Over the past few months there has been a lot of speculation on the web about whether companies looking to make their information accessible on mobile devices should have a mobile website or mobile applications. Unfortunately, for most individuals who are just starting to research this issue, there are a lot of arguments being made for either case which are incredibly misleading.

In this four part series, we’ll lead you through the debate giving you a little bit of context from the developer’s side of the table.

Myth #1: I don’t need a mobile website or app because people can just access my current website from their phone.

PEW Internet Research group recently published a study showing that the total number of mobile phone users who access the internet from their devices is now at 38%. This figure is a 13% increase over last year’s figure and should continue to grow in each coming year. Morgan Stanley has also confirmed this trend as they claim that within five years, we’ll see the internet accessed more from mobile devices than desktop PCs.

The growth in mobile web usage will have a huge impact on how your brand is perceive online. As the number of mobile users grows, the issue of tailoring the user experience to the devices your audience is using will become essential. Typically the individuals who visit your website from their mobile device are looking for quick access to the information they want. In a recent piece at Adage, Steve Rubel calls this “mission-oriented” computing, a theme which promotes individual quick use applications and mobile sites focused on presenting relevant and valuable information to end users.

Desktop websites are simply not optimized for the type of quick on-demand access mobile users demand. If you’ve ever tried to surf the web on a Blackberry device, you’ll be well aware of how painful it is to find the information you want on a website. Too much zooming, scrolling and squinting will frustrate even the most savvy user leaving the individual with a poor experience and perception of your brand.

A mobile website or app will help you deliver quick access to information relevant to your audience. Brands need to think about why people are visiting their website and then try to make it dead simple for their audience to get the information they care about. Mobile users are constantly on the move and you have very little time to capture their attention and keep them interested in what you have to say.

Gyford's Guardian

I always love reading scripting.com. It may be a little technical for most people but Dave Winer, a pioneer of podcasting, RSS and blogging, often has incredible insights into what is going on in the world of technology and the internet. He recently keyed me into a theme which we are beginning to see with increasing frequency around the internet today, that is the argument over whether the internet is too cluttered.

The argument is that if you look at any website today, it’s filled with ads, related articles, image galleries, videos, and many other objects which distract readers from the content they’re trying to focus on. It’s hard to read a serious article when a flashing animated advertisement persistently draws your eyes away from the information you’re trying to consume.

The best articulation of the problem I have seen recently was in a post by Simon Fodden at the Slaw blog where he laments that “With online news, there’s in effect a steady stream; it falls in moment to moment, even as you’re reading; moreover, you’ve no way of judging how much there is today and when you’ve read “enough”. There is, in effect, no end to it.” There are always more related articles and distractions, causing us to be constantly distracted from from the information we really care about.

However, there are a few places on the web where this problem does not exist. The development of smartphone applications and the translation of that concept to larger touch devices like the iPad has given many of us an insight into what the web could be like without all the distractions. With many apps today, your entire experience is kept within the frame of the application ensuring that you can get that feeling of accomplishment after reading what you feel to be “enough”. You have the opportunity to fully finish an article without being distracted.

Readability

This concept of minimizing the clutter is also now being translated back to the web. Most notably, there are three interesting projects which have launched specifically to experiment with the issue of clutter on the net.

Gyford’s Guardian App

The Guardian took a different approach than fellow UK newspaper The Times by opening up their content to be used by developers through an API. This effectively allows developers to manipulate the content to be used in many different formats.

Phil Gyford, a London based developer/designer, took it upon himself to create this incredibly simple and pleasant reading experience called Today’s Guardian. Gyford stripped out all the advertising and clutter from the main Guardian site in order to provide users with an exceptional reading experience.

Readability

Readability is an experimental bookmarklet project, developed by the team at Arc90, which allow users to focus only on the text from any website they choose. It can be installed on any browser and when clicked, it displays a new page without all the clutter. This allows users to enjoy any webpage on the internet without all the distractions.

Apple's Safari 5 Reader Feature

Apple’s Reader Feature in Safari 5

Apple has recently introduced a similar feature in their new Safari 5 browser called Reader. Anytime a user is on a page which can be converted, a reader button appears in the address bar. Click the reader button and you’re presented with a text-only version of the information on the page which allows you to fully read the article without distraction.

Will we see uncluttered website content in the future of the web?

Many User Experience designers are already thinking about this issue trying to minimize the clutter online but as we transition from viewing websites only on a computer screen to an experience distributed across many different types of devices, we will have to watch closely to see how consumers react to the experiences on different interfaces.

It will be interesting to see if consumers start to enjoy the uncluttered and contained experiences found on things like smartphones and tablets. If this trend continues, it will be great to see the web begin to promote experiences dedicated to more “finishable” and easier to read content as it will allow us to skim less and focus more.

Following the announcement of the iPad’s international launch and the 2 million units sold milestone, the past few weeks have seen a flurry of tablet related announcements. Google’s Android operating system has leak onto tablets from almost every major hardware manufacturer including: Samsung, Acer, MSI and Dell with a rumored launch from HTC to follow shortly. These launches are pushing the limits of what we understand a tablet to be, with screen sizes ranging from 5 inches to 13 inches, it will be exciting to see what the market decides as the optimal size as we continue to experiment with touch-driven computing.

Not to be outdone by Google, Microsoft took hold of Computex in Taiwan and launched Windows Embedded Compact 7. Being a few months behind, it will be interesting to see how Microsoft handles the competition for deals with their traditional hardware partners as Android becomes a more attractive (and noticeably cheaper) alternative to Microsoft’s offering.

On the development side, the office iPad has been our test ground for sampling what the new form factor has to offer. Since the iPad’s launch we have seen some impressive apps emerge, most notably in the news category. USA Today, Thompson Reuters, BBC, NPR and most recently Mashable have done excellent work to distinguish themselves in the new form factor. These organizations have done the usability work needed to use the extra real estate effectively, providing more intuitive navigation and a better reading experience than is found on the comparison smartphone applications.

Needless to say, 2010 will be an exciting time for developers and consumers alike as we get to test out a whole new device category, figuring out how best to provide quick, easy and intuitive access to the content people want.

Mobile:
The big mobile story of the week was undoubtedly the leak of the new iPhone, slated to be announced in June 2010. Apple has traditionally been able to keep product launches safely hidden from the public, very few individuals outside of Apple have access to prototypes so it’s major news when one sneaks into the wild before Steve Job launches it on stage.

The gadget blog Gizmodo got it’s hands on Apple’s latest creation this week, evidently claiming they found it “lost in a bar”. Given the dubious explanation, there has been a lot of speculation this week as to whether or not this could be the real thing. After tearing the phone down to its basic components, many geeks are convinced it really is the next iPhone.

What do you think? Is this just another Apple PR stunt or is this the end of Apple’s era of secrecy?

Social:
Facebook had it’s major F8 developer conference this week and the social networking giant made some changes which will effect how brands reach and engage their audience using the social network.

The biggest announcement was OpenGraph, Facebook’s promise to connect every website on the planet. By providing websites with easy access to Facebook’s login and Like button, Facebook can now link users experiences from all over the web. Martin Bryant from TheNextWeb paints an interesting picture of a future Facebook-enabled internet, “Imagine the potential. Amazon can recommend films for you to buy based on what you’ve been looking up on IMDB, Pandora in turn can play music you’ll like based on your friends’ Amazon purchases.”

The Facebook-enabled internet will have all of our social interactions tied together which is nothing new. What will be new is the complexity of user data control, Facebook’s OpenGraph  will be opt-out meaning that Facebook’s integration with websites everywhere will become increasingly automated.

I think brands are finally getting it. With all the buzz about social media over the past few years, it’s been pretty confusing for brands to get a handle on why social media might be useful. Converting old metrics to a new medium meant that social media was going to go through some growing pains. However, it seems that brands are finally realizing the value of online marketing.

The change in the corporate attitude towards social media dawned on me during this year’s Super Bowl commercials. Almost every commercial I saw included a link to the brand’s Facebook Fan Page. It was amazing, it’s as if a lightbulb went on and everyone suddenly saw the value of connecting offline and online marketing efforts.

Combining television advertising with a social experience was a pretty simple step but it had a huge impact on the value of the ad. Just by adding a link, these brands weren’t just buying a 30 second spot to increase brand awareness, they were giving themselves the chance to convert a massive audience into a more valuable brand connection. Their 30 second spot may have been forgotten after Sunday’s game but that connection they created with new fans is something which will last long after the super bowl is over.

What do you think? Is the integration of offline and online marketing the future of advertising?

The hype is almost over! Apple will likely introduce some sort of new tablet device tomorrow. If you’re up on your gadget news, then you’ve likely seen all the latest rumors detailing the various proposed features so I’ll spare you from more speculation. If you haven’t heard the rumors, click over to Engadget to get your fill.

I thought instead of more feature coverage for this post, it’d be interesting to take a quick look at why Apple might think now is the right time to launch a device in this category.

What is this new “invention”?

Apple’s tablet will likely be a thin device with no physical keyboard and a screen size of 7″-11″. This isn’t anything unique, other tablets and E-readers have been on the market in this same screen size range for quite some time but Apple’s presence has generated a lot of buzz and they’re sure to do something special to differentiate themselves from the pack.

Regardless of the specific features, the hype generated by this device seems to have overshadowed the main question which needs to be answered; what is this thing going to be used for?

Re-thinking how people read.

The tablet will quickly become a popular device for consuming content in any place where you want to read, listen to music, browse the internet or watch video without using a laptop. My thoughts are that it will be a useful device for situations where people don’t feel comfortable getting their laptop out, using this thing on transit is the first thing that comes to mind.

Asking people to buy an entirely separate device just for surfing the internet, listening to music, ect. is going to be tough. All of these things can be done both on a phone or laptop so Apple will need to create a user experience which is far superior to anything else out there. This means, quick and simple access to the exact information that people want, essentially translating the concept of the Iphone to a larger screen with more power and functionality.

How does this all become a reality?

Creating a whole new way for people to consume content isn’t an easy task. We’re going to need a new breed of applications and gestures for interacting with the device so it will be interesting to see what Apple has come up with.

Get excited for tomorrow, whatever Jobs pulls out on stage will definitely change the way we think about devices in this category.

Reading a newspaper after my mom is a nightmare! She clips out so many articles of interest, that by the end you’re only left with the sports section in tact. Still to this day, she clips out her favourite articles and sends them to family and friends because she truly enjoys sharing information. Ok, so maybe she wasn’t the first person to tear an article out of the newspaper but this form of social bookmarking has definitely been around long before the internet! It is a natural human desire to find like minded individuals with whom we can share information. Methods for sharing information have always existed but with the growth of internet popularity, the ways of sorting information have definitely changed.

Today, online writers are producing opinionated writing at an alarming pace. Every person with a computer now has the ability to put forward their opinion online. Some individuals have bemoaned this development as the fall of journalism but not me! I look at this as an opportunity, an opportunity to develop new sorting methods to access the best possible information on whatever subject I desire. After all, I’m part of the “I want it now!” generation and I’d accept nothing less. People need to realize that there has always been an endless supply of information available, it is just easier to access online and so you need to figure out how to manage the process.

Think of the internet as the world’s greatest library. Would you ever think of going into a library and trying to read every single book there, just to find the piece of information you want? No, you ask someone to help you find what you’re looking for, until you learn how to find it for yourself. The internet has amplified information and it can be overwhelming if you try to digest every piece of it.

Thankfully, online information sharing communities are setup to solve the problem and help you find relevant information to your interests. Forums, social networks, social bookmarking, social RSS readers, blogging and micro-blogging all have one common purpose. To share opinion and information with people.

To deal with the massive volume of opinionated writing being produced today, we will begin to increasingly rely on more targeted community models of news consumption.  As more information shifts online, these communities will continue to evolve and scale to meet the demands of online information sorting.

Journalism will not be harmed by moving online. The key will be managing the overwhelming amount of information available and my advice is to not think you can do it alone. Information sharing communities are setup to filter out the online garbage and direct you to the best information. Connect with like minded individuals, explore what they have to offer, share your own insights and you will give yourself the ability to find the best information online.

Note: Not my real mom pictured above – she didn’t want to be featured on our blog, guess it was because she couldn’t clip the article out and send it to the rest of the family

Photo Credit: Grandma Picture