COMPUTER MEDIATED COMMUNICATION AND MOBILE

Group 10 Presentation Is About One of the areas of greatest

technological development has been the mobile platform. The development of mobile devices like cellphones and tablets is having a great impact on how we communicate.  In this stream we will be exploring sites like Instagram, Whatsapp, Skype, Mxit, Snapchat.

Evolution of Computer mediated communication

Mobile technologies came into existence to enable people to communicate while they are anywhere outside the office or home.

Communication provides voice, text messaging thus integration of voice, data and video, such as the video conferencing which is most suitable for business meetings in case of long distances, results in minimizing costs and time for travelling.

Recent mobile technologies will substitutes computers and laptops in most aspects of communication.

Evolution of Computer mediated communication

MOBILE PLATFORM • Mobile operating systems:

• iOS and Windows Phone

MOBILE DEVICES• iPhone 5• Samsung S4

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF MOBILE PLATFORMS

One of the companies that contributed largely in the software perspective is Bell and Linux, which came with an open source code UNIX operating system.

The mobile communication industry has used the luxury of these parts to create more Apps and more features for these phones such as the Mxit, Whatsapp, Twitter, etc.

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF MOBILE PLATFORMS

Companies like Sony, Dell, Nokia, Samsung, Microsoft etc., have made an impact on bringing about “game changing” the culture of telecommunication industry at large.

BlackBerry has recently produced BB10 which has the ability to video chart and to make voice over internet protocol calls (VoIP) on Wi-Fi.

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF MOBILE DEVICE

In the early 70’s, Motorola’s engineer Martin Cooper made the first cell phone, It was called the Motorola DynaTAC, and it wasn’t a tiny device -- it was 9 inches (22.9 centimeters) long and weighed (1.1 kilograms).

In 1994 the first smartphone, the IBM Simon had a touchscreen, email and other features, 2007 Apple iPhone introduced mobile operating system.

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF MOBILE DEVICES

The evolution modern living has made it possible for mobile businesses to outsource resources(motherboards, screens, batteries that last longer etc.) that meets changing customer preferences.

From there communication has improve substantial allowing different form of sharing of information between users all around the world example instant messaging.

Instant Messaging…

COMMUNICATION MADE EASE

INSTAGRAM WHATSAPP SKYPE MIXIT SNAPCHAT

Messaging service

2013 users 2012 users

Mxit 7.4-million6.9-million (9.5-million using 90-day metric)

BBM *4.7-million (94% of users)

3.3-million (97% of users)

2go 1.1-million 1.5-million

Whatsapp N/A (top free app) N/A

INSTAGRAM

INSTAGRAM Online photo sharing, video sharing and social

networking service that enable its users to take pictures and videos and apply digital filters to them.

It is an application available for companies with the latest mobile operating software.

iPhone, iPad, Blackberry 10, Windows Phone 8 and Nokia Symbian Devices and so forth; are the number of devices where Instagram can operate.

INSTAGRAM Trends in the business• The development of new smartphone with high mega pixel is also

advantageous to the growth of Instagram usage. Strengths and weaknessesStrengths•

It enables people that are lazy to type a better way to tell a story.• The other strength of Instagram is the level of expertise that the

team has for example Kevin Systrom has been part of Google and Odeo which is now twitter; and Mike Krieger interned at Microsoft Power Point’s team as a PM and was a software developer at Xmarks.

INSTAGRAM Weakness• The weakness that are usually faced by Instagram

users are connection problems• The other problem about Instagram is that people are

using it to take normal pictures and videos therefore misrepresenting the purpose behind Instagram “for people to share exclusive moments”.

INSTAGRAM Major issues facing the business • Since Facebook bought Instagram issues may arise to

adaptation of management style, procedures.• Keeping a continuous satisfactory consumer presumption

about Instagram and meeting user expectation due to the merger and technological advancement happening nowadays.

Competitors• Instagram competitors are Sony, Swatch, Dunkin Donuts.

WHATSAPP• It is a proprietary, cross-platform instant messaging

subscription service for smartphones. Apart from sending pictures it also allow users to send each other images, videos and audio messages as well as their location using integrated mapping features.

• This app allow people to share content easily because a receiver can receive a message sent to him even if he is offline, but only if he has airtime.

WHATSAPP Trends in the business• Whatsapp has over 190 million monthly active users, 400

million photos are shared each day, and the messaging system handles more than 10 billion messages each day.

• With these numbers in place I thing this app is the mostly daily accessed app in the world; because it has easy access at cheaper rates.

• The recent action by Facebook to purchase this app will contribute positively to the upgrading of its features and performance.

WHATSAPP Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths• The most powerful strength that Whatsapp has is that it’s suitable

for all mobile phone users, old and young generations .• Which means it’s usage will continue to grow because it is also

cheap for instant it helps students to create groups where they will easily share ideas concerning the current group work.

Weakness• The weakness with this app is that sometimes it’s become

irritating to receive messages even if you are offline.

WHATSAPP Competition• The competition that Whatsapp faces comes from Mxit,

WeChat, and Viber, but the number of users that use this app daily makes it to dominate the market division of instant messaging.

• The other reasons that makes this app to dominate the industry are the limitations that other competing apps have.

• Example Viber is compatible with Blackberry, iOS, Mac, Symbian and Windows phone.

SKYPE

SKYPE This is a free premium “freemium” voice over IP

service and instant messaging client, currently developed by the Microsoft Skype Division.

The service allows users to communicate with peer by voice using microphone, video by using a webcam, and instant messaging over the Internet.

Calls to other users within the Skype service are free of charge, while calls to landline telephones and mobile phones are charged via a debit-based user account system.

SKYPE Trends in the Business• This app has become popular for its additional

features, including file transfer, and videoconferencing. It is a hybrid peer-to-peer and client-server system.

• It makes use of background processing on computers running Skype software, and this is reflected in Skype’s original proposed name of Sky Peer-to-Peer.

SKYPE Strengths/WeaknessesStrengths• It key strength is that it enables people to see each

other when they are talking and companies with different decentralised offices can use Skype to make a videoconference.

• It can enhance the way employees perform work while at their homes.

SKYPE

Weakness• The weakness is that it requires a lot of resource for a

person to use it. Major Issues facing the business• Some network administrators have banned Skype on

corporate, government, home and education networks, citing reasons such as inappropriate usage of resources, excessive bandwidth usage, and security concerns.

• The competitors are Linphone and Google Hangouts.

Mxit

Mxit Mxit is an IM application used to exchange text

messages, pictures and videos. The Mxit concept was born in 2003 after the failure of

Alaya, an SMS based game, due to the high cost of sms at the time.

Mxit then became arguably the most popular Instant Messaging app in SA.

Mxit Trends in the business:• The rise in the number subscribers of

Woolworths’ MySchool MyPlanet app by 55 870 has been attributed solely to Mxit, thus showing the effectiveness of Mxit as an advertising platform for Businesses.

• Mobile advertising grew by 75% in 2013 alone.

Mxit Strengths and WeaknessesStrengths• Mxit is compatible with many platforms; the app can run on

over 8000 different devices.• With more than 85% of its users being in SA, Mxit is not

very popular internationally.

Weakness• Mxit is mostly criticized for its lack of security and its

exposure of young girls to pedophiles.

Mxit Competitors and potential competitors• Mxit is competing with the likes of Whatsapp, BBM, WeChat

etc. which are also IM apps and offer much more than what Mxit has to offer in terms of the size of files that the apps allows the users to share.

Issues facing the business• Mxit is used mostly by teenagers, under the age of 18, and

there has been a growing trend of a phenomenon called sexting. These apps have become the place where the pedophiles find their targets

SNAPCHAT

SNAPCHAT Snapchat is an app where users sharing photos and

videos. The user take a photo/video and can then edit it and send it to the other user who will then view it temporarily before it is destroyed from the servers.

Though Snapchat went public in July of 2011, towards the end of 2012 it still had not made any revenue, but just over a year after that the company had rejected acquisition offers of $3billion and $4billion by Facebook and Google respectively.

SNAPCHAT Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths• Snapchat users feel more comfortable sharing

messages on this app over the other apps because of its functionality of disabling the content after the user-set period has expired.

• The disabling of chat history on Snapchat helps people not to be embarrassed once they have sent too many messages without response

SNAPCHATWeakness• Snapchat has been a playground for hackers who have

hacked into their system and publicized the personal details of its users. “SnapchatDB.info” is a website where personal details of the app users were published

Major issues facing the business:• Mxit and Snapchat are both used mostly by teenagers,

under the age of 18, and there has been a growing trend of a phenomenon called sexting. These apps have become the place where the pedophiles find their targets.

SNAPCHAT Competitors and potential competitors• This app is competing mostly with Instagram

which has also established itself as a platform for sharing editing and sharing pictures and videos.

• An upcoming competitor of Snapchat is wire which was valued at $1.8 Million before it was even released.