i agree with rob i think if the phones and mms is building traction in europe in handsets this might be interesting bottom line is will it a help sell phones and b bill enough time on the wcarriers networks anyone remember the polariod photo sticker fad low quality small in size but kids totally dug that stuff seems like every adolescent girl had that stuff at one point and it never replaced or aimed to replace digital cameras or normal photographs i don t think mms photos will be a substitute for other photography developed at the local NUMBER hour joint or digital photos on your pc i think it expands the market and forms a new category the extent of the category size is the big question will it be a fad or will it a sustained market that s consumer behavior and marketing but i don t think the technology adoption will follow a substitution of another product on the market in this case digital photos or normal photos europe s the one to watch more teenagers have wireless phones and if the pricing and marketing is right they ll figure out what to do with it once the carriers how to figure out how to market it to them h from rob shavell rob mobiusvc com to mike masnick mike techdirt com cc fork URL subject re sprint delivers the next big thing date wed NUMBER aug NUMBER NUMBER NUMBER NUMBER NUMBER right mike i will agree to disagree but i take your comments to heart my opinion is only that this is one of the last frontiers of communications instant show that we cross easily though you are right as rain on pricing i am mildly amused at the level of skepticism and innatention it is getting my premise is that the world will change in dramatic and unexpected ways once there are a billion eye s which can instantly share what they see amongst each other that doesn t mean that people will stop talking on their phones or that people will spend more time w images than voice just that it is fundamental from news to crime to privacy to dating to family life to bloopers and practical jokes i believe there will be an explosion of images unleashed specifically by cell phone integrated lenses because of their utter ubiquity that dwarfs all pictures taken in the history of photography by orders of magnitude and in short order and yes changes things big time rgds rob original message from mike masnick mailto mike techdirt com sent tuesday august NUMBER NUMBER NUMBER NUMBER pm to rob shavell cc fork URL subject re sprint delivers the next big thing not to keep harping on this but at NUMBER NUMBER pm NUMBER NUMBER NUMBER NUMBER rob shavell wrote content who cares about content that no one can think of useful content is always the business persons mistake the content is the users communications its anything and everything avg person could easily send half dozen pics to a dozen people a day mainly humorous i d guess who cares if content is trivial in nature picture speaks a thousand words this does nothing to answer my question i do care about content hell if i could be convinced that people would send stupid pics back and forth all day i d have a different opinion of this i just am not convinced that they will stupid or not while a picture may be worth a thousand words and this is the same argument the guy who works for me made how many people do you know who communicate by pictures sure it sounds nice to say that a picture is such an efficient messaging mechanism but how often do you actually find yourself drawing someone a picture to explain something i don t buy it for most messages text works fine and is the most efficient mechanism for some messages pictures do the job but i would say not nearly as often as words why do you think pictionary and charades and such are games because images are usually not the most efficient way to get a message across misc ramblings i suppose you skeptical forkers would have said the same thing about NUMBER hour photo processing trivial who needs it i get better resultion elswhere and yet it had great decentralizing impact the plant had to be downsized and pushed to the retail operation the digital camera and finally the integrated digital camera phone brings this cycle of decentralization in photography to a logical conclusion which will put the photo giants to bed and change the world in a meaningful way also sms didn t take off because its easy it took off because it costs less its greatly ironic the carriers often trumpet the profitabilty of their sms traffic over others because of its ratio of cost to bandwidth in reality sms cannibilizes the voice rev s they bought their networks to handle again this is the same argument my colleague made along with you just don t understand kids today and they ll run with this i wasn t saying that mms wouldn t take off because it wasn t high quality or that it wasn t easy i was saying that i couldn t see why people would use it in a way that changed the face of communications i m looking for the compelling reason even if it s a stupid one why people would want to do this sure if they integrate cameras into the phone and the quality improves even only marginally i can certainly see people taking pictures with their cameras and occasionally sending them to other people but mostly i don t see what the benefit is to this over sending them to someone s email address or putting together an online or offline photoalbum i don t think NUMBER hour photos are trivial people want to see their own pics right away and the quality is plenty good enough for snapshots that s one of the main reasons why digital cameras are catching on the instant view part i m guessing your argument is that people not only want instant view but also instant show which is what this service offers i m not convinced that most people want instant show i think people like to package their pictures and show them that s why people put together fancy albums and sit there and force you to go through them while they explain every picture sure occasionally instant show is nice but it s just nice on occasion i still can t see how it becomes a integral messaging method what s the specific benefit of taking a picture and immediately sending it from one phone to another there has to be some benefit even if it s silly if people are going to flock to it i m searching no one has given me a straight answer yet the only really intriguing idea i ve heard about things like mms lately are dan gillmor s assertion that one day in the near future some news event will happen and a bunch of people will snap pictures with their mobile phones from all different angles and those photos tell the real story of what happened before the press even gets there willing to be proven wrong mike ps if the wireless carriers continue to price these services as stupidly as they currently are then mms is never going to catch on 