o2 and mobile blogs

Unlike some people have written, o2's annoucement to launch a blog-like service to capture some of the weblog market has not hit me by surprise. Quite the contrary; insiders expected this very move. Moe has done a nice job summarizing o2's new offering. o2 calls it Mobile Diary. It's nothing revolutionary. 3 Austria calls it Voodoo. Orange calls it Blogs. Users can send a mobile image or video file to a permanent web location via MMS and that's pretty much all there is.

The operators try to capitalize on the weblog trend and MMS-based services are their answer. Fair enough. The users will decide which services they like.

What these services are missing is that weblogs are not just about posting pictures from a phone to the web. Weblogs are about conversations. Weblogs are about giving your voice a home on the web. Sure thing, "phone to web" is an important component but it certainly doesn't stop there.

Some companies actually get it and are able to think beyond MMS revenues and come up with some very innovative ideas combining the power of weblogs and the comfort of a mobile device. o2's Mobile Diary is no such example. But I doubt it was ever aimed at being more than it is: a simple MMS service.