Mobile Radio Simplified. Accessible. Relevant.

I ran across this post from moconews today, and had to laugh:

The Logic Behind Verizon Wireless’s New Low-Tech App
By Tricia Duryee - Thu 13 Nov 2008 02:22 PM PST
Mobile operators are falling over themselves to offer the latest mobile applications, from GPS services that help you locate your friends to chipsets that let you watch TV. So what is Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) now touting? A remarkably un-high-tech service that lets subscribers send photos from their phone to an album on the Web. The idea is that because nearly all cellphones now have camera phones, the target audience is potentially huge.

The funny part is the falling over themselves line… plus the fact that the “low tech” term shocks the sensibilities of the technorati that believes the mainstream can remain out of their target markets until they catch up someday. Do I have a ‘tude’ about all this? Well yes I do. The fact that targeting a product to a wider audience is worthy of a headline at all finally proves once and for all the point we have been making for over a year now. Cast the widest net possible by focussing on accessibility, AND build a mobile apps that perform the same function for the few phones that have new special powers.

Another funny part of all this… this app being discussed I’ll bet you if you took a poll of verizon users who could access it, would be used by less than 7% of them, with most of them citing they just don’t get the point of it, much less the how to portion of it.

The overall discussion about low-tech vs high tech is one of the areas where radio ‘gets it’ and new media lurches on the fringe. We are reconcilers of the two by design, but like to speak up any chance I get when the disconnect occurs on the geek side of the equation.