The path of least resistance

Facebook’s been busy. While everyone in the telecoms media – and some of the mainstream press – got overly excited about what they all confidently predicted was going to be a mobile OS/handset/strategy announcement this week (then rapidly backtracking when it turned out NOT to be mobile, but search), everyone pretty much as missed that the social network has moved into mobile.

In Canada, Facebook is running a limitedtrial of voice calling over wifi between Facebook contacts. OK, so its hardly going to have Vodafone quaking in its superannuated boots, but it marks a big step. More and more people – there are more than a billion on Facebook now – use IM on the site to talk to each other. Adding voice is a natural progression and marks the start of a shift in customer usage.

Consumers will take the path of least resistance when it comes to, well, anything pretty much and if it slowly becomes easy to make calls to all intents and purposes, across Facebook via wifi, then people will.

And while many of you are now sniggering and my niaivity, bear in mind HMV. In 2002 it was a £1billion business, surfing the boom in CD and DVD purchasing and the rabid hunger for computer games. Just ten years later its shares are worthless and it is likely to go to the wall. Why? It didn’t understand that consumers want the easy life. Music, film, books and games are all digital content that can be downloaded wherever and whenever the user wants.  And it was cheaper, but that I think is red herring. It's the simplicity and how the medium suits the content.

Apart from purists who want something to hold and sleeve notes to read (and I was one, and I love vinyl), why would you schlep to a shop buy a CD and schlep home to listen to it when you can pull it out of the air, track by track if you want, and listen to it there an then.

It killed HMV, Blockbuster Video and Jessops. It will kill others. Several are dying as you read this.

And the same could happen with Facebook’s little trial in Canada. Make something easy – and in this case free – and people will use it. With a social media generation coming of age, how long before paying to make calls on a mobile is viewed as something your old dad does?

AS HMV et al have proved, the pace of change of technology drives the pace of change of consumer behaviour and this change is becoming increasingly rapid. Businesses die very quickly these days, especially ones with high overheads.

The launch of Facebook graph and its lean into search also plays a role. It could act like a really deep directory that allows you find people and talk to them – not just your mates, but businesses and more.

It is an interesting time in mobile telecoms: OTT services are at a very early stage and they will ravage the industry. In ten years, as with the music industry, the movie industry, the retail industry and so on, the names of the companies that you make calls through will be very different to the ones we lionize today. Things are changing. The revolution has begun.