Mobile is Where the Growth Is
avc.com
avc.com
I'm finding many mobile apps simple/clean to use - although the 'responsive design' movement is diluting that.
the optimizations for (native) apps just moved from the app-level to the market-place level.
However, if the optimization for apps is based on usage, reviews, downloads, etc, then having a good experience is consistent with having good rankings.
Not so much with SEO where things like engagement and usage data don't factor much into rankings since it's not reliable
that's a story the link-counting-tool providers (i.e. seomoz) and linknetworks / linkbuilidng companies have been telling for years. and it is bullshit to keep the (crapy) status quo in SEO (because their business is deeply rooted into the status quo).
ux metrics (serp clickthrough, long clicks) are an a factor for ages, see i.e. the discussion about "long-clicks" in the exgoogler book "i'm feeling lucky".
plus: on big sites it is very easy (and i and other have done it multiple time) to test this UX factor. just make the UX of google referred visits significant poorer (i.e. via cloaking or performance delays) and see what happens to your overall SERP impressions and click throughs.
the same goes for reviews, there is even an publicly available googler paper about it.
also i know the webmaster videos as well, they are more in the tone of "you have to be careful when you look at user behavior".
also your argument has huge holes: "it's GOOD if a visitor spends 5 seconds there vs. 5 minutes because it means they found what they wanted." well, there is an statistical technic called "standard deviation", if the SD is too big, don't factor it in. (i don't say that google does this, i'm sure they are more sophisticated, but it's a good counter argument for your example)
"Sometimes usage data is misleading." well, then G would just have to determine when it is misleading and with which probability.
i repeat: just test it. (and: don't read to much seomoz.)
I suspect that sucky discovery is somehow beneficial to Apple. This also makes me think that good discovery in app stores might be the key to Google competing with Apple.
1 - http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/23/apple-chomp/
2 - http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/29/looks-like-apple-has-change...
Relax. The question was put out there genuinely, not as FUD. If Apple has so much to benefit from app discovery, why has it taken so long?
I suspect that a lot of people at Apple benefit personally by having the power to decide which apps are featured, and which are not. I know devs for which this makes a difference as big as a good middle class salary or more. I am agreed that it's to Apple's benefit to have better discovery, but as well governed as it is, Apple is not a monolithic entity.
Smart money says that the acquisition is going to lead to much-improved discoverability on the iOS App Store.
I would love for this to happen. I'm not so sure this is in an area of core competency for Apple, though. Acquiring Chomp was the right move, but acquisitions don't always pan out.
Because it's a hard problem to solve? Because app vendors are excellent at gaming any system for competitive advantage?
Curating apps is tough, whether it's delivered via an app store, or whether it's a publicly available app.
There's a reason it was easier to find apps in the PC era; there weren't that many quality apps. There were 1-2 word processors worth a damn, a few spreadsheets, and a few databases. Development costs were high because the apps were difficult to create, and distribution costs prevented developers from monetizing them easily.
Compare that with today's apps; small, easier coding, far easier distribution. You end up with millions of apps for Android and iOS. And there's no hallowed authority like BYTE or PC Magazine to bless your app;
Somewhere out there, someone is thinking along the lines of Page and Brin, thinking out of the box about how to make app discovery work; and when they do, we'll all slap our heads and think "why didn't we think of that?" And then the SEO guys will slowly adapt and app discovery will end up like web discovery.
Chalk that up to the era of disposable apps -- Spending a few bucks during discovery doesn't seem like such a bad thing to a user, I guess, but in aggregate, is pretty unsatisfying.
The post sort of implies smartphone == mobile, but with African mobiles being used to transfer scrip, Indian phones already having good SMS based payment models, there are multiple models, markets and a lot of cultural sensitivities
The one preditiom I can make is there will be no more global phenomenon - one website taking off everywhere. Even just tacking on a new tld will not fix the local differences that mobile adoption is bringing
Basically people adopted themselves to the web cos it was so useful and new. But mobile phones get adapted to people.
People in the developed world pay nothing for most of their online/mobile apps and experiences.
How is that different?
A tiny fraction of the price comes with a tiny fraction of the operation cost.
Also both India and Africa are regions on the rise with a growing middle class.
I don't believe you have really thought this through.
It also depends on what you're selling: I have a friend of a friend who works at IBM and they see Africa as their next huge opportunity for growth (although I'll grant you that they're doing B2B and government work).
Also, something like square would be excellent for the so called spaza shop market. GPS applications for rural transportation, since most of the workforce use rural transportation and also easier payment methods. There are huge profitable markets to penetrate.
The gist of it is that APIs will become more important, and that they shouldn't stay as poorly designed as they are today. I try to think about how an API design could look like git's architecture.
True, but this is also why it's annoying.
But you could argue that once Twitter (and FB) tweak sponsored content to the point where it's no longer annoying or is actually share-worthy, that they've nailed this rev model.
Why?
Because then the advertising agencies will have a way to make content people want to read and share and therefore they can rely on people sharing it, at no cost to them.
However, ad agencies typically get paid more for spending more, so I don't think a "no cost" campaign works well for covering their costs.
Of course there's probably agencies out there that do/will pitch this type of campaign, and charge for the ideation + production. But virality is usually an empty promise.
Alternatively, increasing the k-factor on an already successful campaign is something agencies will want, so I believe they will fork out for these sponsored placements regardless.
All told, I really do think some secret sauce for targeting (aided by Twitter's/FB's data insights) plus some cool content produced by the brands/agencies will win out as the monetization strategy for social networks.
I don't understand the complaint about Facebook not being mobile-ready. When I was on it, the mobile fb app worked almost as well as the regular website. That's how I'm guessing most users want the damn thing to work, the same across every platform and not fragmented because, well, it's on a phone. I'm trying to figure out why everyone thinks they're a non-entity on mobile.
Throughout the history of the web most services and content has been free to consumers and support with ad revenue. But on mobile consumers are much more willing to pay and it is almost completely frictionless.
I wonder if in the next few years we will start to see more and more apps using the subscription model. If Facebook was started today as a mobile first business would they charge for the app outright, charge $1 per month, or use in-app purchase to charge for extra features?
NB: I first posted this comment on the blog
B2B market will still be desktop/web based exactly because of the mobile apps being more features than actual applications.
what? so these mobile apps do not use the web?
Mobile is not just the web.
If you are thinking mobile first, you should be building network applications, not web applications.
Fred Wilson is just an example of someone who get this.
I think the degree or pace of success will be different for a mobile, desktop or web app. I also think that an app that's on all three will be more likely to succeed than one that's only on one or two of these.
A couple or so years ago Microsoft had this vision of being on every screen or something. I'd never heard anything that made more sense as a vision statement from a tech giant. Then cloud came along, and they dropped that vision for the Azure/Office 365 push. That was a mistake.
[Edit] To be clear, Azure/Office 365 weren't mistakes - they were/are good. Dropping that vision statement was the mistake.
I used to create simple websites, do some SEO and get thousands of visit daily and now its impossible. Regular link building its dead nowadays.
So, building freemium apps IS the future.