Dec

A mobile internet service that read my mind

: Image via Wikipedia

The purpose of a mobile internet service is to serve you AND it should do so in the best possible way. The last part is seldom done. When you think about it, wouldn’t it be nice if a service learned from your behavior. for example, you probably know some services by heart, like you know your way home. You start the service, scroll down and click that link, wait for loading, scroll down again and click again, finally. This is your personal starting point of the service and the service should learn tat.

Classic personalization

Sitting at your computer you have access to personalized start pages on Internet and Intranet via Widgets, settings, RSS etc and even what your friends like. This is the type of personalization that most people think about. Don’t get me wrong I am all for that, but it does take time and effort from the user and that is one reason many people just don’t bother to personalize. The nature of mobile phones and mobile internet services call for more personalization but it is even harder to encourage that kind of effort from the user. One solution to ease things up in your mobile life, is to enable all personalization work to be done on the web.

Automatic personalization

The Mobile is personal which and all actions taken can be assumed is taken by you. This means that you are making patterns of usage on the server side of the mobile internet service you use. This fact is can be used to make the service better for you. Even in isolated applications and games, with no server connection, this approach could also be used. When you have answered “No, I dont want to play my chess game with sound” five times in a row the game should learn this, and make it a default setting to have at every time you start your game of chess.
This is simple and straight forward usage of your usage in a certain service, and there is no reason mobile service providers should not already have this implemented. For the mobile future there are lots of more advanced automatic personalization to be done. Yes, there is a risk that users get offended by the big brother approach so it must be dealt with gently.

Services that learn from user patterns and make qualified guesses to serve the user better exists on the Internet. Several success stories(Amazon, Google suggest, last.fm, pandora.com) bring out this as a way to serve the user better than others do.
This is a development born from competition and technology. In the mobile service industry, we don´t really see that level of competition yet. When that time comes, that is in 2009, you will see smarter services that adapts to your mobile life, as you use it.