User-generated content in mobile multimedia: empirical evidence from user studies

This paper presents evidence from two studies on the use of mobile multimedia. Mobile Image has more than 1000 multimedia messages collected from a pilot in 1999-2001. Radiolinja has more than 4000 messages from a multimedia messaging (MMS) pilot in summer 2002. In Radiolinja, it was found that 32% of messages were a part of an interaction chain such as question-answer pairs, greetings, or stories. Thus, approximately 50% of traffic in the network arose from interactional needs rather than from individual, unattached messages. After the practice phase, fluctuations in use are largely explained by interactional reasons. This paper suggests that usergenerated content is a key element in the success of mobile multimedia. 1. EVIDENCE FROM PRODUCT ANALOGIES This article takes a look at the first evidence of how ordinary users create content for mobile multimedia, and what drives its use. The data is from several studies conducted mostly in Helsinki, Finland. Social scientists’ studies of analogical products (mostly, WWW) suggest three visions for mobile multimedia [13]. (1) According to the instrumental vision, mobile multimedia is used to transmit information to other people, to check timetables, negotiate routes, and so forth [6]. (2) The expressive vision has three subtypes: the artistic vision claims that multimedia enhances creativity. People will dramatize their lives to each other with stories, drama, and songs [1,15]. The games and spectacles vision links multimedia to virtual world, games, B-movies, music videos, and advertising [3]. In the identity play vision, people can and do play with their identities, sexual and other in multimedia [19,24]. (3) According to the mundane vision, mobile multimedia mobile multimedia is used for various purposes such as gossiping and keeping in touch with friends and family [13]. It supports mundane activities. If we discount polls, there are few reliable studies on short text messaging (SMS, that is, text messaging using mobile phones). Text messaging is above all versatile: it supports many types of ordinary human activities, not just work [18]. It provides content for boring moments and transforms them into meaningful, sociable situations [10]. It has also created a new platform for a playful culture that consisted of playful hoax messages, chain letters, and humor, among other things [8,9,10]. Some messages are also collected into notebooks and treated as treasured possessions [9]. When we contrast this picture with evidence from mobile services, it is increasingly evident that text messaging became a hit because people use it to create and send content to other people, and to respond to that content. Thus, in a sample of 613 users biased towards higher income groups in the Helsinki area, only about 1/3 had used mobile services (29% of women, 44% of men) [5]. E-mail and banking services were the most used services, but only 2% of those respondents who had tried to use mobile services used them daily. Only 8% were weekly users of banking services, and 11% used search services weekly. That is, less than 3% of all respondents used these services weekly. If this is the case, text messaging owes its success to user-generated content and wireless application protocol (WAP) its failure partly to not supporting such content [2]. The second possible source for cues for mobile multimedia is literature on mobile photographing. In 19978, in an EU-funded project "Maypole," a group of researchers built a functioning prototype for taking and sending mobile images [17]. They learned that: • Photos were used for joking, emotional communication, and artistic activities (enhancing images, building stories from images). • Photos were not primarily supporters of memory, but communicated things as they happened, and communicated emotions. II 645 0-7803-7965-9/03/$17.00 ©2003 IEEE ICME 2003 ➠ ➡