Motoblur is a firmware skin, which integrates postings and updates from the user’s social networking accounts. Blur supports Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, and a few other social networking and messaging services. Blur is customizable in terms of the threads that appear on your home page, and is updated via 3G data push from the Internet to the device. Each specific networking hub can also be customized, making it an exciting new application for social networking. Messaging is integrated and easy with Blur. All social media mail and email inboxes are accessed from the messaging widget, and can be viewed as a single inbox to make managing messages simple and fast. Blur also includes a service where you can remotely locate and wipe your Blur enabled device, similar to the Apple’s “Find my iPhone†feature in MobileMe.
The notifications feed is called “The Happenings,†which consists of requests and status updates. It can be customized either according to the service (i.e. Facebook) or according to contact. With the release of their 3G Android powered mobile device, the Droid, Motorola and Google introduced the ability for your contacts to be pulled from your social networks and entered into your phone thanks to integration with the Facebook app. These contacts were automatically added to the phone, and synced with the anchored Google account, creating an address book complete with Facebook profile pictures and direct links to profile pages along with phone numbers, emails, and other information. Too cool.
But extreme convenience wasn’t enough for Motorola and Google, they had to take it a step further and toward full mobile integration of social media accounts. All of the features and benefits of Motoblur are interesting, but when the rubber hits the road will people like it? In my opinion, it’s almost too much to keep track of. The average person on a social network is not the type to check their status updates and post something new every few minutes (although they’re out there). Blur seems to be built for the hardcore facebookers, and myspace divas of the world, who are now being overrun by soccer moms with 802.11 Wi-Fi connections. They don’t know LAN stands for and they sure as heck don’t need Motoblur’s capabilities. Nevertheless, the phones will sell, we’ll just have to wait and see how many of Blur functionalities become routine, and how many get discontinued by their own customizable settings. I think it’ll be worth a go.
You can read more about Motoblur and the phones that support it here.
