{"id":80,"date":"2012-05-19T17:36:27","date_gmt":"2012-05-19T12:06:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/?p=80"},"modified":"2014-05-09T23:19:22","modified_gmt":"2014-05-09T17:49:22","slug":"will-mobile-blogs-impoverish-bloggers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/2012\/05\/19\/will-mobile-blogs-impoverish-bloggers\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Mobile Blogs Impoverish Bloggers?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently shifted a lot of my blog reading from a laptop to a smartphone. Some blogs like TechCrunch can be accessed via mobile web (apart from PC web, that is) whereas others like Finextra, Huffington Post and Labnol (Digital Inspiration)\u00a0are available as native Android Apps. I found TechCrunch and Huffington Post to be very well optimized for the smaller form factor.<\/p>\n

\"pic01<\/a><\/p>\n

One month after the shift, let me take TechCrunch as an example and list down a few key differences in my experience of \u201cconsuming\u201d this blog from a smartphone versus PC:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Believe it or not, it now only takes me only 15 minutes to finish a day\u2019s reading of this blog on a smartphone whereas I could never finish the same amount of reading in less than one hour from a PC before. I know this sound counterintuitive \u2013 how can it be easier to read something on such a tiny screen? \u2013 but I promise you that it\u2019s not an exaggeration. Go ahead and try it out for yourselves.<\/li>\n
  2. In the past four weeks, I haven\u2019t clicked a single ad on this blog from the mobile. Whereas, while reading it on a PC, I used to click at least 4-5 ads every day. If most readers respond to ads in the same way, it could make a huge difference to publishers dependent upon income from Google AdSense and other PPC \u00a0ads displayed on their blogs.<\/li>\n
  3. It\u2019s a lot easier to post comments from a PC.<\/li>\n
  4. There\u2019s no way I\u2019ll go back to a PC to read TechCrunch \u2013 or any other mobile-optimized \u2013 blog in future.<\/li>\n
  5. TechCrunch proves that you can deliver great UX even via mobile web.\u00a0Per contra<\/em>, my experience with Finextra suggests that a native app by itself doesn\u2019t guarantee mobile optimization.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    At the risk of jumping to conclusions, it would appear that mobile-optimized blogs deliver superior experience for readers but that PC-web versions are more enriching (pun intended) for the publisher and the overall community. The latter conclusion can get turned on its head if mobile versions of blogs generate net additions to readership figures by attracting new readers who never read the blog on a desktop or laptop before. I invite readers, especially bloggers who run both desktop web and mobile versions of their blogs, to share their thoughts in the comments below.<\/p>\n

    PS: I\u2019ve written this post as a blog reader. In my other role as a blogger myself, I\u2019d used a third-party service called Mofuse to\u00a0mobilize Talk of Many Things<\/a>\u00a0back in 2008 when Android wasn\u2019t a household name and smartphones weren\u2019t as common as they\u2019re today. Mofuse has since then pivoted from its freemium model, so I\u2019m now in the process of deciding whether to upgrade to a paid plan of Mofuse or ditch Mofuse altogether and develop a native Android App for\u00a0Talk of Many Things\u00a0from scratch. Stay tuned, I\u2019ll keep you updated.<\/em><\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/p>\n

    RELATED POSTS:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Mobile Version of Talk of Many Things<\/a><\/li>\n
    2. Newspapers Or Printed Versions of Blogs?<\/a><\/li>\n
    3. Job Boards in Blogs<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      I recently shifted a lot of my blog reading from a laptop to a smartphone. Some blogs like TechCrunch can be accessed via mobile web (apart from PC web, that is) whereas others like Finextra, Huffington Post and Labnol (Digital Inspiration)\u00a0are available as native Android Apps. I found TechCrunch and Huffington Post to be very … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4161,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-digital-marketing","category-mandatory-category"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1675,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions\/1675"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}