The future of social is mobile

"As users flock to Vine, Snapchat and, previously, Instagram, the social platforms are challenged to continue to be the primary provider of these services to the growing army of smartphone users."

That is a part of a TechCrunch article by Keith Teare which really highlights the shift from web-based socializing to "the successes of mobile-first messengers".   If you visit the website for both Vine and Snapchat, you know right away that these social tools are mobile only and launched as mobile-first....not web-based.

Facebook taught us how to socialize digitally (beyond email).  But with so many smartphones around the world, cloud computing, and connectivity new mobile social apps are being created.  The next phase will be integration into your corporate brand apps just like how Facebook and Twitter are APIs in iOS for sharing purposes.

I'd like to see or know how you are using these mobile-first social services for your hockey business, tournaments, retail stores or products.

For more insights into this topic, please use the link below to read the full article.

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• The Future Of Mobile-Social Could Spell The End For Social Networks

Web App or Native App?

Nederlands: Linked In icon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We get a few requests to basically cut and paste website content into a mobile app.  There are many apps out there that do this.  This is good if you just want to regurgitate content with minimal cost, minimal functionality and have the ability launch on several mobile platforms with ease.

Apps should let us create, solve, share, explore, educate, entertain, challenge, save time, connect with people, laugh, play and more.  This cannot always be achieved with web apps.

Take a look at LinkedIn's experience with web apps and the limitations they ran into.  Read this VentureBeat interview with Kiran Prasad, LinkedIn’s senior director for mobile engineering.   They finally developed their app native to the platforms and devices that it runs on.
 

As Mobile Increases, All Other Media Decreases

One of my favourite slide decks that I found on LinkedIn was done by Henry Blodget and Alex Cocotas of Business Insider.  The Future of Digital.

It really paints a picture of how mobile presence is essential to any brand.

• Smartphone sales blew past PC sales
• Internet access via mobile far exceeds fixed internet access by 2015
• Mobile users consume content
• A huge amount of content
• As mobile increases, all other media decreases
• Smartphone users spend more time on apps than web
• Apple is dominating app revenue

Digital is now a 4-screen world.  I read about at least four hockey companies each month on LinkedIn that are launching their new business as a website.  www.20YearOldMulti-keystrokeCommodity.com.  That's all there is.  No social media plan, no advertising dollars and certainly no mobile presence.  Just a website.  I recently went through my years of accumulated bookmarked hockey companies to see how they are doing.  About 25% of them no longer exist.  Some were digital based and some were product based. They all had great products and services but no marketing plans.  Just their efforts and dollars put into a website.

While the slides point out mobile display advertising stats and potential, mobile presence for your brand can exist in other ways.  Development of your own app, sponsorship of an app, social media mobile platforms are a few other ways to be known.

To see the complete deck, visit Business Insider 

Apple - iTunes - 50 Billion Apps Countdown

Mac App Store (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The App Store is about to reach 50 billion downloads and we are happy to have created 10 of the over 775,000 apps available.

I knew that apps would be successful when we first launched the HockeyGPS app in January 2009.  So successful that we stopped offering this navigation service on a website six months later (90% of the traffic was done on the app).

Apple - iTunes - 50 Billion Apps Countdown

Of the half a billion iOS devices sold and the amount of apps installed on them, I would have to think that no two devices are exactly the same.  Everyone can personalize their device to their own needs, hobbies, interests, job, and brand preferences.

What's significant about this milestone is that users are spending time with the apps they download.  This is time they used to spend on the computer navigating websites with multi-keystrokes and clicks.

Right now, apps are the pinnacle of mobile presence.