Second, if you’re STILL reading this, it means you’re interested in the topic. I suggest you stop living in the dark ages and get one of the wonderful smart phone devices out there that allow you to explore topics such as this. Marketing is moving fast so make sure your business is up to par with the new standards and new media.

It’s been coming down to the cross roads lately, with the emergence of more sophisticated mobile web apps popping up on the horizon. What direction will developers eventually move to? We’ve noticed that since Google had tried to take the native app approach but was shut down from the app store with the Google Voice, that they’ve been taking full advantage of the web app game.

Google seems to be really involved with web apps and it might be hard to completely turn them into the native app side.

Apple on the other hand is clearly on point with native apps- as is Android and Blackberry. And why not? They’re gaining revenue from the use of native apps on their smartphones. But are they really bringing their users the best smartphone experience when HTML 5 could bring a rich web app experience?

From another viewpoint, when you’re a brand looking to expand your reach to the mobile audience, are you better off having a web application built for your site? Or are you better mobilized as an application? Which will ultimately dominate?

The Native App

I have an iPhone, so for the sake of this post, I’ll be referring to Native apps as ones on the iPhone. Native apps are ones that live on the smartphone. You know, your Facebook application, Words with Friends… all of these are native applications that you can download from an application directory of sorts. Sometimes they’re free and sometimes they cost you $5.99, $9.99 or more.

Native apps are written specifically for the smartphone that they live on, and are downloaded directly to your phone. So what are the benefits of this for businesses that are looking to move into the mobile market?

For one, multitasking on the iPhone. You can have multiple native apps open at once and use them all. You can also do this on web apps but it’s not nearly as convenient as being able to click them on your home screen or risk closing web apps within your browser. In my opinion, this gives the native application a better chance of being used more. There’s also:

Marketing and exposure- There’s a directory where you can find these applications. There’s also tons of resources that outline “Top xx iPhone Business Apps” or “Top xx BlackBerry Fitness Apps.” People WANT to write about applications and you’ll see them everywhere. You’ll never find a shortage of ones to use, and plus, the iTunes directory, Android Market and BlackBerry App directory are all available to browse through.

If you were to release an application for your business (or to compliment your business) you can bet that there won’t be a lack of venues to market your new app on.

Advertising

Advertising- Nothing is ever free of advertising, and a native app is no exception. With iAds, you get access to a whole network of advertising. Your brand or your application, whichever you choose to promote, will be visible for all to see. You’ll be able to also get metrics on the ads that you’re placing. This can come in handy when trying to incorporate strategies involving target markets for mobile users. It could open up a whole new can of analytics to understand fans of your brand.

Word of Mouth- Native apps are always what friends seem to recommend to eachother. You don’t ever hear someone say, “Hey! Did you check out the web app for http://www.facebook.com.” You always hear them referring to the application and whatever updates are going on. Most people don’t even know that there’s a Facebook web app that’s actually more functional than the application. Why? Because friends share native apps.

No Hiccups- When you’re running a native app, you won’t be experiencing the browser lag that comes along with web apps. I notice it a lot when I’m using the Google web apps. It’s nice to have the web layout, but when it comes down to speed, I would much rather go to an application that’s already queued up on my phone. Plus, some don’t even need the internet to run. Another bonus.

API usage- The native applications have the ability to use various features of your smart phone. IE: the accelerometer on the iPhone.

I took the liberty of asking Joey Schluchter, a developer, a few questions to get his general opinions on native apps and offline caching for web apps.

In regards to native apps, I had asked him, “I realize that it really is dependent on the business and industry that the application is built for, but do you see more benefit in a native application or a web app in general?”

Joey replied,

“In a native app, for the user, the experience is better as the ability to know the exact hardware constraints and the ability to use them to their maximum potential. For the business, much more data can be extracted and more content seamlessly delivered when you have native control. Although web apps are catching up, for now native has more benefits to both the user and the business.”

I think his view on allowing the business to control how the content is delivered, as well as how data can be extracted, helps us understand some benefits that the end user may not consider when using an application.

You can see why smartphones are hanging onto native apps so tightly.

Web Apps

What about these highly coveted web apps that it seems we’re moving towards? Will these be beneficial to businesses looking to expand into the mobile market? Well, here’s some differences you’ll notice with the web apps.

Interface Capabilities- You’ll notice that if there’s a web app version of an actual native app, there’s quite a few differences in the interface and capabilities. If you look at the Facebook web app, you’ll notice that you personal activity stream shows what profiles you’ve commented on; something that’s lacking in the native application.

Thanks to good ol’ HTML 5 and being open standards, you have the capability to simply embed videos and not use third party applications which will often slow the load time or hinder the ability to display the video in the first place.  The quality of drawings and animations are exponentially better with HTML5 as well. Not to mention, the capabilities of emulating a native app, in web app form, with jQuery /Javascript. The quality of the content you’re delivering through a web app will be excellent.

If you’re worried about all the different smart phones, don’t be. While cross-platform developing will be a task, there are are options available when working with C# and .net to convert for different platforms.

Geo-Location Capabilities- Generally thought of as a native application feature, there is actually the ability to utilize geo-location on certain browsers on smart phones. Facebook places, for instance, works on both the web app and the native app. As a business, you can run location based sales and specials, on either a location based applications such as FourSquare, or your own, which will take full advantage of real-time marketing.

Offline Caching- Offline caching makes for a temporary database backup. For example, If you’re shopping on a site and you end up leaving it, for a short period of time, your shopping cart will still be cached and ready to play.

Instant Interface/Application Updating- Another benefit that web apps have over native applications is the fact that all development updates are almost instantaneous. You don’t need to wait for V.2 to come out to fix stability issues and add a patch- and your consumers/users won’t need to wait for you to release the version and go through the pesky download process.

Automatical Approval- You don’t have to try and filter your application through a smartphone company to get it approved. Web apps are automatically approved and allowed for use because… well… it’s on the web. And really- they can’t control what you’re looking at. They CAN, however, control what is available to you through the marketplace. Depending on what your company is, this could be a big benefit to you. If you work in a questionable industry (like the sex/escort industry… or you’re just Google and trying to get an Google Voice approved… haha! I made a funny!) you may want to stick to web apps.

No Cost- Yes, there will be a cost for development of this web application, but on the consumer end, it’ll be free. There are free native apps in the app store too, so this isn’t a huge advantage, but just something to think about. The more extensive a native application gets, the more likely a company is to charge for it. With web apps, you can get as complicated as you want without worrying about the consumer/user having to spend a dime- which can easily be the difference between a conversion and a walk away when offering a native application.

I had asked Joey Schluchter what benefits he saw in web apps, such as offline caching, and his response was,

“If it’s a game, then I see offline caching as a huge plus. But most games are now online multi-players where you can see leader boards and such. Kind of tough to replicate that experience when cached. The big benefit with web apps is the ability to develop ONE platform. I realize that iOS and Android have unique browsers, but you still have one code base to deal with. This allows more rapid development and innovation for the app.”

Soooooo?? What’s the Verdict?

In my opinion, it’s really hard to give a straight shot answer- mainly because each industry is different and they all have different requirements as to what they would be hoping to offer in an application.

For retail stores hoping to offer specials and sales, and pull in business, I would say native applications are the way to go- mainly because they’ll almost always get approved (I won’t dare say always because nothing is definite) and it’s much more convenient to click into an application like FourSquare or Facebook Places, rather than logging into the web app. In this case, it’s all about convenience, especially for real-time marketing.

The convenience is there.

For companies that want to offer services involving video and design I’d say web apps are more beneficial.

Really, it comes down to who you’re marketing to. Most people don’t realize that on an iPhone, you can “bookmark” a web app and actually have a button on your homescreen for it. VOILA! (Almost) Instance access! Aside from novices, newer smartphone users (or younger smart phone users) will most likely be looking for applications in the app directory, and not necessarily understanding or experimenting with web apps. This is where offering geo-location native apps, for your business, will be beneficial.

All in all, I’d venture to say that web apps will likely gain more steam as time goes on. While there are plenty of marketing benefits to native applications, they’re not as free and liberating as web apps. Also, depending on the restrictions each smart phone marketplace imposes, they may be locking out part of the market for industries that want to mobilize and offer applications but may not be family friendly.

The time is now to focus efforts in web apps. The success Apple’s made with the app store will increase the the demand for native apps; it’s the most convenient and obvious way for people to use applications. Web designers and developers can build device optimized web experiences- once users notice  there are web apps available that give the user the same, if not a better experience, than native apps, there may be a noticeable paradigm shift on both the business and consumer end.

What do you think? Will mobile web applications take precedence over native applications? Or will it stay a shared market for quite some time into the future?

OH!!! and PS: Make sure you’re reading our fun updates on our BlueGlass Fan Page- or joining in the conversation on Twitter.

StumbleUpon released its first-ever mobile app last week, available on the iPhone and Android platforms. I must admit, I find it puzzling that sites such as SU and Digg and Reddit, which were so early in Web 2.0, have been so slow in the app revolution.

Digg’s app only came out in March and was extremely unstable at first, eventually settling down into a rather simple, yet usable app.

The puzzling thing about both the Digg and the SU app is this: You can’t actually submit anything using the app. With Digg, this means you still have to use the mobile site to submit; with SU – you’re just outta luck. Wait until you get home.

That said, the StumbleUpon app on the iPhone is a joy. It’s exceptionally simple to use but contains all the functionality of the site (except submissions), plus one huge bonus over the browser-based Stumble bar.

What’s that, you ask?

The ability to stumble random content without clearing out the shares in your share bar first.

Let me repeat that: You can use StumbleUpon the way it’s meant to be used, no matter how many pages friends have shared with you.

For those of us who spend a lot of time on StumbleUpon, it’s long been a problem. If you go a day or so (sometimes less) without clearing out shares on your Stumble bar, you can’t set about to stumbling randomly, which is the true joy of the site. If you’ve been on StumbleUpon for a while and have accepted friend and sharing requests with lots of people (let’s face it, it’s social media – that’s being social), that share number can creep up quickly.

I love that I have the option of either stumbling the shares or just randomly in any of my selected topics on the mobile app. Just wish they did that with the Stumble toolbar, too.

So, with that joy discovered, I set about to put the app through its paces, and it performed admirably.

First, the welcome page is simple enough. It gives you the options of what type of content you want to check out and the topics you selected as your interests, if you want to stumble through in just one particular area.

Once you hit “Start Stumbling,” you’ll get the bar across the top that allows you to thumb up or down, as well as click through your shares or Stumble randomly.

If you choose to stumble through your shares, another nice difference from the web-based SU: If you accidentally click past one share too quickly, you just hit the “back” arrow and you see not only the share, but who shared it with you and their note. You can get that info from the SU site, but not just from a simple touch of a button. A nice feature.

Here’s how the share looks, when it first comes up, when you click through to the message sent with it and when you click through to see reviews.

OK, so you’re done with shared items or just want StumbleUpon to serve you up some cool content. Say, something filed under news. You can see the site, the page views, those who gave it a thumbs up and read the reviews. You can also share it via SU, e-mail, Facebook or Twitter — whether or not you have Twitter/Facebook integration set up via su.pr on your account. (That’s especially nice for me, as SU seems to have had a glitch recently that’s kept many su.pr users from signing in for weeks. But that’s another story for another day. Note to self: Next blog post.)

Another nice change from the web-based SU to the mobile app is how you can Stumble through photos. You can choose to Stumble just Flickr submissions or other photos. I appreciated it for a couple of reasons.

First, the Flickr integration on the SU app is the same as it is for the Flickr mobile app. You can flip through other photos in the same set and you have all the other navigation tools you ordinarily do:

Also, Flickr tends to be a different kind of photographic experience than flipping through random photo blogs. Now, the photography that gets served to you randomly on SU tends to be of very high quality, but Flickr is heavy on exceptionally talented, professional photographers. It all depends on the type of experience you’re looking for.

Lastly, there’s videos. Again, the integration with YouTube is seamless. I would have liked a similar option for videos as there was for photos – YouTube and then everything else, as sites like TED and Vimeo and others tend to serve up very different types of videos than the random YouTube video. Not better, just different. And randomly stumbling YouTube can be, well, rather random.

The bottom line? The app was (almost) worth the wait. I had downloaded an app some time back that I’ve long since deleted – it purported to give the user the ability to Stumble and Digg and everything else social, but I didn’t find it very useful.

The only real improvements I would suggest for the time being would be the ability to discover something on SU and separating out the YouTube videos. Other than that, I’m quite pleasantly surprised to find features here that are improvements over the web experience. What do you think about StumbleUpon’s mobile app?

Applications for my phone make all these tasks so much easier or rather possible. I am a graphic designer and artist so I geek out for new apps that cater to my interests around art and design. Here are some that I either use, am installing now, or will be using next time you see me out at the park or restaurant or anyplace that finds me away from my desktop.

Photoshop
FREE It is everywhere, now on your smartphone. Good for minor, quick edits on the go and ease of sharing.

Brushes
$4.99 A painting application for all those illustrators that wish to create original artwork on their mobile devices. Cover story in the New Yorker.

cliqcliq Colors
$2.99 Colors is an easy-to-use color picker for discovering, converting, and managing colors and palettes.

Color Expert
$9.99 This App is a treasure trove of color libraries. Includes licensed data of your favorite color libraries, many with CMYK info: PANTONE® solid coated, PANTONE® solid uncoated, PANTONE® Goe™ coated, PANTONE® Goe™ uncoated, PANTONE® f + h cotton and PANTONE® f + h paper.

What The Font
FREE Ever seen a great font in a magazine ad, poster, or on the web and wondered what font it is? Whip out your iPhone and snap a photo, and WhatTheFont for iPhone will identify that font in seconds!

One of my favorite mobile Web Sites to go to is Yahoo! Mobile. I love checking Yahoo Finance, Sports and my Yahoo E-Mail (Yahoo! Mail Beta is FANTASTIC) But since I spend so much time on this site with this device, I explored a bit further into Yahoo! and the Yahoo Mobile Privacy Policy. They have a table of contents for this which includes:

1. Introduction Mobile Device 2. Unique Identifier Physical Information 3. Use of Information 4. Legal Process 5. Your Ability to Edit and Delete Your Account Information and Preferences

So how does this situation relate to marketing? It was interesting to browse through this because there are some facts about browsing Yahoo Mobile that I did not know:

Under #2: Mobile Device Unique Identifier: “…if the mobile device service provider uniquely identifies the device, Yahoo will receive this information. Yahoo may use this unique mobile device identification information to offer extended service and/or functionality. Certain Yahoo service may require our collection of the phone number for you device. We may associate that phone number to the mobile device identification information; however we will not use that number for telemarketing”

This is interesting because Yahoo is saying that they may look to show users services based on the type of phone that they have. I also find this interesting because it implies that Yahoo can change up the way it presents information based on the type of device and the service provider that you use.

Under #3: Physical Location: “Some mobile phone service providers in the US are required to operate a system that will pinpoint the physical location of devices that will use their service. Depending on the provider, Yahoo! may automatically receive this information. In the future if Yahoo! begins to offer service that use pinpointing technology, we will ensure that we have your consent (an opt0in) before using the information.

It goes on to say…THE INTERESTING PART: “Yahoo! may use and store this information to provide enhanced location-based service as well as to serve location targeted-advertising.”

As a marketer, this last area of location targeted advertising gets me really exited. Basically Yahoo is saying, we will track and pinpoint exactly where you are with your mobile phone and serve up local ads that are both timely and relevant. One could use this tool as a marketer or advertiser: If a product or services retailer/outlet that is looking to move more products and services in a local area by a sale, one could buy advertising on mobile phones in VERY SPECIFIC geographic locations and networks. Here’s how one will take advantage of this advertising. Say Hertz Car Rental had a surplus of cars sitting on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and they wanted to move these cars out quickly with a sale.

_____________________

Renting a car Downtown?
Hertz 14^th Street & 1^st Ave Saves You $10/day on car.
www.hertz.com/lesnyc

_____________________

What’s great about this is that it is so targeted and relevant. I’m sitting in Union Square on a hot day, looking to get out of town on the weekend, I search for rentals and see this advertisement. I think that is extremely effective and promising.

I am also excited as a marketer because I am sure that Yahoo will find a way to make the opt-in option for this really easy to find and most people will end up opting in. People will not mind opting in because it’s an improvement in targeting and relevancy. End users will not be tele-marketed to, and they will also not be spammed as a result of an opt-in. Yahoo is basically saying, we are going to serve relevant, mobile phone advertising, that will work for you, the end user. And I am sure it will be presented to users like, “would you rather see relevant advertising, than irrelevant ads?” So I believe that more people will opt for relevancy rather than junk.

There are two very simple equations for marketers and advertisers to know and they are:

1. Marketing and Advertising Efforts + Disregard mobile advertising = long term struggles
2. Marketing and Advertising Efforts + Pay attention to mobile advertising = long term success

We could go a lot deeper into conversion rates and such…

The subject of mobile search ads is NOT news per se and others have spoken about relevant, local, mobile advertising, but it was interesting to see how Yahoo!’s Privacy Policy yields information directly on this subject and with regard to pinpointing users locations, I found this really intriguing. Also, it seems that there is real push on now for Google and Yahoo to refine the mobile platform for their advertising programs. It’s really critical at this juncture.

Other Web Sites and blogs covering the Yahoo and Google Mobile subjects:

Search Engine Land – Danny Sullivan and his Team comment on mobile search.

Marketing Pilgrim – Andy Beal and Paul Bennet on Google AdSense

I’m sure there are others, so please chime in anyone and let us know where you are covering this.

Yahoo! information and resources addressing mobile advertising and publishing:

Yahoo! Mobile Search Options for Advertisers

Yahoo! Press Release on oneSearch for Mobile Publishers

As a side note, I’ve downloaded Google’s Mobile Pack right on my phone (it took about 5 minutes), and while it installed a bunch of icons for maps and mail and other things, I really don’t use it at all. For now, I prefer Yahoo!’s Go. Although, I will say, the Google Mobile Maps is pretty good.

Yahoo!’s complete privacy policy

Don’t forget to subscribe to the 10e20 RSS Feed!

News, Business, Sports, Weather, Webmail, Travel, Food and Dining, Entertainment, Information, Technology, Ebay, TV Networks, Classifieds, Social, Lottery

I happened upon mdog just the other day as I was using my new Blackberry World Edition 8830 from Verizon Wireless, and while reviewing news on the The Wall Street Journal Online. At the bottom of the WSJ page, I found a link that said “WSJ Mobile Edition Beta 2.0 Powered by the mdog mobile Portal” and this linked over to mdog. That perked me up. Mdog seems to pull tons of content from major news publications positioning itself to compete well with Yahoo! News and Google News. They also have a ton of sports news aggregated and from their mobile web homepage, you can access key news sites such as CNN, USA Today, The New York Times, FOX News and more…

One of the great features as well is that you can access your blog on your mobile device. This will allow bloggers to do more real time updating from the field (so long as their fingers don’t get tired typing on a mobile device) which should enhance the quality of real time news and commentary overall on the web.

Another feature that will probably catch fire is eBay access where you can actually access your account, manage the basics of actions and bid. Michelle Menga at Ecommerce-Guide.com quoted Keith Gerard, President of mdog as saying “In the case of eBay, mdog.com displays auction searches in complete detail and even allows users to submit secure, real-time mobile bids from wherever they are. It’s all automatically available to shoppers, so sellers don’t have to do anything, because we’re accessing the actual eBay site, it’s seamless, We do the SSL interface and all that.”

There is not a lot of info out there about mdog at this point, but back in October 2006 Michal Lev-Ram wrote on Third Screen a bit about this Chicago based start-up. A Google search for example pulls up very little information other than the homepage, but there are not a lot of people out there writing about it yet

I like the concept and I think that they are on to something.

I’m wondering if mdog can compete with Google’s mobile version packet? I’m thinking so. I also still believe that creating a mobile version of a web site on a dot-mobi top level domain is a wise choice for business owners and marketers.

Lastly, as for mdog’s own marketing tactics. I like the fact that on most of their pages, they have a link to have a user “send Mdog” to a friend”. This is a great viral tactic. But what about mdog’s search engine optimization (SEO)? Opera currently has the #1 Organic Rank on Google.com websearch for “Mobile Web Browser” mdog is nowhere – at least not in the first 2 SERP’s on Google. On a first visit to mdog’s homepage, there is a flash intro which may not be the smartest approach to their marketing. As well, there is hardly any keyword optimization on the site at all.