uk mobile network generates £1.2m from video blogging

UK mobile phone network, 3 launched the Me TV channel four months ago, which allowed users to generate their own content and publish them on the 3 network for other users to view. The mobile phone company then charged 10p (or 50p for adult content) for its subscribers to see the content and passed back a proportion of the income to the publisher.

By making the videos easy to create, publish and view; 3 has generated £1.2m from the service. I think this must be the most successful service on the UK 3g networks to date?

Of course, this is not the first time that user generated video content has captured the public’s imagination. The old fashioned way of doing it was to send your tape to the tv studios in the hope you would appear on Jeremy Beadle’s “You’ve been Framed” (that’s America’s Funniest Home Videos for you American folks!). Now it is back, but for the iPod generation.

Source: New Media Age (requires subscription)

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I remember the days when connecting to the internet meant telephone bills of thousands of pounds. I wonder how long it will be before the same occurs in the mobile space? Ben is right when he says it is extortionate right now. I wonder if 3G will ever have the capacity though to bring down the prices to a level that is as usable as the internet was even a few years ago – my understanding whilst vague is that the more data you push through a handset the greater the number of channels available in a cell are taken up – and I don’t think there is enough capacity to be able to bring the rates down. After all if its cheap, everyone would be downloading data and suddenly there is no capacity for those phone calls we all want to make. So they need to invest more which costs more money short term.

I think there is another solution. I think the next generation phones will integrate Wifi Max into them so you can use those networks. Obviously unless its your own network, there will be a subscription – I wonder if there will be enough competition that the cost will come down quickly and not be charged by the byte! That would make the most sense - whenever it finally launches – it seems like I have been waiting years for it to come out – oh wait. I have.[update] links didn’t follow across for some reason. fonts were messed up and a few typos

arghhhhhh! Well it has not been a good start to the day I give you, but for the past 4 years I seem to have had an inane knack of picking the wrong mobile phone. First the 1st gen SPV from Orange (Microsoft’s 1st Gen mobile phone) and then the 2nd gen - both lasted me no more than 3 months due to their umm inability to be a phone (dropped calls and inability to answer them being minor problems in a phone..). Anyhow Back in Feb I got the Motorola A1000. To be fair to it, it all seemed to be going ok for 4 or 5 months, the problems I had with it were not major enough for me to return it:

vibrate is non existant
on start and on shutdown if the sound is on a jingle is played. Fine set it as the default if you must, but allow me to switch it off!!!!!!
it crashed a few times

No in the past few months, it seems to have developed a few really irritating problems. The clock seems to run slow and then fast - jumping almost an hour this morning - not exactly an hour (and daylight saving was switched off because that didnt work when it was supposed to anyhow). Thankfully this happened the other way round a while back so I no longer use this phone as my alarm clock.. on top of that, it has been doing a mighty good impression of the 1st and 2nd gen SPVs - it has rebooted when I answer a call several times now and there always seems to be a delay when I answer the phone. I actually have to consciously pause before saying "hello".

OK rant over