The Mobile Phone: The 7th Mass Media
Here is an article by Tomi T. Ahonen of Communities-Dominate.blogs.com fame. He is a respected author and independent consultant. I don’t normally write a short profile spill of people. In this case, I make an exception because I like his Mobile as the 7th Mass Media post. My comments will be coming in pretty late. I have been wanting to post about this early last week when it was first released. But, I have no excuses 
Here is my summary of the seven (7) mass media:
- Print. Things like newspapers and magazines are considered part of this. This mass media introduced the concept being able to read distributed information.
- Audio Recordings. This includes non real-time listening provided by downloading music and purchasing published audio content (CD/DVDs). This was introduced to allow people to listen to distributed information in non real-time.
- Movies. This allows people to watch distributed information in a single setting.
- Radio. This allows people to listen to distributed information in real-time broadcast.
- TV. This allows people to watch distributed information in real-time broadcast.
- Internet. This allows people to access distributed information in real-time and on-demand. This also added the ability to search information on-demand.
- Mobile. This allows people to access distributed information in read-time and on-demand. It also has the ability to search and discovery this information. It also has additional benefits such as identity and presence information.
The first three (3) mass media cover reading, listening and watching but in non real-time. The information distributed by these mass media focus on on-demand information. The next two (2) mass media are simply real-time versions of the earlier ones. This added flexibility in information distribution but was broadcast in nature. Essentially, one way. The Internet is an amalgamation of all the other mass medias with the additional of better information discovery via technologies such as search. Then, finally we have the mobile. It has all the features of the other mass media with the addition of identity and presence information. Tom mentions about five (5) major benefits. But, I would like to focus on the most important two (2) which is identity and presence. With identity information, personalization and mobile commerce are possible. With presence information, additional location-based and context-based services can be introduced. These two (2) additional benefits definitely make mobile a deserving 7th mass media. So Tom, this is my share of spreading the word.
