Rob Osborn from Gemini Mobile spoke at the SD Forum event to show off the eXplo 3D Community Platform and why creating 3D virtual worlds was more than just fun and games. In his presentation he showed how the simple use of an avatar contained in a rather simple virtual town could open up possibilities for social networking, information gathering, advertising, marketing and content discovery for music, photos and more. While not yet available in the US, the couple of demos were from Softbank Japan S!Town.
Now it may seem a bit odd that people are building 3D virtual places on the mobile phone when the popularity on the PC has been far from ubiquity, however after hearing what Rob said, it is important to understand that it is not merely for entertainment and gaming. Based on what is available today on a mobile phone, it is still rather cumbersome on most devices to do intuitive information gathering. Spinning click wheels or wearing out scrolling buttons to find sports scores, stock quotes or news snippets can be a somewhat laborious task.
The tedium can be broken through graphical representation such as a virtual 3D space. While you could argue that a 2D or icon based navigation can provide relief, it still lacks the immersion and stickiness from building an environment. Add to this the ability to create objects, place advertising, and interact with avatars and it really starts to get engaging quickly with just a simple interface.
The problem of mobile content discovery has continued to be an issue for subscribers. The potential for building from the eXplo platform could help alleviate some of these issues by helping subscribers to visualize what they are looking for through a less intimidating interface that provides a more engaging feel, similar to browsing through a small virtual store. The visual sorting should be more appealing that dealing with a wall of text that link to content. I am hopeful that adopting this type of platform can be in conjunction with a mixed strategy of 2D and text links. Since people want to access information in different styles (faucet vs. fire hydrant analog), the 3D approach should not be exclusive an abandon other methods of accessing information, content, and services. The waves of adoption will happen slowly and with more open systems rather than closed being a trend, there still needs to be multiple channels of getting at the same things.
While there is no install in North America for Gemini’s solution, the heads up was that second half of 2008, they hope to launch in the US.
