CAMERA PHONES ADD MOBILITY, IMMEDIACY TO WEB LOGS

By K. Oanh Ha
mercury News

Laura Burstein is by no means famous, yet she has an international fan
club that devours every detail of her life.

Dozens of virtual groupies get a vicarious rush staring at the photo of
the clam and garlic pizza she had for lunch. They oooh over the cute
snapshots of Percy, her favorite tabby cat. They ogle the ones of
Burstein getting a haircut or hanging out with friends.

They glimpse her life through a visual diary she keeps on the Internet.
It's filled with images captured through the lens of her camera phone,
which goes everywhere she does.

``It's very flattering that complete strangers are interested in what
I'm doing,'' says Burstein, a 27-year-old from Palo Alto who works in
media.

Burstein is on the forefront of the latest technological craze, known
as mobile blogging -- or ``moblogging,'' for those in the know. There
are moblogs devoted to capturing people in the midst of a kiss, bento
boxes and even the journeys of a U.S. senator: Glenn Reese, Democrat
from South Carolina.

Moblogging may seem little more than collective navel-gazing; one site
is literally devoted to bellies in all their glory. But it also raises
questions about a culture that seemingly embraces life as if it were a
reality show and thrives on virtual connections.

Here, in this pixeled world of grainy and ill-composed images, the
narcissists and the voyeurs find each other.

``It's their 15 seconds of fame,'' says Chris Hoar, founder of San
Diego-based Textamerica, a popular site that hosts moblogs. ``People
are saying `I'm an individual. My life is important and interesting.'
They have a compulsion to share it with you because they think you
should be interested.''

Published in seconds

Mobloggers take images with their camera phones and within seconds can
wirelessly e-mail and publish them to a Web site for the world to
contemplate. The trend is expected to grow as camera phones, which have
already outpaced digital cameras in sales, become more ubiquitous.

It's estimated that 11 million camera phones will be sold in the United
States this year, up from 7 million last year, according to research
firm International Data Corp.

The growth in moblogging is also driven by Web sites that help people
publish their moblogs. For those who may attest that the unobserved
life is not worth living, the sites, such as Textamerica, Buzznet and
SnapNPost, serve as virtual scrapbooks.

Many of the sites have seen their membership numbers -- which run into
the hundreds of thousands -- nearly double from month to month.

The sites often provide community forums, encouraging mobloggers to
post photos when news occurs. Yafro, started this year by the Berkeley
founders of dating site Hot or Not, is a popular place to find pictures
of the Iraq occupation, posted by American soldiers stationed there.

Site users say they like the sense of community. Sibylle Schwarz, a San
Francisco techie and shutterbug, posts images of the city to Buzznet as
often as five times a week.

``It's my way of connecting with the city,'' Schwarz says. ``After I
posted one photo, someone wrote and said, `I know where that is. I'm a
neighbor.' That's a strong way of making an anonymous place personal.''

Within this digitized world, commenting on strangers' photos is just as
important as sharing your own. Textamerica, for example, has 500,000
registered users (about half are from the United States). But fewer
than a quarter actually post images to the site. The vast majority
register to comment on the images.

Cat Schwartz, a San Francisco anchorwoman for a cable show, owns the
most popular moblog on Textamerica.

Feeling `connected'

``Browsing through a stranger's photos definitely makes you feel
connected to someone you don't know,'' she said. ``It makes you feel
you have more friends than you really do.'

The vast majority of moblogs share a certain mundaneness. The fact that
the realities of daily life are often, well, boring doesn't seem to be
a detractor.

The low quality and resolution of camera phones' images encourage
people to take more photos, said Mizuko Ito, an anthropologist at the
University of Southern California and Tokyo's Keio University who
studies cell phone culture.

``The viewpoint of many moblogs tends to be very personal and off the
cuff,'' said Ito, whose own moblog chronicles what she puts into her
children's bento lunch boxes every day. ``The images are temporal,
fleeting.''

Others keep moblogs as a way of bridging the miles between friends and
family. Mohammed Mudassir, a software engineer, moved to San Jose two
years ago from Pakistan. His moblog is his connection to his family.
Mudassir, 25, takes photos of his life at work and at home ``because my
family love to see me, and that way I can prove to my mother I'm not
starving myself.''

The mainstreaming of moblogging may speak volumes about our deepening
relationship with technology, says psychologist Ofer Zur, who studies
technology's impact on our lives.

``There's an emptiness within ourselves that's partly fueled by
technology. It can be amazing, and it can also give us a sense of
insignificance,'' Zur says. Moblogging and other virtual activities
help people ``find a drama, an empty adrenaline. We have an illusion of
connection with people we don't really have a connection with.''

That may be true, concedes Burstein, the compulsive moblogger. She
doesn't have much of a relationship with her fan club.

But the appeal of moblogging for her and her friends is that ``people
want to be reminded that they are like other people,'' she says.
``There's a bond in sharing the experiences of everyday life.''
Contact K. Oanh Ha at [log in to unmask] or (408) 278-3457.


BINNEH S MINTEH
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

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