Business owners and developers who are serious about making money on the mobile web need a product to sell and a way to collect payments. Paypal has an entire section in their Paypal Developer Network devoted to answering questions about adding the famous “pay now” button to mobile sites and apps.
There’s also documentation for Paypal mobile, which includes:
Security on the Mobile Web
How Mobile Checkout Works
Customer Activation for Mobile Checkout
Mobile Checkout Processing Flow
Merchant Integration Points
Documentation
If you are viewing this post from a phone or computer that can access youtube, here is a video featuring Osama Bedier of Paypal demonstrating mobile payment integration:
Now that Afilias has purchased dotMobi, there is renewed discussion about whether or not .mobi can compete for mind share and market share with m. or mdot, the shorthand for made for mobile websites that start with m. in front of a brand’s primary web address.
“With the m-dot convention becoming the de facto standard for mobile Web addresses, it’s not clear how Afilias can suddenly generate fresh interest in the dot-mobi domain. Unless it can also revive the fortunes of Friendster at the expense of Facebook.” – Mark Walsh, MoBlog.com
Upon re-reading Mark’s quote, I don’t think it is an apples to apples comparison. Friendster was first, and Facebook came afterwards and passed it in the marketplace. .mobi was not there first, so it isn’t like it lost market share. It just never took off, or at least not yet.
If you’ve read Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, it strikes me that in the future, .mobi still could build momentum and eventually get to a tipping point of awareness if the right people started to care about it. That said, we are nowhere near the tipping point right now, and I think it could take another three years or so despite the fact that many people are yet again declaring 2010 “The year of the mobile web.”
This isn’t some pie in the sky idea. There is a recent precedent in the form of Twitter.
Twitter was around for years before most people even knew what it was, let alone the media phenomenon it is today. People called it a waste of time, a money loser, and worse (sound familiar?). Early adopters called those early days of fail whale sightings “Before Oprah,” which refers to the day mega-celebrity Oprah Winfrey announced that she would be tweeting on her show. Now I see twitter badges all the time on national television commercials, and I bet you do, too.
So, to everyone who sees mdot (as in m.something.com) as the default for how to access the internet on a mobile phone on the top social media and other high traffic sites, I’ll remind you of an important truth: just because something is on top right now doesn’t mean it will stay that way, especially in technology.
The tipping point will only happen if there is enough word of mouth in the right circles, so yes, it is important to continue to develop useful, popular sites in the .mobi namespace, and do whatever you can to get them to go viral.
It won’t happen by accident, though. And, it won’t happen overnight. It will build slowly as members of different communities start to notice developed .mobi sites that they like. Then, they will share it with one or two more people in their communities, and eventually, if enough good sites are built on .mobi, knowledge of .mobi will cross community lines, and eventually, celebrities will start to think it is a good idea and say so publicly.
Signs of Life in .mobi Promotion
Flymas.mobi has a killer of a viral promotion on Youtube right now. It’s user-generated content where people are trying to win free airplane tickets. Some of these videos are very funny. As a result of this contest, in Malaysia and other parts of the world served by Malaysia Airlines, you can bet they’ve heard of .mobi. More campaigns like this one can bring .mobi closer to the tipping point.
Afilias, I am not letting you off the hook for .mobi promotion. I’d like to see dotMobi move beyond the Business to Business strategy that left consumers in the dark about developed mobile sites. I’d like you to show bloggers and small business owners the possibility of registering great keywords at new registration prices.
That said, developers, get busy.
This post is included in Carnival of the Mobilists #212. Please visit the link and see what my mobile colleagues have to say.
Do you have a .mobi site with a viral video? Link it here in the comments (moderated). Let’s see what you’ve got!
Back when I was dating, the cardinal rule was to never phone after the first date until at least three days had passed. The phone was too personal for such a quick contact and you could be seen as too aggressive or worse, too desperate.
Times have changed. Now it is OK to use your phone for contact immediately after the first date, provided you don’t speak into it. Texting something pithy or witty that night, or the following day, can often be viewed as a positive addition to the dating experience.
Now let’s move to the end of the relationship. Breaking up over the phone is not as good as breaking up in person, but not nearly as bad as – OMG! – breaking up via text. Same phone. Same message. Completely different level of cultural acceptability.
We respond to text messages faster than emails, and BBMs faster than texts. Same Phone. Same message. Same textual appearance. Different accepted practice.
It is OK to whip out the phone (among some dining parties) at a restaurant to perform certain tasks – like looking up a sticking point in the conversation – but not others, like answering an email or playing a game. Same phone. Same amount of time “away” from the conversation. Different effect on your friends.
The list goes on and on. What is it about the mobile phone that generates this long list of rules and practices that is not present on our other media?
The mobile phone is not “the third screen.” It is a very personal, interactive, communication ecosystem of which the screen is just one visual component. The mobile phone has developed, and is continually developing, behavioral mores and cultural norms that have very serious implications for marketers. Violate one of those norms, and the consequences can be severe.
Marketers who continue to treat the mobile phone as yet another screen to “repurpose content” or as a quick campaign add-on to “target a hard to reach audience”, do so at their peril. It will be the brands that actively leverage the behavioral use patterns of the mobile phone and their attendant cultural norms that will succeed.
Marshall McLuhan said “The medium is the message” and he couldn’t be more right as it pertains to the mobile phone. The emerging customs, lifestyle behaviors and prevailing standards associated with the use of the mobile phone are unique, real and significant.
When mobile-specific behavior and culture is taken into account, the mobile phone shines as a brilliant addition to a well crafted overall brand marketing strategy – witness AT&T and American Idol.
When ignored, it can have the potential to undo the hard earned trust of the very same brand. AT&T found that out when it violated customer privacy expectations by using the American Idol list. And worst of all, most of the customers who chose to break up with the AT&T brand as a result, didn’t even bother to inform them by sending a text.
This post is one of the ten reasons why mobile advertising has not reached its potential. You can access the other nine at www.mobilemandala.com
File under “This is so cool you have to bookmark it.”
When I was a kid, I got to meet an astronaut. A real, live astronaut. I thought that was really, really cool. He showed us his space suit and answered all kinds of questions from the audience. Today, I got a taste of that same excitement when someone from the Jet Propulsion Lab at NASA contacted me to see if I would put a NASA mobile site on mobiEnthusiast. Hmmm, let me think about that one…. Are you kidding? YES!
Ok, so maybe that wasn’t the calm, cool, professional, jaded response you would expect from a blogger. Let’s see how calm and collected you are when astronauts and rocket scientists (or their marketing department) come knocking on your door.
The site itself has the compelling content you would expect from the Space Agency. Interplanetary photography, artists’ renditions, news, discoveries and links to other NASA sites are plentiful. The NASA mobile site is a great way to keep up to date on the latest in space, or to keep your little scientists busy in a traffic jam or while waiting for a bus or train. Teachers can incorporate it into their lesson plans, and space enthusiasts can get their space fix wherever their mobile internet or wifi network allows.
The NASA mobile site for the Jet Propulsion Lab can be found at jpl.nasa.gov. Those of you who read this blog regularly are calling “Foul!” right now because it is not a .mobi site. That’s correct, it is a .gov, owned by the United States government. It autodetects phones, and is more likely to show on a smartphone than a feature phone. That’s all the more reason to upgrade to a smartphone if you haven’t already.
So, mTLD, here’s your opportunity to meet the nice people at NASA to see if they’d like their .mobi. After all, the sky really is the limit.
Do you blog about mobile? Need some exposure for your blog?
I run the blog MobiEnthusiast.mobi. Lately, I have been involved in many projects and do not have time to give it the attention it deserves. For example, there are two major mobile conferences going on right now, one in London and one in San Diego, and they didn’t get covered due to time constraints. MobiEnthusiast gets decent traffic, though, and I would hate for it to fizzle out.
If you blog about mobile, and would like to make a guest post about something of interest to mobile internet readers, I invite you to submit a proposal for an article for publication.
There will not be monetary compensation for the article, but you will get author credit and a link back to your site. The exposure is considerable:
MobiEnthusiast had readers from 99 countries last month, and is featured on Guy Kawaski’s Alltop, dotMobi’s MobiThinking, DNJournal Resources, and other similar sites. Your blog entry will also be tweeted through my @mobienthusiast account, which has over 4,000 followers (I routinely block bots and sp*am accounts).
Ground rules:
1.) Must be mobile related
2.) Can’t be a sales pitch
3.) Must be business- and family-friendly (teens and kids find our site sometimes since we cover apps in their age group)
4.) Must link to a business- or family-friendly site
5.) Can’t be political (again, readers from 99 countries don’t always agree on politics)
I reserve the right to edit for grammar.
One article per week will be submitted for inclusion in Carnival of the Mobilists.
Interested? Send me a message on LinkedIn or email it to information [at] mobienthusiast.mobi.
Jim Atwood made a WordPress blog and used a mobile plugin. That’s impressive, but not unique. After all, I do that here on mobiEnthusiast.mobi every day. The unique part is that Jim is an American living in Japan. As a mobile internet junkie, I want to learn all I can about what makes mobile tick in a country that is mostly mobile-only – especially since I don’t understand the language.
According to Jim, it is common in Japan to make two completely separate versions of a website. One is for desktop computers, like his standard blog, Ricochehost.com (computer link), and a completely separate, stand-alone mobile website, such as his mobile blog, JimAtwood.mobi.
In Jim’s words:
The Japanese like to make things simple and have two sites. This avoids the browser detection problems that everyone has all the time. With just one dedicated mobile site, things are much easier. In some cases, Japanese website only one version and that is mobile. In my opinion, mobile usage for the Internet is much more prevalent in Japan.
As a mobi enthusiast, this is music to my ears. It makes perfect sense to avoid trying to guess what new phone is going to come out next and garble my site. Granted, mTLD/dotMobi does a great job with Device Atlas, but if you make a site that complies with ready.mobi in the first place, it is much simpler and saves a lot of time and headaches. Dot com for computers, dot mobi for mobile web.
I met Jim through LinkedIn (mobile link). If you are interested in networking with me on LinkedIn as well, please let me know.
Now mobile internet users can get their US Economy news in one place with US-Economy.mobi. The mobile site shows US Economy news stories including economic indicators such as real estate markets, jobless claims, and federal budget news. While the site doesn’t present every story on the topic – that would be impossible – it does offer the reader a snapshot of what’s happening in a mobile format.
