Next Generation Wireless Applications: Creating Mobile Applications in a Web 2.0 and Mobile 2.0 World, 2nd Edition

4.4 MOBILE INTERACTION IN THE MOBILE ECOSYSTEM

Figure 4.4 shows our mobile ecosystem and the locations of each of the possible actor types: human, machine and content.

Let us now examine the layers in the ecosystem and how they support our primary modes of interaction: H2H, H2C, H2M and M2M.

Figure 4.4 Positioning the actors in the mobile ecosystem.

4.4.1 Social Network

The social network is the people who use the mobile services. By explicitly including them in the model we are acknowledging and emphasising that people who use mobile services exhibit all forms of social interaction. A social network is a form of communications network in its own right. We often forget this.

The social network is the highest layer in our network, or its inner core, depending on how we view things. Either way, it is a sensible idea to give due reverence to the users! The inner core is a useful perspective to reinforce the notion that the users are at the centre of our mobile services cosmos. Users use (and abuse) the system and pay to do so. They are its lifeblood, so they deserve respect. In terms of software applications, it would be more usual not to include the social network as part of the model, but we are concerned with the higher abstraction of mobile services where we expect services to be more intimately tied to social habits given the intimate relationship between a user and a device that ...