we’re a part of FunMobility!

we’re excited to announce today that we’re going to be joining FunMobility, the largest mobile content community in the U.S.! FunMobility has some great new direct-to-consumer products in the works…stay tuned!

more proof that we need better mobile web analytics…

in case you didn’t see this post about Google’s Mobile AdWords not reporting conversions accurately…

we’d have to disagree with the comment that Google’s inaccurate mobile web reporting “isn’t much of a problem now, with the mobile web in its infancy. With only a limited number of click-throughs on mobile ads anyway, not many are pouring over the analytics of their mobile campaigns.” we pour over every piece of data that we can find to help make decisions – especially when there’s a dearth of reliable mobile web information!

mobile web urgently needs better analytical tools

a number of recent articles/studies/blog posts – like this here – have been touting the mobile web’s arrival in the U.S.. since we’ve been focusing our strategy on our mobile site for some time now, it’s all welcome news to us .

a recent Jupiter Research study of U.S. mobile web sites revealed some promising mobile web usage trends (ex.: 40% of websites had launched a mobile version of their site and another 22% were planning to do so this year, 25% of U.S. cell phone owners have browsed the mobile web and 16% do so regularly). an interesting stat for us – only 3% of advertisers had placed ads on mobile sites so far…what’s holding them back?!

well, we know one thing that’s badly needed for the mobile web to take off: better mobile web analytics. as “experienced” mobile web publishers, we still haven’t found analytical tools that give us consistently reliable information. there’s also a big discrepancy in the reporting stats that AdMob and Google Mobile AdSense provide for ad impressions on our site – even though we show ads from both platforms equally. please let us know if you find any good mobile analytic tools!

thank you, apple

the NYT recently suggested that 2008 will be the year of the cell phone because all that’s transpired in 2007.

when we look forward to “open” platforms and networks in the coming years, we should first look back and credit apple for creating these opportunities. it was the iphone that made the mobile web seem cool for consumers and helped increase traffic to mobile website like ours.

as the iphone became hugely successful, the non-iphone carriers found themselves unexpectedly on the outside-looking-in. all of a sudden, none of these carriers wanted to be excluded from another iphone-type situation (i.e. well known brand like google creating the next big thing in mobile) – and so participating in google’s open handset alliance became a competitive necessity. then before you know it, verizon said it was going to open up its network.

so thank you apple for helping to open up an entire industry with one phone…

thank you igloo & admob

we got a pleasant surprise last week when we were notified that our mobile site was a weekly winner of igloo and admob’s wapmaster contest. igloo is building a great mobile directory…so if you’re a mobile publisher, list your site on igloo and link back to them to get more mobile traffic!

google’s android and mobile social networking

like everybody else in mobile, we were pretty interested in the details behind google’s android platform released earlier this week.

we haven’t decided whether or not to build a mobile social networking app for android to extend/complement our mobile site, but it was interesting that social networking was listed as the first suggested focus area for the android developer challenge.

as mobile social networking app developers, the holy grail for us (dating back to our research while at the MIT Media Lab) has always been getting access to a user’s contacts on their cell phone. if you think about it, a user’s cell phone contact list is their most personal and most important social network: i might have hundreds or thousands of email contacts and/or friends on myspace, facebook, etc., but only my most important contacts are listed in my cell phone’s address book.

it looks like android is finally going to give mobile social developers access to a user’s cell phone contacts. since mobile social apps need to be available on a wide number of carriers/handsets in order to really take off, let’s hope other mobile platforms being to open up as well…

sidekick marketing…

we have a lot of sidekick users on our site and have always tried our best to keep them happy. sidekick users are generally the young/hip demographic that we’re targeting, they’re passionate about their phones and they’re earlier adopters of mobile data services.

in talking with sidekick users, we frequently heard them wish that their sidekicks had mobile video capture/playback capabilities. so, did anybody else find it ironic that tmobile is promoting the new sidekick slide & LX with a user-generated video contest on myspace…when the new sidekicks still don’t have video capabilities? seems like a painful tease for sidekick owners .

mobile web ads: admob and google

if you’ve checked out our mobile site at m.moblastic.com recently, you may have noticed that we recently added Google’s AdSense for mobile ads.

we’ve been happy using AdMob’s ads for a long time now. in fact, our CTRs and CPMs were significantly higher for our mobile traffic using AdMob than they were for our online site using AdSense. it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but suffice it to say we’ve been very happy with AdMob so far.

we were intrigued by stuff we had read online about other mobile publishers seeing spikes in traffic from mobile AdSense. well…we can verify that we’re seeing almost the exact same results: large spike in traffic from mobile AdSense, but higher CPMs from AdMob than from AdSense.

if you’re a mobile web publisher, try a combo of AdMob and Google for your site and let us know if you see different results.

riding the tide of the mobile web

we’ve been pretty silent about the iPhone – even though it’s been the biggest thing in mobile over the last several years.

a funny thing started happening after the iPhone’s launch this past summer: we noticed our mobile web traffic on our m.moblastic.com site started to pick up significantly without any additional marketing/product changes on our part.  even though we don’t have that many iPhone users, the iPhone’s great mobile web browsing experience seems to have raised the profile of the mobile web & convinced consumers that web browsing from your cell phone could actually be a good thing.

just like a lot of our users, we’ve also decided that the mobile web can be a good thing .  we’ve got some new mobile web initiatives that we’ve been working on for a while now…stay tuned and bear with us as we roll them out!

new facebook app: Photo Gifts!

we just lauched a fun app on Facebook called Photo Gifts.   the premise is simple: instead of sending the same old gifts that everybody else is sending, send a customized photo as a gift. it’s more personal, it’s more fun and it’s super easy to do.  judging from the usage trends and user feedback so far, we also think Photo Gifts might be surprisingly addictive .

send a Photo Gift and let us know what you think!