ALREADY Seeing Significant Mobile Traffic

“ It used to be that us mobile folks like myself had to convince someone with a website to build a mobile version in the hope that they could then tempt some traffic their way. However, it’s a much easier discussion to have when the publisher is ALREADY seeing significant mobile traffic, and they just need to make the decision about how to serve it better. ”

The increasingly quotable Mike Rowehl in Thank You Twitter and Facebook, about how we've finally passed some tipping points in corporate mindshare; the chicken & egg proposition is over, and seeing traffic come from mobile (via, especially, twitter and facebook) makes them want to optimize mobile sites and build mobile apps.

A good example of why we don't care about Twitter

I get messages like this from my wife all the time:

Rotated for your convenience. I often get several picturemails a day from her.

A picture says a lot. Since y'all don't have the context, its of the dog and cat /both/ on her lap in our living room. Everyone napping. No text needed, and this worked a lot better than any text could.

I get Twitter, but I still don't use it

I do get the theory of Twitter; I have a username, I've "tweeted" (hate the cute terms) and so on. But there's no real point as no one else I know uses it. Those who have usernames do the same as me, and use it at conferences and so on.

When I say I get the theory, I mean that I like making my current status available, and seeing others. How? Simple, IM already has a status line:


I update this all the time, and people actually read it. I get comments directly back on the status several times a week. If I forget, and it just says "available" I'll more often get "so, how's it going?" IMs, just to keep contact.

IM, and even better the IM client that connects to several systems, means that I can do this with almost everyone I know, without them having to subscribe to some new system or process.


While awful in every other way, the corporate IM platform we used at Sprint (MS made it) automatically changed the status based on what your calendar said. That was super-convenient, as it would have both the standard auto-status (e.g. offline) and with additional data (in a meeting). I'd love to have an IM plugin that detected location, time, etc. and said what I was likely to be doing as well as what I type in.

Next I should set up the IM client on my S60 so it works well and actually do all this even when I don't have a computer in my hands.