Ovi Contacts, which integrates with the Contacts application, is an instant messaging and presence sharing service. It allows you to chat to your friends (instant messaging) and share information about what you are doing (presence). The latter currently consists of a customisable message (status), music currently being played, call status, and location.
While instant messaging is the most obvious function of Ovi Contacts, it is the presence information which may have more of an impact in the long term. Providing contextual information about what your contacts are currently doing allows you to make more intelligent decisions about when and how to contact them. This is part of the thinking behind social location which Nokia has recently been promoting.
Location sharing, at the presence level, is done via landmarks (i.e. you choose the landmarks at which you are happy to share your location). When you are physically at those landmarks, your presence information is automatically updated. The landmark name is shown in brackets after your name in the list view and is also shown in your profile. This level of sharing is fairly granular, as others will only see the landmark name.
However you can also choose to send your precise location to a friend when chatting to them and they can then view this information in Nokia Maps. As shown below, your location is marked by an icon made up of your profile picture.
What's notable about these location features is that they are more geared to providing contact context rather than being part of a map-centric friend finder as seen in Nokia's Friend View and Google's Latitude.
Currently Ovi Contacts is limited in its impact because it is being used by only a limited number of people. For such a service, the network effect is very important (i.e. the more people use a service, the more valuable it becomes). Currently you can add contacts from Google Talk (and other XMPP based services) to Ovi Contacts, but other, more popular, IM services are not supported.
One impressive aspect of Ovi Contacts, and something we will be seeing for other Ovi services, is the ability to sign up for a Nokia Account (Nokia's single sign on solution) on the device itself. Existing Ovi users will likely already have such an account, and it certainly enables you to get things up and running quickly, especially if you regularly change devices.
Ovi Contacts is still in beta, which means you may still experience crashes and other problems with the service. However it has come a long way since the first version of Nokia Chat.
Nokia are currently conducting a survey, via the Beta Labs Blog, on Ovi Contacts. You can help shape the future of the product by giving your feedback and opinions.
Other IM networks and the network externalities (network effect)
Realistically, to achieve a reasonable level of uptake, Nokia will, as a minimum, need to allow you to add contacts from other IM networks (Microsoft Live Messenger, Yahoo, AIM, Skype) to Ovi Contacts. Even this is flawed, as most people will prefer to use their existing IM account (why go to the bother of telling all your friends you're now name@ovi.com, not name@msn.com).
Therefore, ideally, it should be possible to sign on to existing IM networks using existing accounts. This would allow users to appear on their existing IM network with their current username. It also avoids the need to add contacts all over again. Nokia's recent acquisition of Oz Communications should provide the technology to enable this. It would also let Ovi contacts take advantage of the network effect of other IM networks.
Ovi Contacts at MWC
Ovi Contacts was pre-installed on the phones Nokia launched at MWC this year, the E55 and N86 shown below being two examples of this. Moreover it was included as a plug-in on the home screen of the device - this is very valuable screen real estate and underlines the importance of the service. Ovi Contacts is a key part of Nokia's play for the social location enabled address book (or, as I put it above, the context aware contacts list).
Ovi Contacts set up on the home screen of the recently announced E55
Ovi Contacts setup on the home screen of the Nokia N86 8MP