March 6th, 2008RIM Goes Social
So the telecom industry in general has been trying to come to grips with this inexorable shift of personal communication from calls and texts to a mix of all sorts of things that seem to come out of nowhere like “social platforms”. On it’s own, this bit of wisdom isn’t particularly news. With a stampede of widgets, apps, promotions and deals carriers have been slapping facebook, myspace and everything else all over their devices and ad campaigns for some time now.
With a battle cry of “Social Networking, we’ve heard of it!”, RIM too is now getting into this game.
Co-CEO Jim Balsillie announced today at Canadian Music Week (always a good week for music) that his company is getting in to social media, and what’s more, social media plus music.
“Architecturally, music and the social networking are going to merge,” he says.
This argument makes some sense. In fact, if one wasn’t too busy arguing that this is clearly the case already, you might also be arguing that the future sure looks that way too.
Potential theories on exactly how RIM plans to effect this strategy are thin on details, but could be plotted on a spectrum ranging somewhere from “top secret” to “by magic”.
So, on the surface, a mildly interesting market prognostication from RIM, but more importantly, another smoke signal of RIMs intent to move more aggressively into the consumer space.
Social music being considered, in most cases, not a core enterprise productivity application. Depending where you work I guess.
Apple and iTunes be warned?
