24 Goes Mobile, Minute By Minute
There's lots of press coverage over the fact that one of the offerings on Vodafone's new 3G service is going to be one minute "mobisodes" related to the TV show 24 that will be sent to mobile phones. While it certainly beats streaming live TV to phones, it's hard to see how this really generates that much excitement. First, it's entirely tied to the TV show -- so you've narrowed your audience just to those who watch 24. Second, it assumes that people on the go want to regularly sit around and catch up on these mobisodes. Mobile video, for it to be successful, needs to fit into what people are doing, since they're on the go. None of these mobile TV shows is really designed to do that. They're just taking the broadcast concept and moving it to a tinier screen, while shrinking the amount of time. It's a nice to have for a few people in certain circumstances, but it's not particularly compelling. It's certainly not any kind of breakthrough.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
