Mobile data: Next hurdle for journalism

With 75 percent of all adult Americans using a mobile phone or PDA, journalists need to start thinking about what people do with those gadgets — and how it relates to distributing the products of journalism.

In addition to making voice phone calls, mobile users are texting, e-mailing, sending instant messages; taking pictures; looking for maps or directions; recording or watching video; listening to music; playing games.

Look: 19 percent of them today are accessing news, weather, sports, and other information via their mobile devices; 10 percent are watching videos; 41 percent have used the Internet on their mobile.

These numbers are only going to grow larger.

The study (PDF file), conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, surveyed more than 2,000 American adults (age 18 and older) in late 2007. The median age of respondents was 37.

Last week I asked a class of about 50 college students about their own cell phone use. I found out that fewer than 10 have the Internet on their phone, but there’s a simple reason for that: They are still on the family plan. Their parents have told them it’s too expensive to add the Internet subscription to their group-price phone service plan. I think when these students go out on their own and buy their own phone service, many more of them will have the mobile Internet. They already text continually — they are already habituated to frequent cell phone use.

They told me that most of their phones have cameras built in, but the picture quality is very poor — so they don’t take a lot of pictures with their phones. (Do you think that would change if the quality improved? I do.)

For the 10 mobile activities Pew asked about, 96 percent of respondents ages 18 to 29 had done at least one of the activities. The median for that age group was 4 out of 10 activities. Looking at each of the older age groups (on page 4), you see both numbers drop. That’s a clear sign that coming generations are going to be doing more stuff with their mobile phones.

There’s another factor too — the phones will definitely get better at doing all this stuff.

Some of my students said they couldn’t imagine watching video on their tiny cell phone screen. But hey, think about the iPhone. Spokesman-Review journalist Colin Mulvany looked at the usage stats for his newspaper’s Web site recently and discovered that in one month, 2,300 people had accessed the site using an iPhone. So you’re not impressed by 2,300? Well, three months earlier, Colin found, it was about 1,000 people. You see what I’m saying?

Zac Echola, a young wired journalist, is already using his phone the way older folks use a printed newspaper. He’s that guy in the deli who’s staring at his tiny screen while he chews on a cheeseburger:

When I’m at lunch, I can pull down any news I’m subscribed to via RSS. On a mobile device. Text, pictures and video come together on my phone. I can do the same on the bus … or on the crapper. And I’m engaging with the news. I’m sharing it …

Mobile news distribution can be a better strategy in developing countries than pouring resources into a traditional Web site. Why? Because the growth of mobile phone use — especially for text messaging (SMS) — is astronomical in developing countries, while Internet penetration continues to be low and slow.

A recent post at ReadWriteWeb asks whether “it’s time to declare the mobile Web, except for the iPhone, dead.” (The question was inspired by one mobile apps startup company, Mowser, shutting down.) A large number of comments on the post vigorously disagreed, however; one well-informed comment offers a wholly different perspective:

What we know now is that given the right browser that mobile web usage takes off. And every phone manufacturer is working to copy the iPhone experience.

If you’re an online designer, check out the book about Mobile Web Design.

And here’s something cool for anyone who already has the Internet on his/her phone: Skweezer. This awesome little site automagically converts any URL you give it into a mobile-friendly version — for your tiniest screen.