Shaun Tollerton blog

This is my idea for the research brief:

Each day, millions of commuters travel into the cities to work. When we are on the train there are people around us, sometimes hundreds if it's rush hour. Most of the time we will never speak to these people.
Wouldnt it be good to connect to the people on the train? Share your interests, photos, music etc. For all we know a person sitting on the same train as you a few carriages in front may have visited a restaurant you are about to book, a person sitting a carriage behind may have even gone to the same concert you went to last weekend, a person you can see sitting to your left may even be dating one of your old school friends. Who knows what you may have in common with the people we see around us everyday.

How can we connect to commuters?
I think a device, whether made solely for this purpose, or an existing device, which contains wireless connectivity so it can connect to over mobile devices. This service could be something called, 'MySpace Mobile'. A user/commuter could access the already well established MySpace homepage and be confronted with two options. The first to log-on as normal, so they can update themselves with the friends they've already added to their profile. Or the second option would be to log-on to 'MySpace Mobile'. Once signed in to this option the software then searches an area around you, say 150ft, by using a radio frequency, like when we currently search for devices using Bluetooth. Your screen will show your personal homepage with all your uploaded media and information you have already added about yourself such as your interests. There would be a section of this screen which would show live profile images and accompanying names which have just been found by your device (people will appear and disappear depending on their range status). You can then anonymously browse their 'MySpace Mobile' profiles. If you like the sound of this person you could then have the option to have an instant chat, like MSN Messenger. There could even be an audio option, so you could actually talk to the person. If they are near you it would be weird because you might be able to hear them, so you could physically go over and meet them. But if they were a few carriage in front it might be quite nice to do. You could also listen to their music via a stream, or even download their track (with the three plays or three days limitation) and having the option to buy a full download at a later stage.

How would the system work &/or be financed?
A users device would need to connect to the internet via WiFi then a transport company would need to have WiFi installed in their trains and advertise it as a value added service which may attract commuters to use their transport service and therefore would pay for the wifi in itself.
But to connect to local users your device would need to be compatible. It would use some kind of radio frequency like Bluetooth to connect. But this technology could be standard with all mobile handsets anyway by the time this idea would go live.
Software may need to be downloaded from MySpace themselves.
Ultimately though, advertising would pay for the system. Two million commuters travel into London every day, thats a large audience!

I have found a company that has incorporated MySpace into their mobile phone service, but it doesnt have the 150ft connectivity idea. Their website is:

Helio

This is another company I have found called Jambo (Swahili for hello):