Vodafone rolls out 360 degrees of proximity
VODAFONE WENT live today with its Internet and data service for mobile phones and PCs, dubbed Vodafone 360.
Taking a page from US operators, Vodafone is pitching a complete data service that its PR spinners have been claiming will be the pinnacle of human achievement for social networking.
The centrepiece of Vodafone 360 is its People service that merges your contact books across services like Facebook, Live Messenger, and Google Talk. According to the company, more services such as Twitter, Hyves and studiVZ will also be available soon. You'll also be able to install a client app on your computer and access your contacts anywhere, so long as you have an Internet connection. This will come in handy if you lose your phone and SIM card somehow.
Additionally this fusion of social networks will also allow you to share audio and video across networks. At 3G data rates, of course, unless you hook up to WiFi.
The 360 service is currently being flogged with two Samsung handsets that "give the best Vodafone 360 experience". The Samsung handsets are based on TI's OMAP and LiMo OS, but fear not, most of the 360 services will be available to Symbian-based phones such as Nokia's. As of today, there are 10 handsets supporting 360.
The "tailor-made" Samsung handsets will include an algorithm that organises your address book according to proximity, that is, your most frequent contacts at the top, versus that-guy-who-bullied-you-in-kindergarten-whom-you-accidentally-bumped-into-last-month-and-traded-contacts-with at the bottom.
Eight €uroland countries will have the service right now. Oh, and for what it's worth, the client software also supports Mac fanboys, if you can pry them away from their Iphones. µ
Share this:
ShareBusiness Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
As part of a secret, global experiment, that has been running for a couple of decades, a select number of children have specific gene sequences modified shortly after birth to make them pre-disposed towards purchasing Apple products, despite the existence of cheaper, more versatile, or equally-functional alternatives.
These people also have a reality block that prevents them from seeing the absurdity of non user-replaceable rechargeable batteries.
You will not prise the iPhones & other Apple products from these people's hands - ever!
If Vodafone 360 is a hit with consumers, I think we can expect to see similar services emerge quickly. However while Vodafone has spent almost two years developing its service in-house, it may take much less time for others to catch up, using external service providers. At the moment, platforms such as Android are much better placed to innovate and deploy new services. Unless managed in the right way, operators will struggle to cope with this pace of innovation.
Great article apart from one IMPORTANT thing, it doesn't support touchphones. This means that big hitters like the NOkia 5800, N97 etc wont have it
I don't get Vodafone? Earlier this year they rolled out a slick service at www.pocketlife.com, soon after taking it to the iPhone - now they release a Vodafone branded version on Samsung? Huh? Whereas Pocket Life works like a breeze, 360 does not work for me - I have problems to sync and my facebook updates dont work either. Come on Vodafone!