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.

I’m the first to admit, I have a tendency to get caught up in the elimination/game show type reality TV programs like So You Think You Can Dance, Top Chef, Hell’s Kitchen, and my all time favorite, American Idol. Maybe it’s the cheerleader in me that loves to pick a team (or individual) and loudly root for them to the end. Or maybe it’s the thought of discovering something new and extremely cool (or talented) from a group of “anybodies.” Likely, I think it’s a combination of these two things, and the more I think about it, these are two of the reasons I got into the PR business – from the thrill of learning about a tech company that could be the next big thing, to the satisfaction of taking a company into the public spotlight and helping them to promote themselves to the world.

So, when I heard about a new TV show in the works that combines the reality TV show elimination format with the age old struggle by technology start-ups to get noticed and receive funding, you can bet I was interested.

The new TV show, in development in New Zealand will be called “Start Up” and will aim to bring audiences an insiders’ view of 10 start up companies, while taking one online start up from the formation of the company through to launch in Silicon Valley. Start up companies selected for the show will be put through a series of challenges over the course of three months.

The competition is limited to New Zealand online start ups, and applications are currently being accepted through June 20 here. The minimum entry requirements will be that companies have a product in development or beta phase, however they are willing to consider making an exception for someone that has an exceptional idea supported by market validation.

The program is produced by New Zealand-based Start-UP media along with the support of Telecom, Hewlett Packard & Domainz.

Read Write Web’s Richard MacManus will serve as one of the show’s judges, along with Tim Norton from PlanHQ and Rod Drury from Xero.

The show is set to air on Television New Zealand (TVNZ) which is the main network in New Zealand. No word yet on whether or not the show will be available for US viewers to watch on TV, but Start Up media did confirm (through the comments section of Read Write Web) that the show will be available to view online.

The team producing the show also commented on its efforts to really help the companies it selects to participate in the show. They said, “We’ve done a lot of work on the format to ensure that the program will not end up ‘Noise’. NZ is an extremely early stage online market, through the series we hope to encourage growth and investment into the local sector. We’re not in it to flame a whole bunch of aspiring online entrepreneurs but rather assist them in getting a world-class product to market.”

Good luck Kiwi start ups!