Speaking of mistaken ways in which media companies think when designing sites, how many of their executives have ever tried accesing one of their entertainment or lifestyle guide sites — sites that list events — from a mobile phone?
Almost all of those sites are designed to be read only on 800×600 or 1024×768 pixel personal computer screens. And many can’t be accessed without Adobe Macromedia Flash or other applicaitons incompatible with mobile phones. Dumb!
Think of your own life. When you’ve tried to decide what restaurant to visit, pub in which to drink, club to hear a band, or cinema to watch a movie, have you always been sitting in front of your personal computer? Or have you instead felt that need while driving, commuting, walking around town, or elsewhere away from your PC? Did you have your mobile phone with you?
FACT: More people today have mobile phones that can access the Internet than have personal computers that can. And most spend more of their lives away from personal computers than with.
If you are somebody whose company publishes an entertainment or lifestyle guide, try accessing it from your phone and see what happens.
Excellent point, Vin.
Coincidentally, last week I was at a conference on local search advertising. In a session on pay per call advertising, one of the speakers hammered home a very similar point — that is, how much money news and directory publishers could make via trackable pay-per-cal ads targeted at mobile phone users.
I only wish more people from news and directory orgs had been at the conference. Unfortunately, it was mainly consultants and SEO types. Oh well.
I did blog it on Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits.
Thanks,
– Amy Gahran