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By JENNIFER SARANOW
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
July 26, 2004; Page R11
When Ken Weaverling bought a new cellphone in October, the 45-year-old
tech-support manager didn't know what to do with the built-in camera.
Other than shooting and e-mailing home a couple of photographs during a
trip to England, he barely used the feature.
That all changed in January when a friend showed Mr.
Weaverling Mobog.com, where users can post camera-phone pictures and
comment on other people's shots. Mr. Weaverling, of Newark, Del.,
became hooked. He now posts as many as 10 to 15 pictures daily --
chronicling everything from a trip to Montana to gas prices at his
local station -- and comments on 25 to 50 photos posted by others.
Welcome to a hot new corner of the Internet: mobile Web logs,
or moblogs, which are booming in popularity as camera-phone sales rise.
The sites allow you to send in pictures and captions from your phone,
which are then automatically arranged into an online scrapbook free of
charge. On most sites, users can leave comments on pictures taken by
others as well as create links to their friends' photo blogs and send
messages to fellow users. You can often choose whether to keep your
moblog private with a password or not.
Moblog fans offer a number of reasons for the sites' appeal. They're
less time-consuming than regular text blogging, they offer the chance
to share pictures with lots of people without sending out multiple
e-mails, and they create inviting communities where you can meet other
users.
A Place To Share
But the most compelling reason may be that moblogs answer a
host of common complaints about camera phones. About a third of the
estimated 185 million cellphones that will be shipped this year will
have cameras, according to International Data Corp. Most phones,
however, deliver low-quality images, and for the most part you can't
send the pictures from one carrier's network to another's. Meanwhile,
some people, like Mr. Weaverling, just aren't sure what to use the
cameras for.
Enter moblogs, which give users a reason to shoot away, as
well as a place to send pictures that aren't good enough to print and
that can't be e-mailed between carriers. The popularity of moblogging,
in turn, is spurring camera-phone sales and sparking interest among
cellphone makers and carriers.
Many moblogging sites were started by camera-phone owners
looking for something to do with their pictures. Chris Hoar, who has
been credited with coining the term "moblog" for this activity, founded
Textamerica.com two years ago because he had a camera phone but knew no
one else who did. When the site launched, it featured just a few shots
by Mr. Hoar and his "tech guy." Today, Textamerica, based in San Diego,
has about 110,000 moblogs.
Other moblogging sites also report fast growth. Buzznet.com of
Los Angeles, launched in July 2003, claims to have more than 20,000
registered users, most of whom have posted photos, and says its numbers
are growing by about 25% every month. Yafro.com of Berkeley, Calif.,
launched in January by Eight Days Inc., which also runs picture-rating
service HotOrNot.com, counts more than 100,000 user accounts.
Here's a look at some of the major moblog sites, where you can
post your camera-phone photos and comment on other people's snapshots.
Textamerica.com www.textamerica.com
Comment: One of the oldest moblogging sites, Textamerica.com counts
about half a million users, about 110,000 who keep moblogs and about
400,000 who just view and comment.
Mobog www.mobog.com
Comment: The site claims about half a million users, almost 16,000 of
whom regularly send in photos (albeit many of them racy). Mobog says
most of its users are in their 20s and 30s.
Yafro
www.yafro.com
Comment: This site, run by the same company that created dating site
HotOrNot, is free and has more than 100,000 users. Yafro has a special
section of "Pictures from the Frontline," featuring moblogs from
soldiers in Iraq.
Buzznet
www.buzznet.com
Comment: Buzznet reports more than 20,000 registered users, most of
whom have posted photos, and plans to launch premium subscriptions.
moblogUK
www.moblg.net
Comment: This U.K.-based site, launched about nine months ago, has just
under 1,000 users and features a forum where they can chat.
New York-based Mobog, founded in December by Internet entrepreneur
Philip Kaplan, reports that nearly 16,000 users regularly send in
pictures. Why Mobog and not Moblog? It was a typo made when registering
the site.
Some see moblogging as an easier way to keep an online journal
than traditional blogging. Eric Novins, a 24-year-old Web developer who
bought a camera phone in January, says he tried blogging but found
writing cumbersome.
"I didn't have the time to write all that stuff -- to do
traditional paragraphs -- and I'm usually on the go when I think of the
best stuff to say, so I figure the camera is the best way to capture it
all," says Mr. Novins, a Yafro user whose recent pictures include shots
of his new bathroom mirror.
Others are attracted to the idea of communicating with people
on the sites. Visitors usually congregate on a few popular pages, such
as the ones listing the pictures most recently commented upon. Many
moblog hosts offer community moblogs, where people can put up themed
photos and kid around with other visitors. Textamerica, for example,
has a popular community moblog featuring photos of people's belly
buttons.
"It's so much fun. You get to know the community," says Shack
Samady, 24, of San Diego, who has been using Textamerica since last
year and now runs about 26 moblogs on the site.
Moblogging is also a way of sharing pictures with family and
friends, especially since it's easier then e-mailing photos one by one.
"It's a way for people to keep up with me that live in different parts
of the world," says Cat Schwartz, a television host in San Francisco
and Textamerica user.
To be sure, moblogging has its unsavory side. While some of
the sites offer filtering features, many posts end up being
pornographic. And those who don't join in the dirtiness may not get
much of a response from other users.
John Lawrence, a 38-year-old information-technology manager in
Yokohama, Japan, says he has been posting shots at least once every two
weeks on Yafro since April to show what it's like to live in Japan.
Recent pictures include himself holding a handful of 1,000-yen bills
and graffiti on a park wall. Only a couple of people comment on his
pictures.
"You really need to push the edge of the envelope to get a
response and, for most folks, that basically means gratuitous
pornography," Mr. Lawrence says.
Moblogging also can be an expensive hobby. While it's
generally free to post pictures, users pay their providers when they
send the messages from their phones. On Cingular, for example, it can
cost 25 cents to send a photo if you pay per use or as low as 13 cents
a message under some plans.
That's why Christopher Smith, a 27-year-old journalist in
London, says he sends a few shots directly from his phone to Yafro to
keep a record of things he would otherwise forget, but "the rest I wait
till I get home, connect my phone [to my computer], and then e-mail
them in batches. Sending all those picture e-mails from my phone would
be way, way too expensive."
Most users of the sites, however, don't actually post. They
just look at pictures. For example, Textamerica.com says it has a total
of about half a million users, about 400,000 of whom just comment or
view shots, and Mobog says about 95% of its half a million users don't
have camera phones. Take Nick Baily, a 29-year-old Brooklyn, N.Y.,
resident who works in the music business. He doesn't post on Mobog
because he doesn't have a camera phone, but does check out the
pictures.
Unlike text blogs -- which tend to be stream of consciousness,
containing details of what the writer ate for lunch -- a moblog "is
much more evocative," he says. "You sort of see the threads of
different lives sort of weaving through the same Web site."
Framing The Future
The cellphone industry is encouraged by the potential of
moblogging to spur camera-phone sales and use of higher-priced data
activities such as picture messaging. One reason: Moblogging tends to
be viral. Many users report that their picture posting has sparked
interest among their friends in getting camera phones and joining
moblogging sites.
Many in the cellphone industry are even starting moblogging
services themselves. Among cellphone companies, Ericsson Inc. launched
a moblogging site (experience.ericsson.com/moblog) in August 2003 where
anyone can post pictures free. The site currently has more than 2,000
posts from more than 200 unique users.
Among carriers, T-Mobile USA launched a moblogging site called
My Album (t-mobilepictures.com) in May where T-Mobile subscribers can
post pictures and videos as part of the price of picture messaging (25
cents a message or a bucket of 20 messages for $2.99). Sprint Corp.
created a site called Picture Mail (pictures.sprintpcs.com) last year
where users can post photos and videos as part of its PCS $15-a-month
vision plan. As of March, the site had about 100 million photos posted,
up from about 66 million at the end of 2003.
Other carriers see moblogging primarily as a tool for
promotions. Cingular Wireless LLC, a joint venture between SBC
Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp., partnered with the University
of South Carolina to allow its journalism students to create moblogs
covering the state's Democratic presidential primary in February. Now
Cingular is working on a much bigger project involving several
universities covering both the Democratic and Republic conventions.
AT&T Wireless Services Inc., Nextel Communications Inc. and
Vodafone Group PLC say they are watching the moblogging space to see
how it develops.
Some analysts predict the buzz around moblogging will fizzle
later this year once camera phones that deliver higher-quality photos
hit the market and interoperability arrives, meaning picture messages
can be sent from carrier to carrier.
The cellphone industry believes that moblogging will stick
around, especially as a business application. In March, Ericsson
launched a pilot program with two undisclosed carriers and a
construction site. The builder's progress reports will be posted in
moblog form, instead of printed up as a binder of photographs.
In the meantime, moblogging sites are looking for ways to
collect revenue. Buzznet plans to relaunch its site today with a new
design and pricing structure. Buzznet also offers promotional moblogs
around events such as a recent music and technology conference, and it
co-branded a site with Canadian portal Sympatico.msn.ca this spring.
Moreover, it is developing a version of its software that could be
licensed by organizations that want private moblogging communities.
Textamerica began offering premium services earlier this year,
including an ad-free moblog for $5.99 a month and private moblogs for
$9.99 a month. The site plans to offer a larger selection of premium
moblogs and is looking at templates geared toward businesses such as
real estate, Mr. Hoar says. Textamerica also is in the process of
licensing its software to enterprises such as phone carriers.
As for Mr. Weaverling, he upgraded in June to a phone with a
better camera. "Now the camera is the most important thing," he says.
"I guess that does mean I'm an addict."
Ms. Saranow is a staff reporter of The Wall Street Journal Online in New York.
Write to Jennifer Saranow at
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Source: Wall St Journal
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