While seeking to avoid the tricky topic of 'is content king?', here's a view on why publishers and marketers need to think about what's useful to mobile users first, and the content they want to consume second when it comes to developing services for mobile.
But, hang it, let's first get into why that might also be true on the web. The most simplistic way to prove that, if anything is king on the web, it's 'service', is to consider the biggest web sites in the UK.
The list - without checking Comscore right now - will read something along the lines of: 1. Google 2. MSN/Live/MS (whatever we call it) 3. Yahoo 4. eBay 5. Wikipedia 6. BBC 7. Facebook 8. Fox Interactive (i.e. MySpace) 9. Amazon 10. Ask.
I've had a random stab so let's not get hung up on that. Instead what matters is to consider which of these sites gets its traffic from its own content. Google? Nope. MS? Nope - about eighty per cent of its traffic is from Hotmail and/or Messenger. Yahoo? Much the same as MS. Facebook? MySpace? eBay? No, the only 'content' site you're likely to find in the top ten in the UK is the BBC. The others are services - whether search or communication. Of course all of the above offer 'access' to content, but content owners they are not - even Wikipedia's brilliance is as a search engine for 'facts'.
This also explains why you'll struggle to find a traditional media brand in the top ten (though, yes, there are some who have claims to decent web operations). Their view is, quite naturally, content focused. But all the big boys of the web came from a different angle - and that is to provide useful services.
All that being considered - and it's fine if you don't agree with me yet - let's consider how this digital truism might be applied to the mobile planet. Well, we come back to the fact that the usage of mobile phones is very much defined by what I need NOW.
If we say that we'll be needing to either fill time or save time when we turn to our mobiles, then it's clear that, at least in terms of saving time, the 'content' we need is much more about service than it is about content as a traditional media owner might understand it. It is information we need in this context - and we need a system to enable us to find it fast.
Even when we're considering 'fill time', how might that work? Well, we could have a four-hour flight to fill. That might mean two movies, four albums, or a great game. Yes, the quality of the content will be key but it will come from a major range of content owners and the content we choose is entirely down to us. What we do need are systems and (dare we say it, portals) for finding, accessing and consuming our choice. YouTube for example is the biggest online TV 'station' in the world. Is YouTube a content company?
I'll argue that what's most important to focus on for now is to provide services that are of use to mobile users, rather than content they might want to consume. In other words, think not about what we want to see on our mobiles, but what it is we want to do.
Here, by the way, is the top five most visited sites from mobile phones in the US, according to M:Metrics (now owned by Comscore). Spot the content sites:
|
Active Reach
|
Unique Visitors
|
Avg Mins
|
|
|
|
|
|
google.com
|
64.2%
|
3,977,704
|
4:42
|
|
yahoo.com
|
31.3%
|
1,935,832
|
6:36
|
|
live.com
|
27.0%
|
1,673,881
|
4:24
|
|
msn.com
|
20.6%
|
1,276,831
|
3:42
|
|
sprintpcs.com
|
19.1%
|
1,182,945
|
2:48
|
