The MoPR Blog

In a recent post on Mobile Entertainment Business Stuart O’Brien wrote up a study conducted by mobile analytics and payment company, Bango.

The Bango study surveyed Nielsen’s top 20 most popular websites and found that half of them didn’t work on a mobile handset, even though nearly 10 percent of traffic to these same sites is now coming from mobile phones.

And, it’s not just iPhone users that are regularly accessing the Internet from their phones. Researchers at IDC say that 1.3 billion people will connect to the Internet via mobile phones by end of 2008, and the vast majority of these mobile browsers are using mass market phones from Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola.

“Our figures indicate that up to 10 out of every 100 customers are now routinely entering web addresses from their phones and hitting a site designed only with PC users in mind, which results in a bad experience,” said Anil Malhotra, SVP of Marketing and Alliances at Bango. “Businesses should be asking now which handsets, countries and languages matter most to their business and developing a mobile strategy to match this.”

Bango says many major websites aren’t optimizing their content for mobile users, despite the growing importance of such traffic. In the list of sites that work well from a mobile handset you find names you might expect, such as eBay, Google, and Facebook. However in the list of top sites that don’t work well from mobile there are surprises like, Apple, Microsoft and Craigslist.

Bango’s study also found that many online sites didn’t know how many mobile visitors they are getting. Bango’s figures show that typically 3-10 percent of visitors come from a mobile origin.

I would think for bloggers and other sites with dynamically changing content a solid mobile website is even more important. I recently heard a presentation from MoFuse, a company which gives content publishers, like bloggers or real-time news sites, the ability to publish their content to the mobile web. You don’t have to be a content publisher to use MoFuse though, any website can be “mobilized” (the act of creating a mobile website from a web-only version) in just a few minutes using the MoFuse platform. It’s simple to do, and the MoFuse platform is free to use.

MoFuse is already the fastest growing mobile site publishing network and one of the top mobile publishing networks in terms of traffic. Companies already using MoFuse include: Mashable, Read Write Web, Cool Hunting, and MakeUseOf - which isn’t working as of November 6, due to a nasty blackmail scam / domain stealing ordeal.

Here are some shots of the Mashable site, mobilized with MoFuse:

MoFuse will be presenting at Under the Radar Mobility, November 12th in Mountain View, California. Drop us a line if you plan to be at the event and would like to speak with MoFuse or any of the other presenting companies.

Wireless has landed – many U.S. homes ditch land lines. A new study from The Nielsen Company says that more than 20 million U.S. telephone households (17 percent) are wireless substitutors, or, homes without landlines that rely solely on a mobile phone for their home telecommunications. The new research suggests that one in five U.S. households could be wireless-only by the end of 2008. The study suggested that one of the reasons for dumping landlines is the tightening economy and households looking for ways to save money. Landline phone bills average around $40 a month.

Interestingly, wireless substitution doesn’t work for everyone.  Ten percent of landline phone customers have experimented with wireless-only in their household, but then returned to landline service.  Nielsen reports that needing a landline for another service (security system, satellite TV, pay-per-view, fax machine, etc.) is the primary reason people “mend the cord.”

Mobile social networks fueled by advertising. Ad-funded social networks will provide the bulk of revenues in the mobile user-generated content (UGC) space by 2013, according to a new report from Juniper Research.

The report says that the total value of the UGC market – comprised of social networking, dating and personal content delivery (PCD) services - will rise from nearly $1.1 billion in 2008 to more than $7.3 billion in 2013, with social networking overcoming dating to become the largest revenue generating segment by 2009.

Other findings from the report include:

• The number of active users of mobile social networking sites is expected to rise from 54 million in 2008 to nearly 730 million in 2013.
• The Far East and China region will be most popular in terms of mobile user numbers for mobile social networking and PCD throughout the forecast period, but the Indian Sub Continent will become the largest region for mobile dating services by 2010
• There will be more than 9 billion downloads from PCD sites by 2013, of which 32 percent will be ad-supported.

Dig it! A new Twitter tool. Does using Twitter sometime feel like you’re posting in the dark? Tired of your genius 160-character diatribes going nowhere? You might like Dwigger, a new tool for Twitter that’s similar to Digg. It works by supplementing Twitter by putting Tweets into threaded conversations with vote buttons. By doing so, users Tweets can be voted on. So, what’s the value-add to Twitter? More exposure? Higher web search rankings? Ego boosts? We have to admit Dwigger’s site is pretty cool: top geo clouds, top Tweets and top users. Where’s the mobile app for iPhone and smartphones?

Your social networking friends are…different. Mark Dykeman of Mashable has a fascinating and enlightening piece on the five different types of social media “friends.” Here’s his lead:

“Would you trust a social media friend with your money? Your home? Your significant other? Your children? Your life? Your answer to those questions will determine whether or not you feel that friends, as used in social media, are friends like you had in school or if they’re better labeled as something else.”

He asks if adding or following someone is a tactical move or signs of genuine affection and solidarity?

Dykeman then lists the five types of social network friends: connectors; prospects; groupies; friends and family; information sources.

We’re faced with this on sites such as LinkedIn whenever we add someone. Are they a friend? A former co-worker? Or the worst, “other?” What if we mark them as former co-worker but they think of themselves as a friend?

Man, social networking is a minefield. Where’s Miss Manners when you need her?

Read Dykeman’s piece here.

iPhone’s autocorrect feature well hated. At least it kind of bugs us when we’re texting. And now, according to Mobile Industry Review, someone wants to change it. Please Let Us Disable, Steve is pleading with Apple to disable the auto correction by having users sign a petition. Here’s their plea taken from their website:

Hi Steve Jobs. We now updated to the new iPhone Firmware 2.1 and it definitely made things go much smoother! But we all still miss one feature: We’d like to be able to disable the annoying autocorrection! At the time it is really not Apple-like. Please let your developers make a simple switch button to turn autocorrection off (they probably will do that in 20 seconds, right?). Thank you very much!

Hey, since we’re asking Jobs for favors, here’s our plea: Dear Steve, please let us send SMS photos via texting. And add video.

It’s a short, weird week here at MoPR what with the July 4 long weekend and Canada Day on July 1, so we’re bringing you the usual Friday blog post on Thursday.

So not J/K: Mobile phone users want text messaging. A new report by ACCESS Systems Americas, Inc. and conducted by independent research firm Amplitude Research says a whopping 73 percent of new cell phones buyers are demanding text messaging as a main feature. Texting capability demands were followed by Internet (61%) and email capabilities (63%). Also scoring big was music (34%) and video capability (33%). Users are increasingly using phones to check email: 41% of the survey respondents who use a cell phone with emailing capabilities said they send or check for emails one to five times a day.

Mobile advertising slowly climbing. According to a new study by BIGresearch , advertising account planners aren’t exactly piling on mobile advertising to their ad plans although phone users [90%] are increasing in numbers- meaning there’s a growing audience ready and waiting. The proverbial silver lining? The important and elusive 18-24 year old segment is increasingly being influenced by non-traditional forms of advertising.

According to the analysis, cell phones are much more likely to trigger an online search for young consumers than all adults (21.8% v. 8.3%), as is text messaging (15.3% v. 4.8%).

The 18-24 year old set is also more likely to download to a cell phone than the general market (31.6% v. 15.9%).

Interestingly, more than half (50.5%) of 18-24 year olds communicate with others about a service, product or brand via cell phone (compared to 29.6% of all adults), second only to face-to-face communication (66.9%). They are also almost three times as likely to communicate through text messaging than all adults (30.7% v. 10.8%).

The Twouble with Twitter. Our love/hate relationship with Twitter is not news. It seems the service is down more than up, while posts seem to magically disappear in front of our eyes. But now comes a potential competitor from Canada: Identi.ca.

Identi.ca, launched by Control Yourself, Inc.,  lets users post short messages which are then broadcast to friends in their social network using instant messages (IM), RSS feeds, and the Web.

According to the press release, “Identi.ca is similar to existing microblogging sites such as Twitter, Jaiku, or Pownce. Unlike those services, Identi.ca’s underlying software is available under an Open Source license.”

But like Twitter, it seems to be very slow - and down - frequently. Might not be the great Twitter killer everyone has been chatting about, but at this point it does have potential to be more open than Twitter.

Client news: Cascada announces Cascada Mobile Breeze. Our Toronto-based client, Cascada Mobile, officially announced its Breeze development platform on Monday. Breeze lets users create and distribute mobile applications using basic HTML and JavaScript. It’s really that simple. CEO Alan Lysnee shows some example apps here.

Client news: Talkster adds Skype and Google Talk compatibility. Long time MoPR client, Talkster announced its integration with Skype last week and kicked off this week with the announcement that its’ Free World Dialing Service can now be used from Google Talk for free calling in countries not yet supported by Talkster’s ad-supported calling service.  With the Skype integration, Talkster callers with Skype subscription plans can use their Skype account (and free local calling minutes) to make free international and group calls to cell phones and landlines in 34 countries.

Google Talk for the iPhone. Google has announced a new US version of Google Talk designed specifically for the iPhone and iPod Touch. From Google’s press page:  “In addition to sending your friends Gmail messages from your iPhone, you can now chat with them while you’re on the move, too! Google Talk runs entirely in the browser so there’s no need to download or install anything.”

Mashable’s take? “It’s kinda useless.”

Take the Smartphone Challenge. The PhoneStore is hosting something they call The SmartPhone Challenge. Companies that take the challenge [though we’re unclear what the actual challenge is] can test five BlackBerry devices programmed with their phone number, email and contacts with full managed Microsoft Exchange hosting and BlackBerry Enterprise Server Hosting from Rackspace, for 10 days at no charge. According to the website users can select a date, provide the information then launch the 10-day challenge. Hats off to the PhoneStore for a great promo campaign [and a hat tip to Blackberry Cool].