The mobile web
I just attended a luncheon regarding the rising opportunities in the online mobile phone markets and it was pretty interesting. I found out the the average youth user in China sends an average of 100 text messages a day. That’s just sending! Considering I’d never sent a text message in my life prior to coming to Hong Kong, that just seems inconceivable to me.
However, the focus of the presentation was about the youth market and how it’s affecting and shaping the mobile web. Basically the premise is that the kids today are deciding and driving the technology and services available on mobile devices and us old folks will just get whatever they decide on. Lucky us. The 2 second attention span generation has come to power.
Supposedly, 50 Cent and young Japanese girls have something in common. They are doing something called Lifecasting. They basically wear their phones around their necks and let it record constantly throughout their day and it auto transmits these images or video to an online accessible site. Personally, I’m not sure how I would feel about this but I guess it would keep Fiddy from doing illegal activities since he’d be broadcasting whatever he’s doing to the world. The japanese girls will probably get flooded with dirty old men though. But maybe that’s what they’re going for.
It sounds like more and more content on mobile devices will be branded as well. Just like you can’t have a college bowl game without some companies name and logo plastered all over it. Just like you can’t play certain video games without seeing billboards in the games advertising everything from soft drinks to cars. Now your mobile content will also be branded. Considering the size of the screens, I hope that you can still see what you were looking for with all those logos.
Of course since this meeting I’ve been thinking about the possibilities of making this site and A Little Scary more mobile friendly. I found this Wordpress Mobile Plugin that looks like it makes your site mobile phone compatible and thought I might give it a try. If anyone out there has any opinions on the matter, please leave them in the comments.
I’ve gotten used to having access to websites with mobile content. Even my bank has a mobile specific site.
I do get frustrated with sites that aren’t mobile friendly but seem like they should be (like airlines and brightkite). I don’t worry about it too much though.
Google is pretty good about being mobile friendly. Google Maps on mobile is very, very, very useful.
I think the mobile web is definitely going to be as important as the web as viewed through a PC of some sort. I’m intermittently using brightkite from my phone for sending updates, though I don’t get updates on my phone yet. I don’t need my phone to go off everytime someone I know has a bagel.