Who will dominate communities: users, or brands

Insightful blog commentary at Repositorium from our friend Martin Springer:

“Tomi L. Ahoven writes on his blog “Communities Dominate Brands” that Mobile is the next mass medium.

I do not think that the fact that a personal device is predominant leads to the conclusion that the mobile phone is the gateway to the next mass medium. Digital convergence means that any type of Device can be used for accessing and participating in mass media. Granted, the communication Service Providers trouble to seduce more and more users to use Devices with an integrated payment function. At the same time the media industry phases in DRM and brings actions against Users who share Content for free. Tomy’s assumption may hold for large consumer goods brands. However, in my opinion the media industry’s wish to charge Users for Content and Services is not sufficient for creating community domination over communication Service Brands.

A common strategy of mobile phone service providers is to bundle the access to Content and Services (e.g. SMS) with proprietary payment services (e.g. through a SIM card).

In my opinion a corollary for Communities Dominate Brands is that Users Dominate Communities. In other words: Users must be able to select the communities of their choice (e.g. become members of non-commercial Autonomous Domains, get a personalized google account,…). The freedom to select a community implies that Users control their digital identies. Users must be able to easily switch between different providers of communication services. As long as providers own User Identities (e.g. identify Users through proprietary SIM cards fixed to mobile phones) Service Provider Brands (e.g. Vodafone, Yahoo, Apple…) will Dominate Communities.

Communication Service Provider Brands will Dominate Communities unless Payment will be independent of Services related to Content and Network Access. Communities will Dominate Brands as soon as Users can create and manage their own digital identities and payment tools. Open Standards for Payment and Open Source software implementations will make Users independent of the major Communication Service Providers. Once Users can access the source code of their communication and payment tools the real P2P Economy will start to flourish.”

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