Mobile is where the growth is in startups, venture capital portolios, and user activity, according to a post by Fred Wilson, managing partner at venture capital firm Union Square Ventures and a frequent blogger.
But one of the problems is that third-party reporting services like comScore, Quantcast, and Alexa are showing flat user growth in the first half of the year, mainly because they aren’t capturing web usage that is “growing like a weed,” Wilson said. He wants a service that measures audiences across mobile and the web.
“There is a significant shift going on this year, much more significant than we saw last year, from web to mobile,” Wilson wrote. “It is most noticeable in games, social networking, music, and news, but it is happening across the board and it presents both great opportunity and great challenges.”
He added, “Mobile native services like Foursquare & Instagram have the most to gain from this transition. Big feature rich web apps like Facebook and Google have the most to lose from this transition.” That’s because mobile doesn’t not reward “feature richness” but rather “light services.” Freemium models such as virtual goods purchases work well on mobile if the commerce experience is well integrated. But display ads don’t work well on mobile. The companies that treat the mobile and web experiences differently are likely to prosper. Startups who recognize this will have the upper hand over big internet businesses that started more than five years ago.
We’d have to agree. This trend is why we’re seeing companies adopt a “mobile first strategy” in apps such as gaming, even though the initial user and revenue opportunity seems lower than a “Facebook first” strategy. Companies such as CrowdStar are shifting their weight to mobile, and startups such as Pocket Gems started with “mobile first.” You’ll be hearing a lot about this at our upcoming MobileBeat 2012 and GamesBeat 2012 conferences on July 10-11 in San Francisco.
[Photo credit: Flickr, philcampbell]
Design is determining the winners in everything mobile. The most successful players are focusing on one thing: How to make products, services, and devices as compelling and delightful as possible — visually and experientially. MobileBeat 2012, taking place July 10-11 in San Francisco, is assembling the most elite minds to debate how UI/UX is transforming every aspect of the mobile economy, and where the opportunities lie. Register here.
via VentureBeat http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Venturebeat/~3/k68OrUYBgMc/
