Mowser Founder Says Mobile Web Is Dead. It’s The Opposite: The Mobile Web Was Born Only Yesterday

April 15th, 2008 at 3:53 am

As an original founding sponsor of the W3C Mobile Web Initiative, I’d say it’s just starting. Moreover, people’s perception is changing with regard to how consumers are likely to consumer content on mobiles, which is almost more important than the initial technology advancements being made right now with the iPhone.

I really dislike browsers that bastardise content and brands without checking to see if the site has already been optimised and then render the content based on the technical capabilities of that device - although it’s a necessary evil to a degree. However, too many carriers are making assumptions are ignore mobile optimised sites and decide to ‘repurpose’ them.

I wrote a post about Mozilla not getting the Mobile Web, to which the CTO responded with harsh words. Two weeks later it dropped its mobile web browser.

http://blog.bima.co.uk/mozilla-on-mobile-web/ in case it’s of interest.

Ok looks like I’ve just written a new blog post of my own.

April 15th, 2008 at 3:57 am

I got the impression he was saying the mobile web is dead as a separate entity to the web in general. I.e. don’t bother developing sites purely for mobile-only use, users will expect a similar service to what they see on the desktop (hence the iPhone is blazing a trail with Safari).

‘Mobile Web’ was like version 2.0 of WAP - which everyone knows was crap. We might want (slightly) modified versions of websites to more easily see all the info on a 2-4 inch screen, but still the same/full amount of data that can be gotten from the full-blown website. That and good user interface for browsing (I’m crying here as I try to work around sites on my Nokia E51…)

Just my two-cent

April 15th, 2008 at 4:01 am

Neal - if that’s what was being said, then absolutely. Tim Berners-Lee and the purists at heart, call that ‘the one web’. You should get a contextual representation of the site, irrespective of device used. However, there are benefits to using a mobile believe it or not, so they should be considered - such as voice activation.

More info on http://w3.org/mobile

April 15th, 2008 at 4:10 am

@ MA - yup, we’ve been saying this for the longest time, and even said it before you this time

http://www.broadstuff.com/arch.....e-Web.html

Grabbing undue credit…..

April 15th, 2008 at 4:19 am

Hi Michael,

You must be very tired or sleepy when you wrote this article because I found several obvious typos:

“More and more people will be getting true smart phones in their hards that can open and view normal webpages quickly. ”

hards —>>>hands

“So don’t think of this as the death of your startuup, Russell. ”

startuup —>>>startup

Take care please and wish you best.

April 15th, 2008 at 4:33 am

@10 u must be tired 2 as there’s more.. eg., “build sofware”.. but, no big deal?..

April 15th, 2008 at 4:37 am

Jason:

“My belief is that the use of web services and device based software services utilizing online data bases and communities is the way to go.”

Are you talking about information aggregators? It makes some sense - view the web on monitors, view feeds on the mobile to keep up to date whilst in transit.

April 15th, 2008 at 4:44 am

All I can say - if the mobile web is dead - then why the f&*k has admob served 21Billion advertisements ?

Maybe this dude just needs to have a fixed footer on his application where he can show ads and show a new ad every fking banner impression.

There’s you advertising revenue.

And if its porn thats helping you - hook up some deals with redtube and youporn

Now you are in the richpool - as opposed to the deadpool.

April 15th, 2008 at 4:54 am

…growth has been flat or falling for the past couple months because of various search-engine tweaks I’ve done.

A CEO doing his own SEO. He is blaming the lack of growth on his poor search engine optimization efforts. I suspect the problem is much deeper after reading his post.

I am actually amazed that the same person who wrote that blog post ran a company, even if it was only for a year.

April 15th, 2008 at 4:59 am

Mobile Gaming is not dead. We converted over our game EnergeeInc.com and the mobile version gets twice the page views of our desktop web version. We just made the game small browser friendly for smartphones.

More importantly we bought adMob ads and got 1000 new players the first day.

Thanks………….Rob

April 15th, 2008 at 5:26 am

It’s certainly not dead outside of the US, but there are some interesting dynamics here in Japan, at least. I’m still getting a feel for it all but the impression I’ve gotten is that the mobile web is still very much controlled by the networks. The experience is richer in certain verticals but it’s still very limited and there isn’t the kind of free discovery of sites the way we have in the US. I’d love to be proven wrong.

I agree with Michael’s conclusion. Russell’s been a long-time, valuable contributer to the mobile world and I wish him all the best. He’ll be back.

April 15th, 2008 at 5:27 am

Russ is a risk taker with passion. He’s not afraid to say what he feels and he’s not afraid to lay it all on the line for something he believes in. Read his post, he in fact says the very same things about the Mobile web that Michael has. Mass uptake of the web on mobile will not happen until everyone has an iPhone-like experience.

Good on you Michael for ending off with words of encouragement for Russ.

April 15th, 2008 at 6:26 am

Here in europe the market is predominantly Prepay, which invariably means I just want to SMS, Voice. > 70% in the UK, >90% in Italy etc. Also they tend not to have Smartphones as they are not provided with a prepay handset. Of course you can swap out Sims etc, but I am making generalizations here.. Under such circumstances I cannot see the mobile web being such a success for the mass market at least here in Europe.

April 15th, 2008 at 6:38 am

I agree that it is not dead, but I’m not sure it has really started yet either. I have a smartphone and still can’t accomplish anything on my phone when it comes to the mobile web. And, I’ve tried: Browser, Yahoo Go!, Facebook and several other mobile services. Given response times and reliability of experience, I simply can’t use the services. Only thing that has really worked is Facebook mobile app for very simple functionality. In my opinion, at least in the US, we are years away from a vibrant mobile advertising market. Admob is the only exception given its simple text approach which is a good place to start. Yahoo Go! is, I think, the largest single mobile application with the largest user base and the advertising revenue is tiny even with a huge sales effort. Mobile (non-SMS) in the US has been 90% silicon valley hype that is non-existent to this point.

April 15th, 2008 at 6:53 am

I agree that “creating specialty stripped down version of web pages for mobile devices is coming to an end” but the idea of having different experiences for different devices is not. The problem with mobile sites of the past was that it was “stripped down.” The right approach is to elevate the core functionality. I don’t want 5 banners ads, the full nav, recirc touts, the full footer and when I’m trying to check what time the movie starts or what the score of the game was last night. Success in mobile is about hyper usability and functionality.

April 15th, 2008 at 7:32 am

Mobile web still has a long way to go. Right now, the best functionality comes from client-side apps such as Google Maps or Facebook for Blackberry. Sadly, app development is marred by ridiculous amounts of OS fragmentation.

April 15th, 2008 at 8:47 am

With approximately 3 billions of mobile phones, mostly with average “12-keys”, small screen phone, a unified WEB based service to help browsing the mobile web should be a good business. I guess Russell Beattie assumed the potential of the large number of mobile phones. It is quite absurd to realize that the potential doesn’t seem to exist.

April 15th, 2008 at 10:04 am

Still way too many obstacles in the way; phone “standards” vary from one manufacturer to the other, providers are still making it impossible for users to *want* to surf (too costly, too restricted, etc), and frankly, the “mobile revolution” is still waiting to happen.

Lots and lots of people to talk about it and announce it as the next big thing, hardly anything worth looking at online that’s not some cheap porn site, some limited news site that offers nothing different, or some rip off contest that’s just an excuse for phishing phone numbers.

And no, the iPhone is not *it* either, just some gizmo all the geeks are hot for right now; it’s a niche product, it’s actually market penetration is abysmal.

April 15th, 2008 at 11:09 am

While I agree we are just at the beginning of mobile web, I still think that websites and applications would benefit a lot by optimizing their mobile access. For example, for a good mobile user experience, sites cannot have the same amount of ads and traditional browser mashup are definitely not really usable.

I think that the biggest difference between a mobile device and a PC, is that one of them is (most of the time) one hand operated.

BTW, TechCrunch does not look too bad on my Treo750 (somehow I do not get the ads, which is definitely good). Take a long time to load though, even on a 3G.

April 15th, 2008 at 12:09 pm

I think that the mistake most of the mobile startups make is that they apply the same business and ecosystem model from the desktop web to mobile web. Mobile web is NOT dead and continues to grow but unfortunately as a small startup, it is very difficult to generate a profit and stay in business. One of the previous commenters listed a number of startups “doing well” but we have to be reminded that none of them are actually making any significant money from mobile. Most of them are able to sustain themselves and fight to stay relevant from the investment they raised.

I am convinced that for the time being, there only 2 kinds of companies that’ll succeed in the mobile web space:
1. A big desktop web company who can cover the losses with rev from the desktop or
2. A startup that raises lots of money to cover their burn for the next 3 to 5 years.

There’s a lot of activity in this space but I do not believe that mobile web, in its current form, is in a state that can support lots of startups; especially those that depend on traffic. Therefore, I believe that it is the big companies that will first see some success from monetizing the mobile web. They will find that the mobile web will prove to be a business on its own or at least help their desktop business.

Only then will startups have a chance to thrive which is why they need to raise lots of money now. If their current business plan calls for generating enough traffic in the next 2 years to stay in business, might as well close shop early because I do not believe this will happen.

April 15th, 2008 at 12:40 pm

I don’t get the feeling Russell is being honest with us or himself. Lack of passion, money, both? Whatever. Mobile internet faces lot’s of challenges. Telcoç ripping off customers is an even bigger problem than the big technical problems that exist. Seriously… if Android could just please rise to the challenge. The telco’s though need to get very real about pricing or they will destroy their market just like the majors destroyed the music industry.

April 15th, 2008 at 2:33 pm

Wow - one guy decides that startup life isn’t for him and this is supposed to throw a whole shadow over the industry…..hmmm I don’t think so.

I like Russell, I’ve been a long time reader of his blog and an occasional user of his Mowser application.

I think the key point here is that….”Mowser was filling a temporary problem”, with the release of the iPhone and the imminent massive model variants of the Android OS on the Horizon and the sure but steady improvements in the Windows Mobile 6 OS I think Russell is throwing in the towel as handsets are getting “good enough to no longer need Mowser”.

Now do I think he threw it in too early with only 12 months operation - sure but thats because I’m a serial startup entrepreneur with 2 listed companies under my belt.

As an employee of http://www.Amethon.com one of the worlds first mobile browser specific analytics applications just for mobile content, I for one, am seeing huge growth in mobile content.

Amethon’s clients are seeing traffic build month on month, and yes I think a lot of that has to do with better quality handsets and better quality browsers and most importantly higher data speeds with somewhat more reasonable flat rate unlimited data plans.

With a better user experience more people are finding the convenience of accessing content on the move …..or standing still but getting it right where they are standing with a mobile device never far from their hand ….

The best part about this mobile content is the volume of advertising coming into the space is funding a better user experience, and with tools like Amethon Mobile Analytics users analytics information and a solid roi can be demonstrated against this advertising spend.

Am I sad to see Mowser go, yes - Will Russell bounce, for sure - one of the smartest pioneers in the mobile business, Do I think USA consumers are a little behind eastern consumer patterns in mobile content consumption - YES but that has more to do with carriers and handsets than personal desires and usage patterns.

The mobile space is just taking off, with all the fallouts and successes that there was in the desktop browser wars in the 1990’s.

Watch this space and get in early……your customers are waiting.

Regards,
Dean Collins
http://www.Amethon.com

April 15th, 2008 at 6:01 pm

I just recetnly began using mobile Web on my phone. Although the experience is very clunky (on my Motorola i855 at least), I find that having access to a wealth of pertinant info while on-the-go is simply invalauble.

For example, today I wanted to find out Fast Company’s office number while I was in school (unfortunately, my school does not give net access to students). So I found a private corner (cell phones are banned too), Googled the site, and scanned the contact page for their 212 number. It wasn’t exactly speedy as a Formula1 car, but it was convenient enough.

The mobile Web is not dead. It simply needs improvement (like how more people use smartphones).

April 17th, 2008 at 9:10 pm

I used to read his blog back in 2003-4. Told him countless times in comments to monetize it better. Then last year I told him that if he’d played his cards right, he could’ve been in a similar position to Arrington. He treated his blog as a lark and not a business. Will he ever learn? Turn Mowser into a commercial blog on mobile. You still have time.

April 25th, 2008 at 1:16 pm

hmm.. maybe the exec is just going to another more profitable field by using the lame excuse that the field he is in now is dead. That way he gets two rabbits with one stone. 1. less people going to be interested in his existing business. 2. Noone would know what he up to.. meanwhile check out http://www.pccti.com . Its a healthcare and IT certification / training institute in Chicago IL. Offers various programs that will get you a good job even when US falls into the deep recession (hope everyone got the taste of it by now.. if not watch out - cuz the higher you climbed up the hill the harder is the landing… ) . So dont let me lose my job and just visit pccti.com. .. and maybe even call the school if you are in IL somewhere. I know you out there. keys / tags : ECG; EKG; LPN; MCDBA; MCSE; DMS; Chicago; Programs; Certifications