Workshop on Trust in Mobile Environments

I'll be reviewing research papers on trust and reputation mechanisms for mobile systems. This is for the Workshop on Trust in Mobile Environments. Looking forward to this as it's one of those areas that is full of creative output at the moment.

Re-post: answer to "What is a mobile social network"

I answered a question on "What is a mobile social network" on a LinkedIn. My response is copied below, but visit the original post for other replies.

Hi Paul,

Yours is a timely post, and I think your comment spans two broad issues: user experience in a mobile app, and adding a mobility dimension to social networking. It is getting so much easier now to develop apps for mobile devices, but developers who can build great user experience for the mobile user are still few and far between. Web browsers on mobile devices like the S60 (which uses the same WebKit browser platform as Android) have improved tremendously, and I think this has made developers a bit lazy. This won't last long though as user sophistication will drive the demand for better user experience on mobile devices.

And as you said, eventually "you either need a mobile application or a Web site that has been optimised for mobile phones". I agree, but I think it is becoming increasingly irrelevant whether the app is native to the device or web-based, and platforms like Google Gears and Adobe AIR are blurring the line even further as they let you function online and offline seamlessly.

I see some or all of the following factors (depending on app) as important for user experience, some already mentioned in the replies:

- The ability to discover the user's context and location, either automatically or manually input by the user, and use them to enhance the app's features, like answering your ‘where are you’ question. We don't have to wait for GPS phones for this - look at what the Google Maps people can already do with base-station triangulation: http://www.google.com/mobile/gmm/mylocation/index.html.

- Making full use of the device's capabilities, taking into account how the user will be using the device. For example, thumbing instructions on the number pad would be better than scrolling to a link using the arrow keys.

- A built in reputation system that will allow the user to query on the trustworthiness of objects and people within vicinity, giving the user an opportunity to gain a comfortable level security before interacting with them.

- The ability to pick up where you left off on your desktop app/wired network and continue your interaction while mobile, as in Pekka's reply. If you can have an app with those features, an amazing set of opportunities opens up for social networking, like those in the replies and many more yet to be conceived!

To answer your questions...

1. What mobile social networking sites do you like/dislike? As a user, I like Facebook, because it allows me to be lazy at keeping in touch, while at the same time being able to do just that, and to let my friends know what I'm up to at various effort levels (status update, at the very least... send a message if i'm feeling chatty, or post a blog if I have something to get off my chest). As a developer, I dislike Facebook, because while it does give me access to the largest online social network, it is still a closed ecosystem.

2. What’s the one feature you’d like to see in order to get you to use one? Actually, I would like to see my social network opened up and integrated into (or accessible from) all the apps that I'm currently using. I want to be able to forward an email from my Gmail account to a group on Facebook or advertise for post a contract job for a freelance photographer on my Flickr network straight from my Basecamp project page.

@Peter: WiMAX is coming, slowly but surely :). Our WiMAX projects are mainly focused on rural access but our infrastructure partner is part of a group that has just deployed the first mobile WiMAX pilot in Kent: http://tinyurl.com/35g93b

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Socially mobile

It looks like social networks is quickly picking up pace on the mobile side of things as we read more news about this space, although I think the supporting infrastructure still has some catching up to do.

What's clear is that short and simple messages are the most effective for the mobile user, either on the upload or download. This is due to the limitations of the device, the user's available attention span, the need to fit social messages into what's essentially a multitasking environment (like walking and sending an SMS) and the available infrastructure (download speeds currently are an order of magnitude faster than uplaod speeds, although that will change with the arrival of technologies like WiMAX).

This is why Twitter is so successful - short messages are its lifeblood. And I like Twitter's view of the service they provide, i.e. a channel for messages, decoupling it from the interface, which could be SMS, IM or web.

This will no doubt be a very exciting area to observe as the minimalist and decentralised platform, something that is at the core of SOA and Web 2.0, will very likely sprout many creative output from the developer community.

This is also where I think we will see a lot of innovation, like apps that adjust their modes based on user behaviour and mobility profiles. Possibilities like this will appear when developers realise that the user interface is now intimately connected to the user and "always on, anywhere" is not just an access paradigm for the end user but also for the user's friends and network to gain access to the user himself.

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