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Smartphones – App vs Mobile Sites

Jim DelPizzo Monday, November 15th, 2010

Most companies have realized the shift, the shift that smartphones are here to stay. More and more people are using their smart phones to surf the web, download apps, play games, and check email. The smartphone is taking over what people used to do on a laptop to some extent.

Here is some information on the increase of smartphones and the projections of 2011.

“65 percent of people 18 to 29 years old use their smartphone to access the Internet. Just under 50 percent of people 30 to 39 do the same. Expect those numbers to grow.”
- from the Pew Internet and American Life Project reported in July

There are over 60 million US smart phone users.

2011 smartphones will surpass featured phones by Q3.

Now that companies realize that and finally want to go mobile where do they start? Do they need a mobile website? An App?

Build Apps
Building apps for each device might be time consuming considering as of right now there are iPhones, Andriods, Blackberries, and soon to be released Windows. So you would need to build an application for each device. Though for each device you could use the rich hardware feature of your phone like GPS, maps, and the camera.

Mobile WebSites
Building a mobile web site would be less programming but you would lose out on the hardware features of the phone. Also the display across all the phones might be off, since there are high end smartphones like the iPhone, Andriod, and Blackberry and the low end smartphones that don’t have the display as the high end phones. With the introduction to HTML5 a lot of the mobile sites can act like mobile Apps.

Conclusion
The first thing a company should ask themselves is what are the reason they want a smartphone app or website. From the chart below we can see the breakdown of Apple’s App Store compared to mobile sites

If you are going to use Mobile apps do research on people who are currently using your site, questions to ask – are they iPhone User or Blackberry Users?

My suggestion would be to build a Mobile website first and then if you are in need of an App, you will know which smartphone most of the users of the mobile website use.

**UPDATE pretty cool video on mobile devices:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aUQLIPdtg8&feature=player_embedded

Posted in digital marketing, gaming, mobile, strategy, web dev | No Comments »

Web Development News, Tips, and Tricks

Jim DelPizzo Thursday, April 29th, 2010

Facebook had their third f8 conference on April 21st in San Fransisco while being streamed on Facebook. These conferences are like a state of the union, Facebook telling the world what they have been working on, the changes that will be happening to Facebook, and announcing some new features for both users and developers.

Contrary to some posts I have read Facebook is not ending the Facebook Connect. They are changing the brand name and expanding it. They are moving towards using the Graph API which will make it a lot easier for developers to build sites that use the Facebook Platform.

The Open Graph Protocol is a way for users to build their profiles through “LIKES” throughout the net. When a user clicks on a “LIKE” button say on http://www.nhl.com/ice/teams.htm for their favorite hockey team (i.e. the Flyers) on their Facebook page it will let everyone know that they like the Flyers with a link to that site. With 75 site launching this technology the “LIKES” will grow quickly. Here is a link to those site already using Facebook’s new Protocol http://developers.facebook.com/showcase/

Another thing that came out of f8 were new social plug-ins which can be added to any site without much programming knowledge.

So what is Facebook’s master plan with all this information? There are a couple rumors out there that Facebook will start community pages. These pages will be all user generated from different “LIKES” for different genres, for example if you went into the Hockey community you could see what people were saying or sharing about hockey. It would be a neat way to see information from the masses.

If you don’t have the Facebook javascript included into your site you can stilll include Facebook social icons using frames. Here is an example of the code.
<iframe src=”http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http://blog.netplusmarketing.com& layout=standard&show_faces=true& amp; width=450& amp; action=like& colorscheme=light”<br /> scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″ allowTransparency=”true” style=”border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:px”></iframe>
Which will show:

If you do have the SDK all the code you would need is
<fb:like href=”http://blog.netplusmarketing.com” layout=”standard” show_faces=”true” width=”450″ action=”like” colorscheme=”light”></fb:like>
As with anything Facebook does, there will a short time of backlash from its users who have to change the way they think a little – and let’s face it people don’t like to think – but in the long run Facebook can revolutionize the web once again.

Posted in facebook, news, SEO, social media, strategy, Uncategorized, web dev | 1 Comment »

do different; think different

John Shanley Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

My daughter is constantly asking me if I know where her keys are and I usually don’t because she never hangs them up on the key thingy in the kitchen–like I do every day. Turns out I might be doing my middle–aged brain a disservice through this rote behavior–and my daughter is working her brain in a beneficial way by dropping her keys in a different place every day.

Scientists have found that the brain does not, in fact, loose millions of brain cells daily between the ages of 40 and 60 as previously reported. In fact, while some neural connections become folded into corners of the brain and become a little harder to retrieve, we actually gain a fuller understanding of the bigger picture as we age.

What we can do to keep those neural connection sharp, is to do things differently. Drop your everyday routine, be it good or bad and shift things up. Take a different route to work. Do yoga instead of cycling. Pull out the cookbook and make something you’ve never tried. Learn a foreign language. Or at least try.

The same thing goes for marketing. Get in a rut, use the exact same process for every client, go back to the old tried and trued standards and you’ll be left behind. Unearth the unexpected. Don’t think out of the box, there is no box. Comfort zone be damned.

For all my fellow geezers, here’s the NYTimes article I referenced.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/education/edlife/03adult-t.html?scp=1&sq=brain&st=cse

And for all you youngsters, keep mashing it up. You’ll be here soon enough. If you see a set of VW keys laying around, they’re mine.

Tags: middle age, strategy, thinking
Posted in advertising, digital marketing, strategy | No Comments »

The Baby Manifesto

Richard Clifford Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

The imagery associated with New Year’s Eve often includes a baby. Babies suggest “new beginnings, a fresh start, endless possibilities”….big concepts that often result in well-intentioned and heartfelt pledges of improvement and the swearing of personal oaths. But just as most resolutions collapse under the next day’s clear-eyed vision of the long road ahead (“…meet you at the gym at WHAT time??!!!”), the little cherub usually gets thrown out with the stale champagne.

For me, infant imagery is much more useful for its promise of slow and steady growth. Babies crawl before they walk; they learn by trial and error; they are information sponges; and they are relentless. Now that’s an image I can work with. And it also has everything to do with smart marketing in 2010.

Here’s the Baby Manifesto that I pledge to follow this year:

• Do something! It doesn’t have to be monumental, it just has to relate in a thoughtful way to your plan. You don’t see many toddlers just sitting on their bum, do you? They are gettin’ at at! Motion creates its own momentum.

• Take baby steps. Lots of advantages here. You can do stuff quickly; you don’t have to bet the ranch; a certain amount of falling down is expected — even cute; and when you take a couple of successful steps, everybody cheers.

• Don’t be afraid to fail. No need telling you that success requires trial and error. It’s the self-imposed embarrassment associated with error that gets in the way. Babies don’t care if they frequently fall and eat a little dirt. So tell the voices in your head to stuff a sock in it…you’ve got experiments to conduct!

• Use all of your tools. Babies touch. They smell. They listen. They observe. They gnaw. Between your colleagues, the Internet, and social media, there are lots of ways to develop a solid foundation in your area of inquiry. Listen. Engage. Create a dialogue. You’ll be up and running a lot quicker.

• Celebrate the little stuff. Whatever you’re trying to achieve is going to take a lot of time and effort. For your sake and the sake of your teammates, honor the process. Clap your hands and laugh together when you hit your milestones. Take “family” photos. Put them on your digital refrigerators.

So as my New Year’s gift to you, here’s a picture to tuck in your wallet so that your “baby” gets off to a strong start in 2010.

Tags: baby strategy, cherub
Posted in strategy | 1 Comment »

Archive for the ‘strategy’ Category

Smartphones – App vs Mobile Sites

do different; think different

The Baby Manifesto

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Archive for the ‘strategy’ Category

Smartphones – App vs Mobile Sites

Social Media 2011 Cover Story

Web Development News, Tips, and Tricks

do different; think different

The Baby Manifesto

Netplus Twitter Feed

Recent Articles

Categories

Authors