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The ShoZu Campaign begins on MIR!

ShoZu is a service that helps you easily get your content off your handset. So, for example, install the application on your handset and every time you take a photo, you can be prompted by ShoZu to send it to your online Flickr gallery, or to your blog or the like. Press ‘OK’ and the image sends in the background via your handset’s data connection. Genius.

Once your content is freed from the chains of your average handset, all bets are off and the excitement arrives. You can actually DO stuff with all that content you’re creating.

There is little value in keeping your content on a 240×320 screen (or worse resolutions). Most of the time we want to share. It’s a basic human requirement — interaction supported by content. As a 10 year old I can remember being bored to bits by the neighbour popping over to show my mum her ‘holiday snaps’ (or ‘photos’, if English isn’t your first language).

A picture paints a thousand words. And, as I well know, can keep two 35-year old mums talking for hours. But the need to share and use supporting content to underpin information exchange is ingrained into the human psyche. More so now that your average normob is a huge Facebook user and wants ‘to know how to do those mobile upload things’.

Getting the sodding content off your phone though, that’s a real headache. By now, most handset manufacturers have got some kind of phone suite that lets you connect to your phone and retrieve pictures and video from it.

But what a total pain it is.

And it’s hardly real-time. Or quick.

If you’re out and about, you take a photo and… you leave it on your handset for five weeks until you can be bothered to get the cable and your computer to talk? That’s the reality. Indeed most of the normobs I meet simply can’t be bothered to figure it out. They just show their photos on their handset — because they don’t know how else to do it.

And here we are: My Campaign! I want to raise awareness of ShoZu amongst the Mobile Industry Review audience and beyond. My hope is that you, dear reader, will take it upon yourself to educate at least five normobs about ShoZu. Further, I hope you will help them get the app installed on their handset and setup to send to Facebook or Flickr or the like.

It’s my firm belief that ShoZu is a ‘gateway application’ — like a gateway drug — that converts a normob to a mobile data user (a ‘promob’).

ONCE you’ve tasted and started using ShoZu, you ‘get’ mobile data. You can start to look at other applications and uses. You might like to check out Jaiku. Or try and get your head around Twitter.

But the key is photos. Photos OFF your handset, on to the internet. That’s the magic that converts the normob.

Too often, nobody cares. We’re all busy. Normobs just get on with their lives. Take 10 seconds out to explain the concept though — and you spread a little joy with your technical experience.

I’ve talked to ShoZu and I’m pleased that they’ve agreed to support the various costs we’re going to incur to do this. Thank you ShoZu.

I hacked out a few ideas that I wanted to do here on Mobile Industry Review to comprise a campaign over the months of December and January. I’d like to find the best normob handset for the likes of ShoZu and give some away. I’d like to do a series of How-To videos, I’d like to interview as many folk as possible about how they use the likes of ShoZu. So standby for more news on that.

Not for nothing are the mobile operators and handset retailers gearing up for what they hope is a going to be a bumper December — this is typically one of the busiest periods of the year for handset retailers and across this month and January, hundreds of thousands of normobs are set to take delivery of a new handset… And if we can influence just a smidgen of those to adopt the likes of ShoZu and the concept of ‘mobile applications and services’ then the future for the mobile industry will be that little bit better.

So help us out here at MIR. Hug a normob — and show them how to use ShoZu.

Or, if you’re already an advanced ShoZu user, nominate yourself as a ShoZu Grand Master.

18 COMMENTS

  1. The problem with Shozu (and please don't get me wrong I fricking LOVE it!), for normobs at least, is mobile data. Most of them fear using mobile data, don't really understand it and probably are scared of getting a massive bill or having their credit wiped out. Shozu IS genius but the world of the normob needs to be educated in 'mobile data' first.

    K

  2. In ShoZu's defence they do try and inform their users that their app is 'data intensive' at every opportunity.

    I agree though, maybe we should do a new feature on the show as part of the next 'Walking with Normobs';

    “What mobile phone have you got?”

    Followed by:

    “Do you have a data bundle?”

  3. Oh yeah – I wasn't critising the app – it has plenty of nags – but people wince at the thought of using their phone 'on the internet' due to the usual tabloid hype of people running up £££££££ bills accidently. Thankfully networks like Three (and to some extent O2 with the iPhone), are helping with this – but yeah – spread the word data CAN be cheap!

    K

  4. I think mobile data is much LESS of a problem nowadays. Particularly if you look at the likes of Voda including 'fair use' data automatically in most of their price plans. But yeah, this is part of the deal. My viewpoint being — 'get' ShoZu and you *need* to 'get' mobile data.

  5. <Warning: confusing use of both irony and double-entendre follows. Stick with me folks>

    But Ewan, loads of Nokia-wielding Normobs can post to Flickr, Blogger et al using Share Online, right now. just a few clicks, a username and password away. And SOL comes preinstalled even, on (wild guess subject to Whatleyification) every half-decent Nokia for the last 12 months? Many, many millions of devices.

    So where's your SOL campaign? How much easier when it's pre-installed? Built in? Surely the world's largest handset manufacturer, you know, the one with a marketing budget in the hundreds of millions, would have told folks if they really thought it would fly?

    I mean, who would launch a device with such apparently fruity functionality, and then not mention it to a soul?

    Why, that would leave NorMob-turned-Prosumer FaceBook-hungry 'money on the table' for the likes of ShoZu (somehow) and the INQ1 to scrape into a hat and do a runner wif.

    Someone in Espoo is weeping into their Pariloitua poron sisäfilettä right about now.

  6. Yup, you can post to Flickr and Blogger with a Nokia. But not Moblog. You can post to Blogger via Sony Ericsson. But not to Moblog.

    Ideally I'd like everyone on the planet to be given an iPhone. Or an INQ1. Or something decent with the facility to easily add applications (or functionality) on demand and something that is EASY for normobs to use.

    The reality? There are a trillion Nokias, Sonys and other handsets out there. Right now. Being used. But only for calls and texting. AND for taking photos and video. BUT the content stays on the handset. It stays right there because nobody knows what to do about it. ShoZu is one way — ONE SMALL WAY — we can change that. Right now. Grab a normob. Hug them. PUt ShoZu on their handset and show them the way.

    It's certainly not a brilliant fix. It's all we've got. Every normob I speak to wants to send their content SOMEWHERE other than their phone. They just don't know it. You have to ask pointed questions like 'Oh, could you send that to me' or 'Heh, you should put that on Facebook' or the like, to understand that most normobs have given the THOUGHT to getting content OFF their handset… but they've hit a wall, somewhere along the line. Often because it's so fucking difficult to do anything on most handsets at the moment. And often because it's really quite difficult. Even installing the likes of ShoZu needs a bit of patience.

    Talk to a normob and say 'would you like your photos — the ones you pick — to be automatically sent to Facebook'? And they'll say 'Yeah, I'd like that'.

    But they look at you with a strange face. Because they don't know how to do it and they are envisioning that it will be hugely difficult. They've been there before. They've tried sending an MMS photo. They've spent the 50p and sent an MMS to a mate — partly because it's right there on the fucking menu 'Send MMS' when you've taken a photo… and they've felt totally cheated when it either didn't work, didn't deliver or the recipient got a 'go to this website on your PC to look at a 100 pixel wide photo and use these incomprehensible username and passwords to login'.

    We've got nations full of Nokia-wielding normobs who make calls and texts and take photos. And who're too scared or frankly can't be arsed learning how to do anything else. So take a normob aside. Explain mobile data. Get them on a mobile data plan. Get ShoZu installed on their handset. Show them how it works. Get them connected to the next generation and get them hooked.

    Do SOMETHING!

    Every time I see an N95 in the hands of a normob, I die a little inside… because I know that 9/10 of them would LIKE to — for example — send pictures to Facebook. And they don't know how and can't be fucked to get their head around it.

    SAVE the normobs!

  7. I'd also like to pimp Vodafone's* “My Communities”**. It's like ShoZu in that it can (automatically/manually) upload images and videos. It's currently limited to FaceBook, MySpace, Bebo and YouTube.

    However, the killer functionality for me is that I can use it to browse my online content. On Facebook, for example, I can use it to browse not just what I've uploaded from my phone, but all of my albums. That's pretty swish, I think.

    It's only available for Vodafone customers and can be found on Vodafone live's App Store (linked from the front page).

    T

    *Yes, I work for them. No, they don't pay me to comment on MIR. Yet…
    **MyCommunities is built by http://www.newbay.com

  8. i dont mind shozu – but ive always ended up finding it a bit unreliable
    and intrusive. also its very easy to accidentally upload photos you didnt mean to share.

    though that has got its plus points. a friend had some wierd photos appear on his flickr stream
    turns out it was a from his work phone he never used – but had set up shozu on.
    went to get work phone and it had been stolen from his desk draw.
    the photos were self portraits of the cleaner that stole it!!!

  9. Is that the same story that first appeared on Flickr AGES ago?
    You know that guy?

    I remember the furore around the whole thing – he got flamed a fair bit for being ShoZu PR (which he clearly wasn't) but still… You know him!?

  10. im not sure if its the same story or not – do you have a link?

    actually googling it got quite a bit of coverage. assuming were talking about the same story
    which it probably is – yes i do know him, it was me that reminded him he had am N93 – he had forgotten about – the advantages of being a phone spod.

  11. “Yup, you can post to Flickr and Blogger with a Nokia. But not Moblog. You can post to Blogger via Sony Ericsson. But not to Moblog.”

    On the new Sony Ericssons you can send to any blog site that takes content via an email address using the “Send to Website” menu……..ok, but only as an MMS, which is re-sized and therefore a bit shit. But at least its reliable and pre-provisioned on all the handsets.

    Terence, where is this application store thingy? I can't see it on a C905.

  12. “Yup, you can post to Flickr and Blogger with a Nokia. But not Moblog. You can post to Blogger via Sony Ericsson. But not to Moblog.”

    On the new Sony Ericssons you can send to any blog site that takes content via an email address using the “Send to Website” menu……..ok, but only as an MMS, which is re-sized and therefore a bit shit. But at least its reliable and pre-provisioned on all the handsets.

    Terence, where is this application store thingy? I can't see it on a C905.

  13. Is that the same story that first appeared on Flickr AGES ago?
    You know that guy?

    I remember the furore around the whole thing – he got flamed a fair bit for being ShoZu PR (which he clearly wasn't) but still… You know him!?

  14. im not sure if its the same story or not – do you have a link?

    actually googling it got quite a bit of coverage. assuming were talking about the same story
    which it probably is – yes i do know him, it was me that reminded him he had am N93 – he had forgotten about – the advantages of being a phone spod.

    ah i just found this one too…
    http://shozu.vox.com/library/post/dude-thats-no

    its not him i know

  15. “Yup, you can post to Flickr and Blogger with a Nokia. But not Moblog. You can post to Blogger via Sony Ericsson. But not to Moblog.”

    On the new Sony Ericssons you can send to any blog site that takes content via an email address using the “Send to Website” menu……..ok, but only as an MMS, which is re-sized and therefore a bit shit. But at least its reliable and pre-provisioned on all the handsets.

    Terence, where is this application store thingy? I can't see it on a C905.

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