IanSchafer.com

Life doesn't hand out second chances very often. But you have one now. Mobile browsing is changing the way consumers use the internet, and while that change has taken a while to materialize, I think what we're about to see is a mobile computing and browsing renaissance.

Lets look at some very telling information.

** The iPhone is currently responsible for .23% of all U.S. web traffic.

** Microsoft has said it expects license sales of its mobile operating system to outpace smartphone market growth in the next few years. It expects the market to quadruple in size in 3 to 4 years to around 400 million handsets. It will be launching a fully-featured version of its Mobile Internet Explorer browser this year.

** Google's Android Mobile OS is coming soon.

** As of Q1 this year, RIM (BlackBerry) has 44.5% of all smartphone marketshare — a new OS is on the way, as well as 2 new phones (Bold & Thunder) that will make mobile web browsing a much fuller experience.

(chart courtesy of ars technica)

Are you prepared for what is on the way? Or even what is here now?

Here's a simple litmus test: Borrow an iPhone. Visit your brand's website.

If you can't navigate it easily, or it doesn't display in a way that makes you actually want to spend time on it, then you're not ready.

If you don't have an iPhone available, I'll save you some time. If your website uses Flash for any kind of navigation, fuhgeddaboudit. The iPhone doesn't display Flash. At least not yet.

If you've been at all involved with mobile over the last few years, you've likely been developing WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) sites. These sites were meant to be viewed on a small screen, like the one you might have on a flip-phone.

Well, phones are getting smarter. Literally.

Smartphones have bigger screens, better rendering capabilities, touch-sensing technology, and numerous other features that make those websites eyesores compared to what is possible now using higher resolution and CSS.

Phones are becoming more like laptops each and every day, and you need to be thinking about this now.

On July 11th, the new iPhone hits stores. By the end of the year, we'll have new RIM and Windows Mobile phones available. Heck, we may even see Google's Android on phones before year's end.

Are you going to wait for your consumers to have a disappointing experience once they get their hands on these phones? Or will you be there for them when they do? And if you're an agency, are you equipped to to handle this type of development?

And just wait until mobile social networking becomes one of the most popular activities on these devices. You'll wish you were ready now. Watch this Wikipedia page explode over the next 12 months.

Follow the Twitter conversation going on at OMMA Social by clicking here.

Learn a bit about 'hashtags' in the process.

Back on May 28th, I announced that I would be auctioning off a sponsorship of my Twitter profile and feed — for charity (The David Wright Foundation), of course.

Well, after a week of intense bidding, and a month of creative approvals, Metacafe won the auction with a bid of $1,082.01 (duking it out with VideoEgg) — and the sponsorship is now live.

You'll note that I insisted that the words 'sponsored by' or 'advertisement' be featured on any Metacafe image, so as not to confuse anyone as to the nature or intent. I actually received the images without those accompanying words, so I added them myself in Photoshop and got Metacafe's approval.

News coverage of this auction reached far and wide, from Mashable to Adverganza to Adrants.

Ev Williams, one of Twitter's founders, even chimed in via a comment on Mashable:

…That said, we're cool with people monetizing their own use of Twitter, in general (as long as they're above-board about it). Because it's all opt-in, if people are annoyed or not getting value, unfollow is easy.

As a side note, and for the record, while we don't mind the community brainstorming, we're not in desperate search for a business model. We have some ideas we'll try out when the time is right, but Twitter isn't going to go away for lack of one any time soon (nor will reliability issues be solved with one)…

From my perspective, the reason for me doing this was clear — to start a conversation, get marketers looking at emerging technologies, and collaborate on finding ways to monetize them. As I've said before, consumer behavior is evolving faster than advertising, and we run the risk of today's best new technologies running out of funding before finding monetizable solutions.

From Metacafe's perspective, according to Michelle Cox of Metacafe:

Living in the world of social media as we at Metacafe do, we

Tweet

How come every time I go to a developers' conference Twitter lights up, but when I go to a marketing conference there are no tweets at all? Why is there so little blog coverage of what goes on at these marketing-focused conferences?

I think that's the problem…not enough marketers — or even agency folks — are using social media technologies and platforms (other than party pics on myspace and facebook, of course). They should be blogging. Microblogging. Sharing.

How can you innovate if you're not making innovation a part of your life?

I love Apple as much as the next guy. But someone should take another look at their ad targeting. Here's what I saw while visiting Time.com on my MacBook (using Firefox 3, of course):

Someone deserves a makegood.