Audio-slideshows as mobile content?

Met up recently with David Stranks, an old colleague.

David is an expert in mobile and online media. He’s worked as Head of New Media for production company Sunset + Vine, part of the Tinopolis group of TV and interactive producers. He’s also been an Executive Producer at mobile network 3. He worked on video and multimedia content at 3, and oversaw their coverage of the 2006 World Cup. Before that he worked for an Asian telecoms firm developing their mobile offering.

He’s well placed to give us an overview of the state of the mobile content world in 2011, and the current fortunes of media like video and podcasts. Hopefully, this will provide some context to thinking about audio-slideshows as mobile content.

He feels that multimedia general news and sport content has not quite lived up to the hopes of the networks or content producers in the UK, especially since the euphoria when the 3G licences were awarded back in 2000. As the UK government prepares to auction of the 4G licences, it’s been Apple and the growth of Apps that have been the real winners in seizing our attention and income. Social networking, email, gaming and traditional text and call are the mainstay of our mobile habits.

Thinking of his 16 and 19 y/o children, Stranks says for younger users, ‘the mobile is still about communication, the laptop at home is still where they go to get content and share it with friends”

And as for the idea of mobile becoming a platform for which visual content might be specifically commissioned and/or paid for by mobile users, “the economics really only work at present in terms of re-versioning existing content… unless it’s allied to a wider effort by a sponsor – or the network – to seek associations with their brand”

He believes the underwhelming take up of video content is partly a result of download times and data usage issues, and streaming capabilities hindered by network connection issues. Stranks says the same problems are likely to affect audio slideshows, given they (ideally) have high-res images as well as audio which needs to be downloaded / streamed.

On the subject of audio-slideshows, he adds that “if journalists or producers have gone to the trouble of recording audio and taking stills, why didn’t they just video it?” A view the VisVox members have discussed more than once!

Stranks’ view is that while video content of general interest news and sport has not been the successs on mobiles that many hoped, specialist interest content has been done well– e.g.  following your favourite football team, and downloading weekly podcasts from the official team site, or a clip of their winning goal.  He says the impetus to download that clip is often tied in to social networking behaviour – perhaps your friends just tweeted/Facebooked about it and you want to download to show to a friend later on.

Likewise podcasts from your favourite radio programmes, or comedians – he believes people are happy to download content to their phones if they have an existing connection to it, have already bought-in to the ‘brand’ and the concept.

But people browsing news/sport on their mobiles and downloading video content, audio-slideshows etc? Stranks thinks it’s yet to truly take off in the UK (though Asia, specifically South Korea is a different story).

So where are things headed next? Will the auction of 4G spectrum in the UK usher in a new era of rich content, anywhere, anytime? Stranks points out that “everyone said that about 3G, but it didn’t quite work that way”

What about the advent of the iPad – it might not be a mobile phone, but it’s definitely about mobile data. Will it be a game-changer for content in same way the iPhone ushered in the brave new world of apps? “It will change things, but to some extent it’s still a toy for the early-adopters”.

Discussing the iPad with David Stranks at the end of our meeting really got me thinking – perhaps tablet-style computers like the iPad are the ideal platform for audio-slideshows.

The screen is big enough for the viewer to relish high-resolution images (unlike a mobile!). It’s light, enjoyable to handle and perhaps the tactility of a touch-screen encourages users to engage with content in a more focused way. It’s already being seen as a tool primarily for enjoying audio-visual content. Finally it’s got momentum – news / media providers are flocking to make their offerings available via iPad apps – Sky News, the BBC, The Times, The New York Times, the Guardian to name but a few…