A good (and scary) laugh.
Link: MobHappy: If Car Companies Employed People from Telecoms.
Carlo and I have been kicking around what would happen if a car company only employed people from the telecoms background. This is what we came up with.
Request for comments: What is your strategy to integrate your Web product with the Mobile Lifestyle?
Anyone who has been reading these pages knows that I am keen on the fusion of the Web, PC, and mobile. Not only have I been elaborating on what makes a great mobile product, but I have been trying to understand the dynamics of Mobile Living in the Web world.
I’ve mentioned a bunch of Web companies that get mobile, companies that understand how to create neat mobile products, products well integrated into the Mobile Lifestyle. What I haven’t done is list Web companies who I think need an infusion of mobility into their products. I don’t mean that these companies don’t get it, but from what I have seen, they either have nothing, or have a long way to go to create compelling mobile products and services.
Some Web companies that could use an infusion of mobility (in no particular order):
Six Apart – TypePad, LiveJournal, Comet; Yahoo! – Flickr, Search, Yahoo!mail; Google – GMail, Search, Dodgeball, GMaps; Blogbridge; Socialmarks; Broadband Mechanics; Wikipedia; Social Text – SocialText.Net, SocialText.Org; AskJeeves – Bloglines; Apple – iTunes, iPhoto, .mac; 37signals – Basecamp, Backpack, Ta-da lists; eBay – Skype; Writely; Amazon; del.icio.us; Feedster; Technorati; qoop; dropcash; Barfrog
This list is by no means complete, but includes a subset of companies I have been observing and like. To be fair, some of these companies have already created connections to the mobile world or already on the right track. Also, some of these are actually companies connected to the Mobile Living space, but could go further than, say, just SMS or basic browsing.
But, here is my question for all Web companies:
What is your strategy to integrate your Web product with the Mobile Lifestyle?
Please leave a comment or send me a private email on your thoughts about this. Here are some related questions to help you formulate an answer.
– How important is integrating your Web-based product to the mobile world?
– How does mobility extend your business model?
– Would you hire a full-time person or team to do the integration for you?
– Would you hire an external team of consultants to either guide you or do the integration for you?
– Would you partner with a company to add mobility to your offering?
– Who do you turn to to understand how integrating your product to the mobile world will impact your business?
Feel free to add or comment on this list of companies or what kind of questions you’d like to ask. You can also participate with your mobile phone: visit http://winksite.com/cschick/mobile (bookmark it!) with your phone or click on the ‘Powered by WINKsite’ graphic on the upper right of this page to open it up in your browser.
A few disclaimers and comments: Of course, the goal here is to get a feel for what Web companies are doing in the mobile space and thus make some business suggestions. I will collect info for the next month or two and try to summarize at some point. All responses mailed directly to me are confidential and will not be repeated without permission. Also, don’t get all excited thinking this is directly related to Nokia (my employer). It’s not. But, what I learn here might spill over there, so let me know if you’ve withheld something because of my employer. And, my personal email address is on my about page.
Ease of use sometimes means nothing to a first time user
My brother, who lives in the US, just got a new non-Nokia phone. So, I started playing with it to check out the browsing and messaging experience. Of course, many years of using the Nokia UIs made it difficult for me to use my brother’s phone. And really, there were some dumb usability mistakes.
My niece (10 years old), saw me playing and I showed her how to send her first SMS using her dad’s phone. I walked her through the (to me) awkward process and she was delighted when my mother’s phone beeped.
Thinking I was going to show her how to really send an SMS, I then showed her how to send and SMS on my mother’s Nokia phone.
That’s when it hit: The Nokia UI is not necessarily easier for a first time user. It felt almost as awkward showing her how to send her SMS from my mom’s Nokia phone than it was from my brother’s non-Nokia phone.
I still will say that for regular users, the Nokia UI in this case is far superior and generous for sending SMSs – and operator SMS revenues from Nokia phones proves it. But the first time user has no usage model that maps onto the phone, so it’s all confusing no matter what.
Interesting, no?
What does that say for the hurdle of first few uses restricting uptake of a service or product? I’ve seen it happen with other products as well – you need to get over a small hump before the user has the ‘Aha!’ and starts avidly using the product.
How should one design a product to minimize the barrier to first-time use?
Is this the first mobile tag cloud?
If you go to winksite.com/chat from your mobile and select "Browse Chat Tags" you can view the tag cloud for all the chats on WINKsite. And it loads pretty fast.
Might this be the very first tag cloud that works well on a mobile? I haven’t seen any before.
Call for comments: It works fine on my super-duper, top-of-the-line, whizz-bang phone. Does it work on yours? Let me know! Put phone make and model at the bottom and tell me what you see, regardless if it works or not.
InterCasting Corp: TravelPod Integrated With Rabble
Very interesting run down on Intercasting Corp’s product strategy.
I think they are spot on.
Link: InterCasting Corp: TravelPod Integrated With Rabble.
We don’t reinvent most web-based blogging and social networking sites, but we do add mobility very well, and make the functionality appropriately simpler for the mobile environment than on the web. Rabble is growing organically unto itself but is also a sort of consolidation point for different types of social and personal publishing services in the mobile environment, enabling users of these other services to put the respective functionality in their pockets.
Shawn Conahan’s Europe trip report
Shawn Conahan is the CEO of Intercasting Corp, the folks who have brought us Rabble. He really understands the implications of the mobile lifestyle on multimedia creation and consumption.
Read the Intercasting Corp blog (link below) if you want to know where mobile multimedia is going.
A recent post of his (see except and link below) stuck a chord with me, as an American living in Europe. Here’s my comment to him (I tried to leave one, but was having issues):
great report. i think there are two axes here: the teen scene and the europe-u.s. differences.
as for the teen scene, we need to listen and watch teens more since they are very clever in how they adapt and use tech. but, i keep wondering if they are actually the biggest market for everything from toothpaste to underwear, if you know what i mean – everyone wants a piece of the teen scene.
with the europe-u.s. difference, i’ve been able to see it evolve over the last 6-7 years, being able to dip to some degree in both worlds in the wireless and computing space. it’s been interesting to see the u.s. grow it’s own flavour of mobile. i get a bit peeved when folks say the u.s. is behind europe when it comes to mobile. it think that’s just too simplistic. the reality is that the u.s. perceives mobile differently because the technical foundations are so different. i stated this years ago and it still holds. but, that makes it challenging to create a global product and a global marketing message (been there, done that), especially viewing the challenges of scale, players, and consumer attitudes.
looking forward to rabble on this side of the world. 😉
Here’s the post:
Link: InterCasting Corp: Europe Trip Report.
I am back from Europe and learned a few things. One of which is that I am going to be spending a lot of time out of the country next year. You can also look forward to Rabble going international fairly soon, possibly in Q4. Overall it was a very productive trip. Here is my synopsis:
This is Mobility � Blog Archive � Social Software Going Mobile
MoMo Mike on some of his insights from a panel he moderated. He also goes over some very good pointers on smoothing out the user’s mobile experience.
Link: This is Mobility � Blog Archive � Social Software Going Mobile.
I moderated a panel on social software last week and got to talk to a bunch of interesting people, both on the panel and in the audience. I just want to get down a bunch of the stuff we spoke about, so here’s a random sampling of the ideas:
Sprint changes their band too
Related to an earlier article I wrote on the near suicidal changes in the Palm brand.
Now, Sprint has decided to totally revamp their brand after the Nextel acquisition. Uh, now the brand has no connection to either Sprint or Nextel. I find this to be brand suicide.
Not only that, the logo which harks back to the pin drop campaign of early Sprint days, looks like the Amtrak logo (also a relatively new look for Amtrak – d’oh!).
What do you think?
Sprint is now Yellow!
Is that the Sprint pin falling the other way there or what?
More on Usability Vs. Features
The discussion continues. Here is a nice comment from a simple observation. I definitely think this is so – that’s why geeks put up with crappy interfaces, but all my parents want is a simple app that works and you can forget the hootin’ falootin’ features.
Link: Hephail’s Jail: Usability Vs. Features.
Hence, people who want features, don’t mind sacrificing usability.
While people who want usability, don’t mind sacrificing features.
Mobile computing vs. Mobile living
Continuing this discussion, I’d like to bring a bit of distinction to the difference between mobile computing and mobile living.
Mobile computing devices are foreground devices. These are about Game Boys, Mobile TV, the Nokia 770, PDAs. It’s what 3G was made to serve. These are what Wireless Broadband is all about.
Mobile living devices are background devices. These are about mobile phones, iPods. These are about access to snippets of data in contacts, agenda, and to-do – what PDAs are really used for – and not email writing
Of course, it’s not a binary world and there’s a continuum, and ignoring the continuum is dangerous. For example, WAP 1.0 was mobility-only, discarding the rest of the Internet. I get worried that folks like the W3C are barking up the wrong tree, repeating the mobile-only mistakes of the past. Also, I think 3G and Wireless Broadband are about mobile computing and end up over-serving the needs of the general mobile phone user (geez, how’s the uptake been of these networks among the general mobile phone users?).
Likewise, it’s not enough to shove the PC into the mobile. There is a Usability Knee – the point at where adding more features in a certain form factor causes a tremendous drop in usability. Somewhere between phones and laptops are small tablets and palmtops, such as the Psion Series 7 that straddles the foreground and background world really well (phones into computers?). The Usability Knee analysis also suggests that there is something in devices that are single-function, very very simple.
In the end, you need to pick the one based on what you want to do – data, productivity, voice, or what. There will be no one über-device (though everyone seems to be proposing one). Heck, I’ve been advocating ‘horses-for-courses’ for years.*
What do you think?
*I found a really old article I posted about 6-7 years ago. Kinda funny flashback for me. 😉