As we all know, online (or virtual) communities are groups of people that primarily or initially interact with each other over the Internet. People who are active in the same social spaces on a regular basis will probably start to recognize other visitors after a while [Wolf, 2006]. With some of them, they will interact by sharing or exchanging information or thoughts. Communication plays an important role in everybody’s life, professionally as well as personally. Lately, the demand for efficient communication ‘tools’ has steadily increased. Most newly developed technologies have resulted from this trend. The main drivers involved are users’ mobility and their continuous need for ubiquitous communication: mobile applications make it possible to communicate whenever and wherever people want [Jaokar & Fish, 2006; Lacohée, Wakeford & Pearson, 2003].

The A4MC³ project (Architecture for Mobile Community Content Creation), involves the development of a mobile application used within a city context to allow users, i.e. (mainly) city inhabitants, to communicate and share information with one another. This application aims to connect users and to serve a variety of heterogeneous goals, ranging from maintaining social contacts to sharing content, from publishing in an online newsletter (like a city blog or forum) to advertising a business in a user-tailored way. In the context of this project, an empirical study was conducted on the use of mobile technologies by people in a city context and on their impact on the formation of the community by the exchange of content in the form of photos and recommendations [Calvi & Jans, 2007; Jans & Calvi, 2006]. In Figure 1, the functionalities of this mobile city application are shown. In this paper, we describe the role that interaction can play in the future, when there will be an even bigger need to communicate anywhere and at any time: It will be argued that mobile technologies can be used to achieve this goal. The technical aspects, related to the development of this client application that will be done by EDM and Androme, are described in detail in Jehaes et al (2007), but will not be mentioned here.

The paper is structured as follows: In Section 2, we examine the social aspects and other success criteria related to Web 2.0 technologies, with a special focus on the sociability, usability and accessibility of Mobile 2.0. Section 3 discusses some possible elements that are needed to build a community within a city context. Finally in Section 4, we will give conclusions and recommendations.

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