MySpace growth faces cultural hurdles

MySpace's biggest challenges in expanding abroad involve cultural differences. People outside the United States have different and very established habits when it comes to socializing online. And many do so by using mobile phones rather than computers.

"In the U.S., teen and twentysomething culture is more about IM," or instant messaging, according to Danah Boyd, a fellow at the Annenberg Center at the University of Southern California who studies popular culture and technology. In other countries, "the primary way of talking to your friends is SMS," the text messages on mobile phones.

Would you agree with it? IM is pretty strong in Switzerland too. But elsewhere? Does anyone have figures concerning this?

Wireless: Building the right cellphone

"This industry is a triangle, with three points," Ron Garriques, president of the mobile devices business at Motorola, said in a recent interview, citing the wildly successful Razr line of phones as an example of how sharpening the three points - network technology, consumer electronics and fashion - can lead to runaway success.

Handset makers like Motorola need to address all of these for their two categories of customers, phone carriers and retail consumers, he said. So Motorola needs to offer phones with HSDPA technology, the fastest data standard available, for carriers that want to push advanced services like video and Web browsing.

On the consumer electronics point of the triangle, "if you don't have a camera with 2 megapixels, or 4 megapixels or 5 megapixels or whatever, and everybody else does, then people aren't going to aspire to buy your device," Garriques said, referring to camera resolution.

And on point No. 3, "there's the fashion industry," Garriques said. "If you make a device that looks like the remote control of your TV set, nobody's going to buy it.