Black & Mobile
Yahoo! launched their Yahoo! Go 3.0 beta yesterday, a tool for browsing the internet from your mobile phone through a bunch of mobile widgets.
It got me thinking… Everyone I know checks their mobile phone as much (if not more than) they check things on their computer. They all text more than they email and as phones have gotten more capable of browsing the internet and accessing wi-fi networks, they are also using their phones to browse the internet. I can’t even imagine what’s going to happen once the iPhone price drop occurs. So, I went on a quest to try and find the best black mobile sites out there… wait, let me change that, what I really did was look to see if sites that have a black target audience were capitalizing on the fact that more and more people are using their phones as their primary device to connect to the internet.
Now, I would be lying if I said I was surprised to find out that all of the sites I went to were not optimized for mobile browsing (minus the blogs that weren’t image heavy).
One site that I did find that had a mobile site was bet.com, though not advertised on their actual site, if you go to m.bet.com (fyi: you can load the site in your normal browser) you have the option to buy HOT wallpapers and ringtones… Hot pictures and ringtones? Oh and there are some games sprinkled in below the fold. Apart from BET, I didn’t find much…and BET didn’t do that cool thing that websites do where they recognize that you are coming from a mobile device and load the page in, you know, mobile format.
Basically, there is a big void of black themed mobile sites and information. While games, and ring tones and wallpapers are fun for a certain age demographic, in the age of portable music and digital cameras built into phones, those things are obsolete. For now, I’m going to have to stick to going to Google for my mobile needs. Not only is Google Mobile updated all the time, they keep a blog about it. They’ve also been going out of their way (not sure if it is on purpose) to make their services as compatible as possible with the iPhone (YouTube videos+Google News+iPhone = LOVE). I will also keep looking towards Apple for iPhone/iPod touch web apps. I’ve found some really amazing mobile sites that way that I probably wouldn’t have visited otherwise. Apple is also going to be launching their Apps store and their Mobile Me service soon, and I’m curious to see what those two offerings are all about.
As for Yahoo! Go? Not compatible with my device, so I couldn’t install it!
Hopefully we will start to see some more diverse offerings in the mobile world for black people soon. It is a great medium for innovation and the creation of dedicated users. Plus, the market is hungry.
July 1st, 2008 at 7:55 am
[...] an online search for young consumers than all adults. Basically, if the point wasn’t made in Black & Mobile that this is the next frontier of innovation, in terms of brands and media, to bridge the gap that [...]