Think Forward

Innovations in Consumer Voicemail Services

Prior to my iPhone I had been a long time Windows Mobile user. One of my favorite features as simple as it was, was custom ring-tones. I was the person that had a specific ring-tone for all my closest contacts. I also changed those ring-tones pretty often and spent a lot of time creating new ring-tones.

I have recently found a new service that has me spending a lot of time like I did with ring-tones but this time with custom voicemail. The service is called You Mail and it has several cool features.

The first is that I can create custom voicemail messages for all my contacts. So my wife, parents, business colleagues, college friends etc all can have their own voicemails personalized for them. I literally spent hours when I first signed up for this free service creating custom voicemails for all my contacts. I went so far as to get out my recorder gear and break out my guitar to record a voicemail for my wife with all my musical abilities, which isn’t much, but it was fun. If you don’t feel like going through all the trouble to record a custom voicemail for your contacts you can simply pick from a large list of community voicemails that are fun and funny as well.

The second compelling feature is that I can check my voicemails online in a user interface that looks similar to web based e-mail. I found myself doing this more then I thought I would.

The third compelling feature was the text messaging voicemail alerts. Now having experienced visual voicemail on the iPhone this feature was found lacking however for those without the iPhone it is a poor mans visual voicemail.

After experiencing many of these different services it really got me thinking the levels of personalization and customization that are still unexplored in consumer services. I am happy to see You Mail innovate in consumer services and start to give consumers more control over their devices.

I look forward to seeing more innovation in 08 in consumer services.

Dec Analyze This - Social Games

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2977/analyze_this_divining_the_next_.php?page=4

Here is my Dec contribution to Gama Sutra's Analyze This.

Vertical Social Networks - Great Examples

If you read my Future of Social networks posts a few month's ago I mentioned that we felt the value of social networks are when they are vertical or focus on people of like minds or passion. I have found a few sites that truly embody this and are gaining heads of steam. The sights are Dogster and Catster. What is very interesting about these sites is that they appeal to the animal loving community at large from a social network standpoint. But they also appeal to specific dog and cat owners who can join a sub group that is specific to their breed of dog and cat. Their is a local section so local pet clubs can interact and schedule events etc.

This is truly when the value of social network come alive. Sometimes in Silicon Valley we get caught up in the constant innovation we see around us. We forget that "middle Amercia" is not online all day browsing the web. They browse the web in spurts and only for limited times at a day if at all. For us to think they all want to spend the little time on the internet they spend searching random people is absurd. Instead we should reason that they want to spend the little time on the internet they have really getting value from it. Social networks add the most value to people's lives when you are connected with like minded people who have the same passions as you.

Dogster and Catster are great examples of this and brilliant for advertisers who want to reach animal lovers.