MoBlogging Wishlist

Considering that 1 in every 3 Filipinos have a mobile phone (estimated close to 30 Million), I believe that one way to exponentially increase exposure and readership on blogs is to introduce a better, more convenient and cheaper way to do mobile blogging. Currently, only those mobile phones that have MMS or GPRS capabilities are able to moblog, which can be done via MMS to email or direct web browsing.

I have tried both and it’s pretty expensive. I loaded my site on my Nokia 6230, clicked on a full entry and posted a comment. After that very short period, I already spent about Php 100 for the GPRS connection alone.

I did the computation — Php 0.25/KB x 100KB/page x 4 pages = Php100.00!

Now, I wonder if it’s possible to do some moblogging using the cheaper SMS alternative. Or maybe just some blogging enhancements.

Hence, my moblogging wishlist:

• Be able to send short blog entries as asides via SMS. 160 characters may not be very long but it’s enough to send out “1,834 feet up in Mt. Apo. Wish I could describe it any better in less than 160 chars.”
• Able to subscribe to a blog and get SMS alerts when new posts are made. A title and excerpt would be enough to fit 160 characters.
• Able to send comments to blog posts via SMS (when used with feature above). Pre-authentication is done earlier via mobile phone registration.
• Geo-location. A section in your blog indicates your physical proximity — Geo-locate: 100 meters south of Tagaytay Highlands.
• Shoutbox-to-SMS. I’ve seen something like this implemented by Chikka. Much better if you can shoutback via SMS as well.
• BlogStats alert. Very usefull for those who are so engrossed with their blog stats. A daily SMS alert of how many visitors your blog had for the day may tell you how many people missed you blogging. Additional stats like pageviews, comments, shouts, and the like summarized in one SMS alert is pretty nifty. Of course, this can be turned off/on via SMS, esp. when you are away or do not have net connection within the vicinity.
• (My favorite!) AdSense Daily Revenue Alert (same concept as above).

Imagine if you can have all these features available to bloggers? Moblogging might exponentially increase blog traffic, exposure and involvement. All these at Php1.00 a pop. I hope the telcos are listening (reading). *hint*

Permalink | | 13 Comments