Robin Blandford [ ByteSurgery.com ]

23/01/08 Making Your Mark: Operator Logos

SINGAPORE - Continuing my theme of looking at the most popular digitally ’shared’ objects, I again get drawn back to ‘mobile shares’, ringtones, screensavers and backgrounds. The method of distribution is great, SMS - the protocol everyone understood.

But what started this ‘mobile share’ boom?

It was those awkward ‘Operator Logos’! Remember those little B&W pixelated images you’d pay for? Those magical things you could install but never work out how to reset to default? What are their properties and why did we go crazy over them? How can we duplicate that success model today?

Appearing on the idle screen of a mobile phone they were originally intended as a way for phone companies to brand phones attached to their networks. Once consumers realised they could hack it, the operator logo has became a method to customise a phone to express interests, followings & views. We see this again & again today - themes, skins, customisable display settings are now commonplace. But this was revolutionary on a small gadget and it had some differences that made it special.

I can’t help believe their success was due to…

1. control - feeling like you could personalise your own device,
2. distribution - an easy delivery method (SMS),
3. simplicity - B&W and limited to a couple of pixels in dimension,
4. individual - there were millions to choose from,
5. trust - install not required to view it first,
6. micropayment - it cost a little money to get one (SMS),
7. no storage - you could only ever own 1 at any point in time.

What other objects can we share like this? The most interesting properties to take away are the last two. These are things we’ve lost on the internet - we often have unlimited storage, creation ability & distribution. Is there a casestudy here? Is this what SMS did that email never can? Added a payment gateway, creating an industry around the shareable objects?

-Robin

(Image Credit: Simplicity, control, micropayment - Eating rogan josh on banana leaf from your hands in Little India, Singapore. By Author.)

Tags: cell phone, General, mobile, nokia, operator logos, sms

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