People they come together (harpooning information on AT&T's Blackberry Torch offering)

If you're not subscribing to my music blog, then perhaps you missed this post that I shared a few minutes ago, based upon this AT&T Blackberry commercial.



As I mentioned in the earlier post, I could have taken that post in several different directions, but chose to focus on the music. I'd like to take a moment, however, and explore one of the other issues raised by the video.

Or I could have taken the social media angle, and noted how multiple information sources can be brought together to serve a single purpose.

While the commercial seeks to emphasize that AT&T and Blackberry can bring all of these different sources into the palm (whoops) of your hand, the truth is that this coordination of information goes well beyond this service or this hardware platform.

Let's look at all the information sources that appear in the commercial. I'll probably miss some of them, but we'll still get a lot.

You start with an electronic mail application, which includes a short message.

Next, you are reading a book online.

After that, you switch to a music application and start playing a song.

Then you watch a TV show online.

Next, you use an online map to plan a trip.

Then, you look at a picture of your starting location.

Then you go to an online social network (that started in the northeastern United States, naturally) and share a status update. Because this is a social network, your friends respond with text (and picture) responses.

Which prompts the sharing of a picture from ANOTHER picture service, Yahoo's Flickr. (Yup, co-opetition again.)

Then you use the phone's voice-activated search system to search for something.

And we're only halfway through the commercial. You still have calendar applications, alarm clock applications, game applications, and who knows what all.

Now there are some people who spend all of their online life on a single service, and that service is the focus of all of their online attention. Yet there are others who are jumping around between multiple services. I happen to fall in the latter category, and this post itself falls into the latter category. Some people will go to blogspot.com to read it, others to Google's Feedburner, others will get here via Google search, others will see a link to it via another service (Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, Google Buzz). Maybe someone will see it in Google Buzz, and I'll respond to the person on Facebook. Or maybe someone will walk up to me one day and talk about the Moby post. (Then I'll ask, "Which one?")

And then there's a whole other level beyond this. Someone will be searching for random information about the Blackberry Torch from AT&T, and will look at this post along with other information about the device.