■Opinion22
“The Media Capability of Mobile Phones as seen in the Cell phone Novel”
● Cell phone Novel Awards Decided
The “Japan Cell phone Novel Awards” were announced in Tokyo on November 28.
D2C were involved in running the event, including introducing award recipients on a “special top menu”, and I myself took a seat on the judging panel.
Looking at the prizewinners, the youngest was a 17-year old girl and the oldest a 37-year old man, so no doubt that the trophies were claimed by the mobile generation.
● The Cell phone Novel is Web2.0
Web2.0 is currently the talk of the town, and the cell phone novel is one of the same.
Using the mobile phone in their pocket, anyone can announce a creation, and readers use their phones to offer their thoughts and feelings. Some suspend writing for several months due to writers block, but get going again due to reader support, and in many cases end up finishing off what they started.
Most fantastic of all though, is that just by having their own mobile phone in their hand, people of this generation are now able to share with a great number of people the myriad rich experiences they have had and unique stories that only they could imagine.
D2C supports these awards for this very reason, having made so much effort to contribute in just a small way to the development of mobile culture, which now includes the setting up of advertising awards.
● Mobile Phones = Established Media
Sitting in as a judge, I suddenly sensed the connection with “newspaper novels” and “serialized comic books”.
Readers write in, and the author is spurred on by their reactions, and while enjoying this reader input continues to write the series, which ends up being made into a publication, that is then purchased primarily by those readers.
Transmitters and recipients have merely switched the traditional medium from “Mass Media” and “Postcards” to “Mobile Phones”, with the original structure unchanged.
These days, one often hears that “young people are separated from the printed word”, but actually something approaching 100 thousand cell phone novels have been made into publications and are selling. In order the words, all that has changed is the “media that I casually browse”, and the essential human essence of being deeply moved and shedding tears from reading the printed word is still the same.
● Now is the time for user-centered ideas.
The main newspapers and TV broadcasters were present at the awards, and you’d have been forgiven for thinking that it was a long-running event.
It was a day where everyone reawakened to the fact that mobile phones have established their status as media, and that with their inherent power to really get users going and the fact that through ever speedier transmissions from one side and director responses from recipients, the mobile phone is the medium that closes the gaps between the transmitter and recipient.
The address by the top brass of a newspaper company was unforgettable.
“We are told that young people are moving away from newspapers, but surely it’s the newspapers that are moving away from young people.”
And to all readers I say, will your marketing be OK?
You can read all back numbers of DD News in Japanese from here.
