
Mobile is Where the Growth Is - MediaSquirrel
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/07/mobile-is-where-the-growth-is.html
======
mtkd
One factor assisting 'mobile' right now is that SEO is less pervasive - mobile
apps are focussed on UX which desktop webapps long ago ditched to get rankings
(ramming as much content on page as possible, overusing keywords, reviews,
ratings, UGC etc.).

I'm finding many mobile apps simple/clean to use - although the 'responsive
design' movement is diluting that.

~~~
franze
app stores are market-places. search engine are market-places. app stores are
search engines.

the optimizations for (native) apps just moved from the app-level to the
market-place level.

~~~
stcredzero
_> app stores are market-places. search engine are market-places. app stores
are search engines._

I suspect that sucky discovery is somehow beneficial to Apple. This also makes
me think that good discovery in app stores might be the key to Google
competing with Apple.

~~~
sedev
Citation needed. How on earth is bad discovery beneficial to Apple? With the
size and profitability of their app store, they have the most to gain from
good discoverability. That's why they acquired Chomp. Smart money says that
the acquisition is going to lead to much-improved discoverability on the iOS
App Store.

~~~
stcredzero
_> Citation needed. How on earth is bad discovery beneficial to Apple?_

Relax. The question was put out there genuinely, not as FUD. If Apple has so
much to benefit from app discovery, why has it taken so long?

I suspect that a lot of people at Apple benefit _personally_ by having the
power to decide which apps are featured, and which are not. I know devs for
which this makes a difference as big as a good middle class salary or more. I
am agreed that it's to Apple's benefit to have better discovery, but as well
governed as it is, Apple is not a monolithic entity.

 _Smart money says that the acquisition is going to lead to much-improved
discoverability on the iOS App Store._

I would love for this to happen. I'm not so sure this is in an area of core
competency for Apple, though. Acquiring Chomp was the right move, but
acquisitions don't always pan out.

~~~
greedo
"If Apple has so much to benefit from app discovery, why has it taken so
long?"

Because it's a hard problem to solve? Because app vendors are excellent at
gaming any system for competitive advantage?

Curating apps is tough, whether it's delivered via an app store, or whether
it's a publicly available app.

There's a reason it was easier to find apps in the PC era; there weren't that
many quality apps. There were 1-2 word processors worth a damn, a few
spreadsheets, and a few databases. Development costs were high because the
apps were difficult to create, and distribution costs prevented developers
from monetizing them easily.

Compare that with today's apps; small, easier coding, far easier distribution.
You end up with millions of apps for Android and iOS. And there's no hallowed
authority like BYTE or PC Magazine to bless your app;

Somewhere out there, someone is thinking along the lines of Page and Brin,
thinking out of the box about how to make app discovery work; and when they
do, we'll all slap our heads and think "why didn't we think of that?" And then
the SEO guys will slowly adapt and app discovery will end up like web
discovery.

------
lifeisstillgood
Mobile is not a single view / Market / technology

The post sort of implies smartphone == mobile, but with African mobiles being
used to transfer scrip, Indian phones already having good SMS based payment
models, there are multiple models, markets and a lot of cultural sensitivities

The one preditiom I can make is there will be no more global phenomenon - one
website taking off everywhere. Even just tacking on a new tld will not fix the
local differences that mobile adoption is bringing

Basically people adopted themselves to the web cos it was so useful and new.
But mobile phones get adapted to people.

~~~
tomjen3
I have to strongly disagree with that claim. India and Africa doesn't matter.
Nobody wants to sell to people who can only pay a tiny fraction of what the
product could be sold for in the first world.

~~~
phpnode
This is super short sighted. There are billions of people in India/Africa
combined, it doesn't matter that they can't pay that much individually because
combined they represent a huge and growing market. So what you say might be
true today, but it's not a good long term strategy. These are exactly the kind
of markets that people should be targeting, uncrowded and huge huge potential

~~~
wslh
I don't agree. It is also about cultures: people buying pirated software even
if the time spend on that is more than the price of the product. For example,
in Argentina people can buy pirated software in the streets and nobody care
about original software, even if they have the money to do so.

~~~
wslh
I am tired of downvotes without replies.

~~~
wslh
It repeat itself. Feels like vigilantes on hacker news.

------
gbog
I wrote a reaction to this article: <http://www.douban.com/note/223029237/>

The gist of it is that APIs will become more important, and that they
shouldn't stay as poorly designed as they are today. I try to think about how
an API design could look like git's architecture.

------
amirmc
_"The ads are the default content object (the tweet) and are delivered right
in the primary user experience (the feed/timline)."_

True, but this is also why it's annoying.

~~~
mikejarema
Agreed.

But you could argue that once Twitter (and FB) tweak sponsored content to the
point where it's no longer annoying or is actually share-worthy, that they've
nailed this rev model.

~~~
tomjen3
At that point, they will become obsolete.

Why?

Because then the advertising agencies will have a way to make content people
want to read and share and therefore they can rely on people sharing it, at no
cost to them.

~~~
mikejarema
True, that's a solid point, thanks for the reply.

However, ad agencies typically get paid more for spending more, so I don't
think a "no cost" campaign works well for covering their costs.

Of course there's probably agencies out there that do/will pitch this type of
campaign, and charge for the ideation + production. But virality is usually an
empty promise.

Alternatively, increasing the k-factor on an already successful campaign is
something agencies will want, so I believe they will fork out for these
sponsored placements regardless.

All told, I really do think some secret sauce for targeting (aided by
Twitter's/FB's data insights) plus some cool content produced by the
brands/agencies will win out as the monetization strategy for social networks.

------
aswanson
_That is why Facebook should (and it looks like will) break its big monolithic
web app into a bunch of small mobile apps. Messenger, Instagram (not yet owned
by Facebook), and Camera are the model for Facebook on mobile._

I don't understand the complaint about Facebook not being mobile-ready. When I
was on it, the mobile fb app worked almost as well as the regular website.
That's how I'm guessing most users want the damn thing to work, the same
across every platform and not fragmented because, well, it's on a phone. I'm
trying to figure out why everyone thinks they're a non-entity on mobile.

------
k-mcgrady
Great post. I think one of the most interesting aspects of this is payments.

Throughout the history of the web most services and content has been free to
consumers and support with ad revenue. But on mobile consumers are much more
willing to pay and it is almost completely frictionless.

I wonder if in the next few years we will start to see more and more apps
using the subscription model. If Facebook was started today as a mobile first
business would they charge for the app outright, charge $1 per month, or use
in-app purchase to charge for extra features?

NB: I first posted this comment on the blog

~~~
technoslut
It's fun to think about but it wouldn't change Facebook's model at all. The
power of Facebook is based upon the number of users it has.

------
ThomPete
This post is great but it speaks primarily to B2C.

B2B market will still be desktop/web based exactly because of the mobile apps
being more features than actual applications.

------
rbn
"There is a significant shift going on this year, much more significant than
we saw last year, from web to mobile"

what? so these mobile apps do not use the web?

------
dirkdk
Love this post. Monetization on mobile, as shown by Facebook's struggle to do
well, is the next code to crack. I agree that as users are on mobile in a very
focused state of mind, they are not open to advertisements, in particular not
those that are in the way of achieving a goal. Subscription, in-app purchase
might be better, also when users become more aware of the fact that if they
are using a free service, they themselves are part of the offering being sold
to the companies paying the bill.

------
joe-mccann
I will continue to beat this drum:

Mobile is not _just_ the web.

If you are thinking mobile first, you should be building network applications,
not web applications.

Fred Wilson is just an example of someone who get this.

------
JanneVee
Well you can't argue with that. But what says you can't build a successful
business around the web? Why can't you build a successful business with a
desktop application?

~~~
Spearchucker
You can (build a successful business with a desktop application).

I think the degree or pace of success will be different for a mobile, desktop
or web app. I also think that an app that's on all three will be more likely
to succeed than one that's only on one or two of these.

A couple or so years ago Microsoft had this vision of being on every screen or
something. I'd never heard anything that made more sense as a vision statement
from a tech giant. Then cloud came along, and they dropped that vision for the
Azure/Office 365 push. That was a mistake.

[Edit] To be clear, Azure/Office 365 weren't mistakes - they were/are good.
Dropping that vision statement was the mistake.

~~~
JanneVee
Yeah, but I find the original post as a little backwards. Not everything makes
sense on mobile. Not everything makes sense on the web. So why try to shoehorn
it in there?

~~~
extension
As with the web, it's not the shoehorned apps that are leading the charge on
mobile. It's the totally new kinds of apps that didn't make sense until this
platform came along.

------
niico
SEO is dead. Mobile IS THE FUTURE.

I used to create simple websites, do some SEO and get thousands of visit daily
and now its impossible. Regular link building its dead nowadays.

So, building freemium apps IS the future.

