Life is best shared, and when accompanied by a good tune
I want to share a couple of paragraphs from an article I read this morning in the Times (by Alexi Mostrous). The ideas expressed and the scene imagined, resonate so perfectly with our vision here at Miyowa.
“It’s 4am in a hotel room far from home and you’ve just broken up with your lover. Aside from the minibar, there’s no empathy on offer: not a soul to talk to, no shoulder to cry on.
You update your Facebook status with news of the split. Seconds later someone on the other side of the world sends your smart phone a digital version of What Difference Does It Make?, allowing you and Morrissey to wallow together in self-pity. Someone else sends you Paul Simon’s Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover, which cheers you up a bit. This may sound far-fetched, but the hope of the music industry rests upon such connections. A future where songs are not bought, but accessed via telephones, sent across cyberspace, and passed around friends through platforms such as Twitter, is what is hoped will save music from the twin ravages of illegal downloading and a lack of strategic direction.”
This is uncannily similar to one of the user-case scenarios we worked out when we started building the roadmap for the InTouch5™ Rich AddressBook (give or take a few song titles). Only, importantly, we can assure you that the concept isn’t far-fetched at all. In fact, it is exactly what we are in the middle of delivering. It won’t be ready for the end-user until the second half of the year but yesterday I had my first demo experience of music sharing with the InTouch5™ Rich AddressBook.
For those that don’t know, the InTouch5™ Rich AddressBook aggregates all of a users social networks in to his or her mobile phone address book. That is to say that, next to each of the friends in my phone book, I have their most recent status update and an icon for each of the social networks that we’re connected on. These icons show me whether my friend is currently active on that network or not, and when clicked upon, take me to the InTouch5™ Social Dashboard. Here, I can access the entirety of each of the social networks, and carry out any of the actions that I can on the original wap version. I can also choose to be alerted any time certain (or all of my) friends change or post something new to one of these networks.
In the scenario that we at Miyowa envisaged when we designed our roadmap, I would receive an alert from Facebook, to tell me that one of my best friends had just changed her relationship status to single. If she also decided to post the news on Twitter or Windows Live Messenger, I would see that immediately too. I’d be notified in real-time, and could react in real-time – with any form of communication I choose. I would decide to dip in to my (in our case) last.fm library, chose a song, and send it to her – either as a pop up message, on Twitter, or on Facebook. She, who has since dropped her phone on to her plump hotel pillow, as she rummages in the mini-bar, receives an alert to tell her I’ve sent her something new.
Despite the miles that separate us, my friend has my support, in real-time, the moment she reaches out.
Our prime concern at Miyowa, is about providing the end-user with a service that keeps them constantly connected to the people they care about, in as many ways as possible, and as immediately and easily as possible. On top of the social networks, instant messaging and email services that we already have agreements with – I am really excited about the others that we are currently working in to the InTouch5™ experience. These are really going to make what we finally deliver to the end-user, the most comprehensive social experience imaginable.
We are also thrilled to be part of delivering a service that could help the music industry find a new way to flourish. If there are two things we’re sure of at Miyowa, it is that life is best shared, and even better when accompanied by a good tune.
