The Power of the Mobile Community

As you can see from my other entries, one of my passions is finding new examples of Digital Swarms in action.  Two user-driven services that have become very popular are Trapster (www.trapster,com) and Urban Spoon (www.urbanspoon.com).  Trapster provides an updated view of speed traps all over the world.  It has even added a recent feature that include real-time feedback from other users on the location of police on the road.  Urban Spoon offers updated restaurant info and ratings (mostly from other eaters) in your location with a quick navigation/search feature especially tailored to mobile users.  Both of these applications gain there true value from the network of mobile participants that can add real-time content.  Especially in the case of Trapster, this real-time sensing by the group can provide real benefit to the user (maybe not in the eyes of the poilice!). 

As phones become smarter and higher speed 4G networks roll out, you can envision rich media exchanges among the network such updated photos of police locations, the signal strength of police radars plotted on a map, virtual tours of restaurants and what each meal looks like, and possibly even interviews with servers!  This may all sound a bit crazy, but ultimately, users will determine which applications survive (as they do today in the appstore model), not carriers or content owners.  It is this user-centric power that will unlock more Digital Swarms in the future.