C-Summit: Moses Ma discusses creating camera phone tipping points

How do you influence an industry, push it in one direction or another? Moses Ma, one of the developers of the Cameraphone Summit, asked in his "Tipping the Market" presentation. Moses has been involved in the computer and Internet industries for year, and is now a partner in Next Generation Ventures.

He discussed three possible ways to influence the development of the camera phone industry.

One way is through social engineering -- manipulating people to act in a specific way. He cited an example of Clark Gable, in the movie "It Happened One Night," who removed his shirt and wasn't wearing an undershirt.

After seeing the reaction of their wives or girlfriends, millions of men decided not to wear undershirts and sales of undershirts plummeted.

Turning negatives into positives

Moses noted how camera phones on television and in movies are typically used in a negative fashion. He pointed to the movie "The Medallion" where camera phones are used by kidnappers to identify a child to be kidnapped. In "Tru Calling" (what's that?) he said a person takes a photo of a credit card to steal the number.

An episode of the television program "Law and Order" also used camera phones in a negative way.

As an example of a company that aggressively promotes its products in a positive way, he pointed to Apple Computer. Apple spends money to place its computers in movies and on TV. The "good guys" use Apples, he said.

Scriptwriting contest

Moses suggested that the camera phone industry -- a handset vendor? cellular operator? -- could sponsor a contest and offer a prize of $10,000 to a screenwriter who wrote the best script that portrays camera phones in a positive light.

He also suggested that the wireless industry should consider paying for product placements in the media, where camera phones would be shown in a positive way.

The Cameraphone Summit audience seemed to feel that it was a good idea to encourage positive uses of camera phones.

However, one attendee said that while a scriptwriter might include a positive scene involving a camera phone, by the time other writers worked on the script and the director worked on it and finally approved the shooting script, the original scene might be cut.

Creating fads

In addition to engaging in social engineering, the wireless industry could try to create fads. Moses used the example of Burning Man, where thousands of people meet in the Nevada desert for several days to create an artistic (of sorts) community. Twenty eight thousand people have paid $180 each for the privilege, Moses said.

Another example of a fad is flash mobs, where people use mobile communications to suggest a place to gather -- for the sake of gathering -- on the spur of the moment.

How do you create a fad around camera phone? Moses suggested an event he called "One World One Day" during Valentine's Day 2005. The aim would be to convince 10,000 camera phone users plus 1,000 student photographers to upload 50 million images of things they loved.

Celebrities would be encouraged to participate so that students, for example, could follow around TV and movie stars for a day. The consensus of the Camera Phone Summit audience, however, was that it would be extremely difficult to engineer a "fad."

Moses' third suggestion was encouraging the creation of venture funds that would specialize in investing in the wireless imaging business and/or encouraging funds to invest some of their funds in the industry.

He pointed to Sun Microsystems' $100 million Java fund, Intel's $100 million Digital Home fund and the Internet funds in years past that helped legitimize the business of the Internet.

Moses noted that partnerships where corporations invest in startup companies often produces better results than just venture capital investments.

Looking for new ideas

Moses encouraged the audience to send him ideas about ways to stimulate the growth of the camera phone business. I think this is a great idea.

In the past, I suggested the possibility of establishing a camera phone association that would represent the industry and help deal with such issues as privacy, security, technical standards and government regulations.

There are many associations for both the wireless and imaging industries, so perhaps a new association isn't needed.

But there are many crucial issues the need to be resolved in order to further growth the camera phone business, and think it's great that Moses is helping to stimulate thinking on these issues.

Comments

[paul]

Tru Calling is a TV show on Fox. I like it. :)
http://www.fox.com/trucalling/tru_home.html
(Yes, I remember the episode mentioned above.)