First, allow me to thank all the regular readers who contacted me directly with congratulations and well-wishes. The domain transfer, site propagation and a thousand other details took longer than I had anticipated, but the results speak for themselves. My special thanks to Paul Nash and Matt Harper at Fifty50 for a design that perfectly balances a “wow” factor with practical usability. Thanks also to Janine Redgrove, Head of Admin, who keeps us all on the same page; Jennifer Abelson, CEO and founder of the Abelson Group, who expertly coordinates our public relations, promotion and ad sales; and regular writers James Cameron and Paul Skeldon, both respected voices in the industry in their own right, who consistently track the mobile trends that matter.
And talk about timing! Just as MSG went live on late Friday afternoon, Scott Beaumont, CEO of RefreshMobile, a company best-known for enabling mini-magazine content on mobile (mobizines), recruited me to be a part of Mippin and join the thousands of online destinations already accessible via this new mobile service. (Thanks for the screenshot of how MSG looks on a mobile device, Scott!) I was worried that the new style sheet (over 2000 lines of code!!) would scramble on Mippin, but it was smooth sailing as Mippin isn’t another squeeze-an-Internet-site-on-to-mobile scheme. Instead, the service takes an RSS and creates made-for-mobile pages from that – an elegant approach that automatically tailors content to fit the mobile device.
But it’s not just about usability; this user-centric approach also encourages people to rate and share the content via text and Twitter, for example. Recognizing that people co-create their content experiences, Mippin also allows users to customize Mippin with “Mipplets”, small apps that – like widgets – pave the way for users to personalize their information. Mippin is in beta testing – and you can check it out at http://mippin.com.
Scott has ambitious plans for the community of people “mippin it”. From the start, Scott has told me that mobile is web publishing all over again and his role is to provide online publishers and advertisers with a new, low-maintenance way to distribute digital content to mobile users. Now he has gone one better, allowing users to interact with the content and – my guess – ultimately the brands behind it all. We’ll see when Scott circles back with an update and a few surprising stats from a recent mobile advertising case study.
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- Mobile Social Networking, Web 2.0, On-Device Portals, Mobile Content, Mobile Advertising, Uncategorized
