There is little doubt that sites such as YouTube have transformed the entertainment industry. The power to entertain no longer relies on big budgets, stars, and sophisticated studios. However, it’s still a one way process – someone creates, others consume.
Sony Ericsson Creations is designed to transform this process, into one in which content is continually evolving: Where the consumer can become the entertainer by editing content created by others.
“At Sony Ericsson we believe that everyone has a sense of creativity within them,” says Christopher David, Head of Developer and Partner Engagement at Sony Ericsson. “It may be something as simple as taking a picture, where consciously or unconsciously they choose the subject matter, lighting, perspective and alike. Through Creations we hope unleash and extend this personal creativity.”
At the core of Creations is a publishing space where all content is submitted under the Creative Commons licence. Community members will be able to upload content, which is then available for anyone to use, share, or update.
“We want to enable our users, indeed the whole world, to start participating in entertainment, collaborating, co-innovating, co-creating within the context of entertaining and bringing smiles to peoples’ faces,” says Christopher.
At launch Creations will consist of the web publishing cloud infrastructure and a set of PC and phone based tools to enable community members to modify the content. The initial batch of tools will provide for manipulation of published items into phone content: themes, wallpaper, and ringtones.
The reason for choosing these tools is fairly obvious. For example, according to Christopher, the PC version of Sony Ericsson theme creator has been downloaded 2 million times and been used to create themes that have resulted in 140 million downloads. A version of the theme creator will therefore be incorporated into the community cloud and also made available for devices. The device version will make it “possible for users to create theme on their phone in just a couple of clicks,” claims Christopher.
Progressively, Sony Ericsson expects to add more cloud, PC, and phone based ‘DIY’ applications, to enable users to manipulate content within Creations. “Our goal is that Creations should not just be a community of Sony Ericsson users,” says Christopher. “We want everyone to be involved, through the web and through mobile devices. As a result the DIY tools will be available for any phones running our supported platforms: Symbian and Android. The only difference will be that the best user experience will be delivered to Sony Ericsson phones.”
While the success of this venture hinges on user participation, the role of third-party developers is equally important.
“We will be looking to our community of developer partners to create new types of content and provide innovative ways of updating it,” says Christopher. “To enable this we will be providing tools and information to enable developers to access the Creations content and deliver updated content back to the cloud.”
This will be a key theme of the Sony Ericsson Creation Day in App Planet on Wednesday February 17 at MWC. (Developers who don’t yet have MWC tickets, but would like to attend Creation Day can obtain tickets by send an email, explain why they would like to attend, to dwevents@sonyericsson.com.)
Creations will undoubtedly be the subject of much debate in the coming months. The concept bares some similarities with the community Nokia attempted to kick-start around MOSH – such as their activities at Pop!Tech in 2007. However, Creations seen to be quite different and Sony Ericsson have a big advantage in being able to draw on Sony’s pool of entertainment talent if Creations needs to be nudged in the right direction.
You can check out Sony Ericsson Creations at creations.sonyericsson.com and judge for yourself.