Hello everyone,
Having talked with many Japanese TV and radio broadcasters about their
integration of mobile Internet services and TV/radio programs I assumed
that Japan was light-years ahead of the rest of the world. But a report on
a recent seminar in amsterdam called "SMS meets TV" suggests otherwise
(http://www.europemedia.net/showfeature.asp?ArticleID=12767). European TV
stations are using SMS to offer chat services, do surveys, promote
interactive TV, and increase viewer ratings. Most Japanese TV stations (as
far as I know) are still moving very slowly to offer surveys due to
concerns about overloading their systems. On a wider note, this is just one
more example of how the success of Japan's mobile Internet has little to do
with culture; in fact the amounts of money that europeans pay to download
ringing tones, screen savers, and now participate in TV station-sponsored
services suggests that europeans may be more interested than japanese in
these services. it is probably just a matter of time before similar things
appear in the US as SMS services continue to diffuse there.
cheers,
jeff funk
http://www.rieb.kobe-u.ac.jp/~funk/index.html
Received on Thu Sep 26 05:35:44 2002