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Why the iPhone App Store Changes Everything
My son, the actor (a.k.a. "primary demographic focus group of one") came home with his 3G iPhone the other day and began our conversation with, "You gotta see this." A half hour later, we'd made a movie of his favorite apps. Watching this takes about 8 minutes, so if you've already got one of these at home (mobile 20-somethings, not iPhones), or you don't think you need to listen to consumers talk about their information habits, just skip this and read on. But don't miss the point: the Apple AppStore changes everything. Apple -- which well learned the downside lessons of its past hoarding of the Mac operating system -- has done far more than change the form factor of the phone with its iPhone, especially the 3G. It's created an innovation platform for entrepreneurs and given them both the means and the opportunity to profit from their ingenuity. Observe: - It was awhile before Chris got to "news" -- unless you count Drudge, which was quite prominent. Despite what he says about wanting to stay "informed," Drudge is clearly a must-see because of its entertainment value, not merely to keep abreast of world events.
- Those things that we think of as news that featured first impinged directly on daily choices: the weather, the traffic (the traffic cam, btw, came from the NBC affiliate in Washington, not a newspaper...), the subway, movie times.
- There are nearly 40 pages of "free" applications on the iPhone site, though less than a handful from "newspapers." There are just three pages of apps that come up in iTunes when you search for "news" in general, but even when combining free and paid apps, very few attributable directly to just newspapers.
- Most of these applications are "fun." Many are useful. In the mobile space, "Hey, that's hilarious" often trumps "I really need a...". Both are way out in front of "I really should..."
So, once again, it is the disruptive, nothing-to-lose, aspirational
innovators who are taking advantage of the low-barrier-to-entry
opportunities that capture the market's imagination -- NOT the
"established media." Who is taking advantage of this new platform?  Well, let's see. There's the ubiquitous New York Times, which hasn't even created an "iPhone edition" of its online site to be featured, yet saw its mobile traffic jump from 500,000 monthly page views in February 07 to 14M in February 08, coincidentally when the first iPhones burst upon the scene. The iPhone two-finger touch to enlarge capability makes this feasible, but how hard would it be to "Drudge it up" a bit for mobiles -- not to mention integrating a phone-friendly ad? How many million views does it take to make this worth a couple of days of effort? There's CBS's Eye Mobile -- video on phones wins because there aren't that many places to go to see what 3G DOES. NetNews wire, Pocket Express, Now Local -- these are all aggregators, some from folks like NewsGator with which newspapers play ball, others like NowLocal which springs from Internet Broadcasting Systems, one of publishers' major competitors for national/local ad dollars. Poised like a fragile little flower among heavily plowed fields is WRNI radio -- NPR from Rhode Island. And, as if on cue to drive home one of the key lessons from Guy Kawasaki's Rules for Revolutionaries ("Don't worry, be crappy!") there is the ever savvy Fox News UReport. This last example consists of just two fields that enable "viewers" to upload news-related video directly to Fox. (Don't act like you haven't seen this before...YouTube has long made it possible to upload mobile video to the Web for some time-- we just haven't carved out any room "above the fold" to foster this level of immediacy from our UGC contributors. 
Potentially even more interesting are the iPhone RSS aggregators. What does it take just to be included in one of these? Crisp Wireless asserts: Mobile web browsers spend more time and view more pages on sites in autos, men/sports, TV & entertainment, and online services. However, sites drawing the highest percentages of visits per unique, representing greater “stickiness,” are in women’s lifestyle, youth, and TV & entertainment. So, what's stopping publishers from creating their OWN aggregated RSS feeds on STYLE (Skirt, Style.com come to mind), NASCAR, local sports? How big do you think the potential audience might be for a men's health aggregation one touch away from the iPhone deck? --- Hmmm... Opportunity options: *RSS everywhere. Make it easier for your feeds to be an option in popular readers, INCLUDING MOBILE ONES. *Start your own iPhone App Fund/Prizemoney *Copy the Fox App and post mobile news from users (disclaimer no. 1: note that, like Garmin driving directions the user is responsible for not doing anything illegal at the behest of the blogger...) *Create a "Hack this" page or icon on every published Web site that shows users how to embed their favorite news and views into their every info device. *Take the concept of "social bookmarking" and turn it into mobile syndication. Little phone icon on every article/story/module (i.e. weather or horoscope) is clickable to capture this category for your phone. * Let AP move beyond "local" news to category syndication on the iPhone. AP Style, AP Sports, AP Food... Prominence is hard to achieve, but shouldn't be that hard to leverage for a piece of the action. (Disclaimer no. 2: the views expressed herein are those of the blogger and not necessarily those of the NAA...) * Follow the buzz. Note that one popular app, "Election '08" is just an aggregation of where the latest polls put the candidate count for the next SIX WEEKS (hint -- popularity is in perpetual motion), and now look at what Crisp cites as the top 20 mobile "search terms" driving traffic to its content network: 1 barack obama / obama, 2 movies / movie times, 3 Weather, 4 heath ledger, 5 News, 6 britney spears, 7 Horoscopes, 8 Sex, 9 Porno, 10 american idol,11 Iphone, 12 brad renfro,13 lil wayne, 14 hillary Clinton, 15 h&m clothing, 16 Nasdaq, 17 Cloverfield, 18 nfl playoffs, 19 Spitzer, 20 Apple Note that, counting iPhone, Apple's on the list TWICE. Nasdaq probably moved up in recent weeks. Sex, porno, Britney Spears and Brad Renfro all trump Hillary Clinton. Tell me what's hot that makes me sound smart, that couples cultural observation with utility and entertainment, and I am_LITERALLY_in the palm of your hand. * "Fun" rules. --- Because I started out with a case study of one, I feel compelled to end with some more macro observations. On a day when Google can issue its own phone operating system, and nearly every phone is on
track to feature touch-screen and/or "pocket Internet," the pace of mobile marketing is
about to heat up substantially. eMarketing predicts that the $1.5
billion that advertisers currently spend about annually on
mobile media is expected to increase almost 10X to $14 billion by 2011.
Why?
* 40 million mobile subscribers in the US (15.6%) actively use the mobile Internet.
* Nielsen says, "mobile Internet has reached a critical mass as an
advertising medium in the US. …individual sites attract millions of
unique users. This provides scalable marketing potential with
demographic breadth."
* Marketers have discovered that mobile marketing works. 26
percent of mobile Internet users recall seeing some form of advertising
while using the mobile Internet.
* Mobile Internet users are 60% more likely to be open to mobile
advertising than the average mobile data user. There's a 12-25%
response rate on average. (Last two stats from MMA newsletters.) <cue the big finish> More Cowbell!
Published
Sep 25 2008, 10:57 PM
by
MGipson
About MGipson
Melinda Gipson, who founded The Digital Edge, was once NAA's interactive business guru. She then proved that even really prescient people can misjudge their interactive champions. Having recently abandoned the ranks of interactive newspaper employees, she currently consults online innovators who themselves may offer good partnership opportunities for more established publishers. Rest assured that any such companies that come up in blogversation will of course be prominently disclosed. Any and everything else is fair game.
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