The cameraphone and online image sharing

Virginia Nightingale

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticle

    Abstract

    The cameraphone and the cell phone together create a commercially exploitable mobile communications environment, yet there is evidence that the mobile communications industries find encouraging a culture of online cameraphone image sharing difficult. According to M:Metrics (2006a), ‘cameraphone ownership and usage is climbing across the U.S. and Europe’, but it is unclear that this is in response to user demand. Rather, it reflects the now almost ubiquitous bundling of camera and cell phone. A user survey by Lyra Research of 525 cameraphone users in the United States, conducted in April/May 2006 indicated that 72 per cent of users share images ‘on phone’, 28 per cent use MMS to send images, 31 per cent send images using e-mail, and 33 per cent save images to their PC, but only 12 per cent share their images online. This suggests that the cameraphone is most used for highly personal activities that involve the least additional cost to the user, and that online sharing of images does not yet register as a mainstream component of mobile culture (Lyra, 2006). Unfortunately for cameraphone users, the industry has been slow to address the reasons for this lack of interest, and so only a few sites, most notably Flickr, have risen to the ‘social networking’ challenge.
    Original languageEnglish
    Number of pages13
    JournalContinuum
    Publication statusPublished - 2007

    Keywords

    • cellular telephones
    • communication and culture
    • digital electronics
    • mobile communication systems
    • social aspects
    • technological innovations

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