Last Thursday a group of bloggers were invited by Vodafone to the launch of their new Vodafone 360 internet service.
The Dita Von Teese appearance was brief, her contribution minimal, and her departure swift.
The two brief speeches did little to whet the appetite, and I was wondering where all this was going, until I sat in with Pat Phelan to get an in-depth demo of the 360 service on one of the dedicated 360 handsets (Samsung H1).
The software and hardware union were very slick. The 3D view was pretty but for me I’d stick to a 2D list view for speed.
People are at the core of 360, with the aim of highlighting that cellular networks were social networks before Facebook and Twitter came along.
360 merges your contacts from the services it supports. Add your Facebook account, your friends are added to your contact list, add gmail and your contacts are added, and so on.
The group functionality was simple but very useful. For example, I could share my location with my ‘family’ group, but hide it from my ‘friends’ group.
Sharing and synchronization is prominent too. Take a photo on your camera phone, and it automatically appears in your 360 web account, where you can share it with friends. New contacts are automatically synchronized too. You can also update your social networks (just Facebook for now I think?) and IM.
Here’s a video of the demo we received:
I was very impressed with the handset and the 360 software integration, but I’m looking forward to receiving a demo unit to get a proper idea of it’s strengths and weaknesses.
Putting people and their interactions (voice/IM/sms/social networking) front and center is a winner. Coupled with location based services, music, and photos and you have a very nice package.
The one area that was not covered in much detail was the application market place (referred to as store in documentation but shop in the software). Apple’s App Store integration with the iPhone is seen as a key advantage, so the shop implementation will need to be well executed, as it will be compared to Apple’s benchmark. Announcing a very rewarding (€100,000 top prize) widget competition will attract developers, I wonder will the shop be up to scratch though.
I think Vodafone could be onto a winner with 360 if they get the cost of it right. We are well aware of how data plans in Ireland are woefully inadequate, so for a device and service which will be sending and receiving lots of data, Vodafone will need to price it wisely.
P.S. Thanks to Keith for meeting up before hand, if only he’d stop using the silly business words in my presence.