The topic of tonight’s Mobile Monday is messaging (the lineup is here). One of the big questions I have is how do you use messaging together with the mobile web to make a better application for end users? As far as I know there’s no way to generically allow users to sign up to get updates from the mobile web.
Lots of times when we have discussions about building applications for mobile phones, and the discussion tips toward mobile web stuff, someone pops up and says “hey, this isn’t just about building the little brother of the web. Mobile phones are special, they’re always on, they’re personal, they’re asynchronous”. And we all nod because of course that’s correct, this shouldn’t be about just building a smaller version of the wired web.
Okay, so lets try to do that. For instance the simplest way I can think of to make the mobile web more mobile enabled is to allow folks to request updates. There’s a reason it’s one of the first things that folks like Myspace and Facebook add to the mix, notifications are kinda the first step. So say I would like to enable that for my mobile web site. How? There are some services that allow me to create a notification group, or I can do it myself using an aggregator of my choosing. But then I have to pay for every message that I send out, and if my application is successful that can be a large cost.
It doesn’t really make sense to say that mobile web applications should respect the mobile disposition of users and not just be smaller versions of the wired web, but then set an arbitrary and relatively high pricepoint per message and demand that application providers hit it. The reason that so many discussions currently about mobile applications tip toward mobile web is that it’s an open and free platform. Users can either choose to pay for the kilobyte usage charge if they want to download a page, or get an unlimited data service. What’s the equivalent for messaging? The payment is normally on the sender end, inverse of what it is for accessing a web page. You would have to have users pay you for the right to sign up for notifications. That’s a whole lot of friction, and in the US at least users are already paying for their messaging plan. They don’t understand why they have to pay again for receiving messages from my website.
The model there just seems to be broken, which is why I assume there are so many SMS services companies running around solving all the different issues. It’s great they’re out there working through the issues, but the overall setup just seems to be broken. It’s a great person to person communications mechanism, there’s a ton of usage for it. And in some niche areas like voting for American Idol it can be a great revenue stream.
But to tell a mobile website developer that “Hey, you should think about SMS as well, there are X billion SMS capable phones out there!” is really a misrepresentation of their addressable market. Reaching all those phones requires that you be able to extract a value per outbound message of somewhere around 6 cents. No one bothers to say that when they’re gushing about the addressable size of the SMS market.
Hi Mike – We’re seeing interest in adding the messaging we developed for Padpaw to existing social networking sites. The cost per message is a real issue, but the benefit is the instant update of some piece of important information. A good example is the snow storm that hit the Northeast today. It’s canceled a number of events, and these sites want a way to get that out to group members quickly because they’re not sure people will read their email in time (in the car, busy at work, etc..). Our customers aren’t using mobile Internet plans, so this is a requirement. – Keith
Touche, Mike. I’m as guilty as anyone one of always gushing about the addressable size of the SMS market, and the killer user experience of push. Totally agree that the model is fundamentally broken for app developers which is why the mobile web ends up being the default option. At Bebo we’ve got some weight to throw around and can negotiate some different models like what we’ve launched on Orange UK and O2 Ireland, but that’s difficult to scale up even for us and certainly out of reach for most developers.
I’m gonna keep trying to find the model though because SMS is just too compelling to give up on just yet — while cranking on mobile web of course, because the model there just works. :)
Hey Jordy,
Actually I was thinking of you when I wrote this:
http://www.thisismobility.com/blog/2007/12/11/mobile-messaging-recap/
I’m sure you folks will figure out a way to get your application working. Hopefully that’s with SMS and a supporting model. But even if that doesn’t work I’m definite you’ll find a way to make it happen.
- Mike