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.

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.

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.

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

RSS is a term used widely online today. It stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS was created to make it easy for people to get all of the information they wanted from their favorite sources delivered to one central place.

Check out this video quickly, it makes understanding RSS really easy.

How does RSS work?

RSS allows you to have content delivered to you, all you have to choose is a destination.

The first step as a reader is to choose a place to receive all the new updates. I suggest creating an account with Google Reader.

When you go to a website and decide that you like the information they offer, the next step is to look for the RSS subscription button. You may have to hunt a little bit but most websites now offer an option to subscribe through RSS.

A few examples are pictured below, they take many different forms but the circle and the two lines are consistent in every example.

After you click the RSS button you will be prompted to choose where you’d like the content to be delivered. This is the destination that we chose above, if you setup a google reader account, then select google reader from your list and you’re all ready to go.

Here’s a quick re-cap on how to use RSS feeds.

1. Setup an account at Google Reader

2. Find a website that you like

3. Locate their RSS button

4. Click the button

5. Choose Google Reader as the destination

And that’s it! Now, anytime new information is available on the sites you chose, you’ll be updated in Google Reader.

Was this explanation helpful? How do you explain RSS? Let us know in the comments below.

Back in February, Burger King launched the Sacrafice Friends for a Wopper campaign. It was a huge success that spread quickly across Facebook.

Whopper > Facebook Friends.

I hunted down an interview with Jeff Benjamin, the creator of Burger King’s hit viral Facebook application to find out how he came up with the idea. Benjamin very succinctly puts goals of the application into perspective, “we try and find spots where it’s not just about buying impressions—it’s about creating something that makes people create the impressions for you for free. People can do the advertising for you if you give them the inspiration and the tools.”

Online Marketing Requires a Different Strategy.

Benjamin says it perfectly! So many companies don’t realize that marketing in the digital era requires a much different strategy than traditional tactics. Marketing online is about creating something unique and worth sharing. The attention of audience is pulled in so many different directions that you need to be creative with your marketing dollars.

Why The BK Application Worked.

Burger King combined all the right elements to make their application a hit. Facebook users were asked to sacrafice ten friends and in return BK would give them a coupon for a free whopper. Pretty simple concept and brilliantly executed.

BK directly integrated sharing features and publishing to the Facebook stream. They also gave people an incentive to use the app and did it in a unique way that made it worth spreading the word. BK did everything right to make it a success.

What You Can Learn.

There are two main lessons here. The first is to find creative ways to spend your marketing dollars online, the internet makes it really easy to reach your ideal target audience if you’re creative.

Second, if you’re going to spend the time and money developing an application for a platform like Facebook, make sure you take full advantage of the platform’s features! Make it easy for people to share the application with their friends and give them an incentive to do so. If you’re creative enough, your fans will spread the word for you.

What are you doing to make your company a success online? Let us know in the comments.

Back in 2006, I remember being forwarded one of the videos from the “Will It Blend” series. The basics of the campaign are that they take all sorts of items and answer the question “Will It Blend” by massacring the item in a BlendTec blender.

I orginally thought it was kind of silly to be ruining expensive electronics just to answer the question “will it blend” but after over 200 million views on their Youtube channel, I see the genius in their plan.

Here are a few highlights from the series:

“Will It Blend” seemed pretty silly initially but after looking through a few of the videos, I forever remembered the Blendtec name. Call me a sucker for a good marketing campaign but if I’m ever in the market for a new blender, I’ll probably go with a BlendTec. So there’s success #1, they won my mindshare.

Make something worth sharing.

By allowing users to send in suggestions of what to try blending, BlendTec was able to give their customers a distinct connection to the blender. BlendTec had all the right elements of intrigue and user participation to make their brand an online success.

They found an incredibly creative way to get people excited about a product in an industry that doesn’t typically produce very innovative marketing techniques. I mean, when was the last time you forwarded a fridge, dishwasher or oven ad to a friend?

What they’re up to today.

So how is BlendTec doing these days? Well they’re still making new movies and their Youtube channel is one of the nicest I have seen complete with gorgeous HD videos. They also have an active FaceBook Fan page with a couple of thousand fans where people can suggest new things to try blending.

What’s the Take-Away?

The biggest lessons to learn from BlendTec are: produce great content, put it in the right places and give users lots of ways to connect with the campaign. Give people something worth talking about and they’ll do the work for you.

Have you ever thought of making a video series to spread your message? Let us know in the comments below, we’d love to hear what you’re thinking.

Yes, hope.

In a time where businesses are reevaluating their models, values and even their existence, strength still comes from above; from industry leaders who have paved a path for others to follow.  The NY Times such a role to a t

Business is a cash game and whether cash is generated through top heavy revenues or marginal overhead costs, ca$h is and will always be king.  Many people covering the NY Times story have stipulated their financials woes are a microcosm of the larger media industry.

The reason I bring this issue of financial performance to the forefront is that in many ways the NY Times is both a poor and excellent example of the financial hurdles the media industry must address.

With companies, assets and real-estate that spread beyond that standard assets held within a media structure (here is a quick list), it is easy to see where The Times financial woes begin.

So that is the bad side…now for the good side.  If you were to break off the digital media component of The Times, we may very well find a diamond in the rough.

(***Warning: The following are assumptions made with the best information I could find***)

What I did in the table below is try to extract the online component of the NY Times Business to see if therein lies a profitable business.  My assumptions are based on the following:

1. Q1 Report of the NY Times found here
2. The Times financials are non-seasonal (indeed, they maybe – however, things have changed so fundamentally that I believe only using the latest quaterly data is appropriate)
3. The online division accounts for 10% of The Times overall costs (personally, I believe this is way too high but 10% will be good for sensitivity purposes)
4. All loses from other assets, leaseholds, etc. are not taken at all into consideration – online biz only!

* Note All Figures are in 1000s

Wow – a profitable business (13.64% margin – not too shabby)…but there remain some serious questions:

• Is their online content dependent on correspondents in the field that typically report for print?
• Is there cross revenue generation between the print and online components (i.e.: do advertisers run both in print and online campaigns under a single agreement – if so, is print the leading driver in the sales transaction and how often does this happen?)
• The Times revenues have been downward trending – have they hit the bottom or not?

I’m going to leave this post open ended as I am certainly throwing some issues into the wind but here is my point: even in the worst of times, The NY Times online division has proven that new media is sustainable and profitable with the right mix of content, technology and execution.  The approach is not properietary so there is hope for others to enjoy the same fruits of labor.

I believe this issue needs further scrutinizing but suffice it to say digital media does have a place and a business model.  It will take the right formula of people, technology and vision to bring it all together.  And with that, I say to the ladies and gentlemen fighting on this battlefield…may the force be with you.

Photo Credit: http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2008/0810/debt_clock_1014.jpg

In the digital transition, newspaper brands are suffering from their one-dimensional approach to news reporting. The reality is, to be successful in new media you have to be producing the full spectrum of content. This includes audio, text and video versions of news to satisfy the “I want it NOW” attitude of online news consumers.

Now the NYT is producing content in a variety of forms but not with the same quality as full media veterans like the BBC or CNN. I can watch BBC content live at any time of the day, streaming from desktop programs like Livestation, listen to a daily news podcast updated twice daily with quality interviews from around the world or read in-depth content on their website or iphone app.

It’s like having my own real-time global reporting team in my pocket. It’s accessible from anywhere, anytime and in the format I want. BBC is often my sole news source and if you are going to play that role in a person’s life, covering the full media spectrum is necessary.

Newspapers like the NYT are satisfying the minimum requirements to exist in new media. The 5 minute audio overview of the news and short video montages on their website show that they are trying but their content hardly compares to the BBC or CNN which both produce much higher quality content across the full media spectrum.

I truly come from the “I want it NOW” generation, if you can’t give me content where I want it and when I want it, in the exact format I desire I’m going to go somewhere else.

“Real media” brands like the NYT have a very short time to capitalize on the brand recognition they have developed before the nostalgia for their news medium disappears. CNN and BBC have had an easier transition because of their content diversity but can newspapers make-up the content gap before it’s too late?

My next post will be discussing “The issues of credibility and transparency in blogs and citizen journalism” so stay tuned to our twitter stream (@joyspoon) for it’s posting!