theregoesdave

So far, we’ve seen mobile web users flocking to social networking sites to keep up with friends on the go. Facebook started the trend with their mobile interface which was quickly followed by Myspace and micro-blogging site Twitter. Craigslist’s bare bones text layout made it relatively easy for their users to navigate CL from their cell phones.

So what’s next in terms of innovation on the mobile web? Many organizations are rushing to build mobile web interfaces to extend access for their users to their mobile phones. However, with drastically differing support for Javascript, we’re seeing a disjointed approach to mobile interface development between the iPhone and other mobile browsers. Hopefully we’ll see browsers beginning to support Ajax, because interfaces are likely to go through several iterations until they are capable of displaying full Rich Internet Applications. Unfortunately there aren’t any mobile browsers that I’m aware of that are even nearing full AJAX support. Location-based services like Fire-Eagle are still young and developers will still need to integrate location into their applications.

The answer could just be that mobile video is the most important trend on the mobile web in 2008. Video has been a hugely popular medium on the web in the last few years. From Youtube to Hulu, vloggers and online shows such as Wine Library TV have been gaining huge momentum in adding a personal interaction to the web. So how is mobile web video going to take off if we can’t have full Javascript/ Ajax support?

YouTube is currently working through mobile applications that interface with the site and return results to the application, but most people aren’t using the mobile web to do searches or discover content. This could be because of the difficulty of discerning relevance on such a small screen or because of the propensity to end up on a non mobile web friendly site.

Enter Adobe’s Flash. Adobe is currently working on Flash plugins for both the iPhone’s mobile Safari browser and Microsoft’s Pocket Internet Explorer. This means that the majority of hardcore mobile web surfers will have Flash support and hopefully before Fall. Once Flash is enabled in our phones, it will become very easy to embed a Flash video into mobile web applications. This will allow people to put videos on their mobile profiles and for users to access the videos on their favorite blogs. Flash can also be used for Rich Interfaces, but would be slow to load at the current speed of the US mobile web.

So with Adobe bringing video capability to mobile web users, the question still remains: Will people watch videos on their phones?

This is a question that I’m still a bit mixed on. While it’s nice to have access to content anywhere you go, it’s not always appropriate to play a video or audio clip out loud while waiting in line at a cash register or riding the train to work. iPhone users may have headphones, but they can also download videos from iTunes or video podcasts already. It could be that iPhone and iPod Touch users start eating up all the free video they can eat, but it’s also possible that mobile video’s day will have to wait until more phones are converged mp3 players or portable media devices (PMD).

What do you think? Will you watch videos on Myspace, Youtube or Blogs once your phone has Flash capability?

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