new way with new power because this device is personal.

Sounds hazy right? Let me give you a scenario I daydreamed up involving a company that I learned about in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress.

Vringo (http://www.vringo.com/) does video ringbacks. Say what? They have built a service that plays a video message of your friends choosing on your phone every time you call her. For instance, I can set my video ringback to be the clip of Lindsay Scott running back the winning touchdown in the 1980 Georgia/Florida game (ok, if I owned the rights to that video). Every time a Florida friend calls me (and, yes, I do have friends associated with the University of Florida), they would be annoyed by this video on their phone.

Yep, that is a trivial example. But extend just a little farther to think about how a gimmick goes good. I care about helping battle HIV infection – HIV is the virus that causes AIDS. One way to fight HIV/AIDS is to be tested. Knowing your HIV status allows you to protect yourself and others. National HIV Testing Day is June 27th. What if on that day, people all over the country made their video ringback a video message encouraging HIV testing? Would a message selected by a friend specifically for playback on your phone have a different impact on you than one you see on television? I think it would. Because it is delivered at the request of someone I care about via a device I use to communicate with people I care about, I think I will care more about the message. I think mobile video has unrivaled potential to change us – and hopefully for the better.

Right now few people have seen any video on their cellphones other than the silly short clips they shoot for themselves. But, believe me, we will all have the opportunity to watch video on cell phones very soon. The Epic Moneymaking Opportunity for advertisers, cell phone carriers, and content producers guarantees that mobile video will happen. And the iPhone has made it easier for 3.7 million of the 3.3 billion cell phone users on the planet to video video on their phone. So it is coming. Our challenge will be to make this new connection between viewer and content a positive one.