The new browser frontier is finally important

One of the things I love about running my little websites is they help me get my head out of the valley environment (or my ass depending on your point of view) since it is a hugely skewed demographic. The users of my sites are not valley types at all. In paper airplanes it's mums, dads, kids and teachers. On cocktail recipes it's a huge wide ranging audience... mainly non-US and over a huge age range but generally skewed towards a lower income demographic.

Trends that are big in the valley sometimes take a decade to bust out of the valley into the broader consciousness; for example RSS or Blogging. Some bust out of the valley seemingly instantly and find their main life outside; for example social networking or online classifieds. It feels like the mobile internet/internet everywhere is an example of the former and has been called out as the next big thing now for almost a decade.

There is a burgeoning microtrend happening across my websites in an area we have been talking about in the tech industry for seemingly eons. I am seeing all kinds of new operating systems appearing on the list of operating systems my users are using to access my site. This is a list that has been essentially 7 entries long for the last 10years. The big 4 in order are: iPhone, Danger Hiptop, Playstation Portable and iPod. These new operating systems are now just shy of 1% of visits to my sites.

That 1% number is pretty important to me... think 1% of internet advertising revenue being $300MM annually (ish) or 1% of goods sold on eBay being $600MM annually (ish). This is important to me since a $30MM market isn't really big enough to make the big guys look at it but this volume of potential is finally proving worth the effort. It's also true that a market at that scale can finally support a significant number of startups without them needing so much VC money it's not worth it.

Maybe I am overhyping the importance of average websites as canaries in the coalmine but I feel these sites are not a tech savvy demo, not designed with mobile in mind and if they are still getting c. 1% of visits from mobile this is a good indicator of a base line of mobile interest.

I have always loved the ideas of mobile internet transforming the world but I never saw how there was enough revenue there to really support a company. Now I see it and I am very excited about seeing what all the clever folks around here do to use the internet everywhere.

Comments

[Dan Wilson]

I like this post. So right to get out of that sophisticated 'valley', industry, net obsessed environment and think about the people who actually use the sites and services we develop.

I like to remind people (ad nauseum) that 40% of British small businesses don't even have a website... so things like dopplr and twitter are way off the mark for most just now.

Equally, never overestimate the technical savoir faire of many web users. I advised a fairly successful eBay seller recently and frankly the best tip I passed on was how to copy and paste text. Many users are self-taught, not stupid, so we in the industry have to mindful of that.

If people don't get something, it's not their fault. It's ours.

[Will]

Interesting stuff. Our site, laden with ajax, basically doesn't work on basic mobile browsers. I think zach said we've had one mobile visit to date so not a big deal! Maybe worth having another look to see if it's shifted up, now that iphone is launched here and it's pushing the mobile surfing show off habit.
We did consider building a mobile version of the site, a la facebook or beeb, but the swankiest phones work fine (vs screen size is an issue even if ajax isn't). Any thoughts on that?

btw, how did you discover this demographic info?
"In paper airplanes it's mums, dads, kids and teachers. On cocktail recipes it's a huge wide ranging audience... mainly non-US and over a huge age range but generally skewed towards a lower income demographic."

and finally, i agree re rss...i'm fairly techy, but i've only finally now got round to getting a reader for various feeds set up as i couldn't be a*sed until now...i finally gave in over crimbo, hence seeing your blog post so soon this time round. :)