MWC

Weekend Roundup: Fiddle Favorites

Good Idea: Finding Easter eggs on Easter. Bad Idea: Finding Easter eggs on Xmas.

– Jack Handy

Time again to pack up the coffee mug and head home for the weekend. While you’re shuffling kids into the car for that nice long road trip to a relative’s house you’re not that fond of anyway, or stuffing your face with far too much honey-glazed ham, we know you won’t be far from your mobile device of choice. That’s why as always we thought we’d take this chance to send you into the weekend by taking a look back at some of our favorite developments in the mobile world from the past week.

That’s all for now, have a great Easter weekend, enjoy the start of passover, or just take some time to relax. We’ll see you all back here on Monday but until then make sure to follow us on Twitter @fiddlefly and check us out on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest for more mobile web developments.

Mobile web apps: Facebook wants to help you throw your hat in the ring.

Yesterday, everyone’s favorite social networking giant dropped yet another game-changing development on the open web. Backing up the commitment it made at this year’s Mobile World Congress, Facebook yesterday open sourced its web-app test suite Ringmark.


Basically, Ringmark’s function is to serve as a channel for prospective web-app developers to test and analyze the effectiveness of their products. The system works by
running a series of several hundred individual tests that measure the reach a web-app will be able to achieve. Of course there is much more to the system, such as analytics and prospective potential, which you can certainly read about from the minds who created it themselves.

While FiddleFly is a mobile website company and our main focus may not be just on web-apps, we love what Facebook is doing with Ringmark. Admittedly, part of our adoration may stem from the fact that Ringmark and fiddlefly were both conceived the same way, as a simple solution to an in-house problem which grew into something that could truly make the web better. Apart from the kindred paths however, Ringmark boosting the web-app world is something we can all applaud.

We’ve already written on this blog about native apps versus web-apps, and we made it pretty clear that we think the future of apps resides on the open web. A big misconception that we hear all the time however is that web-apps threaten mobile optimization. The truth is that couldn’t be farther from the truth, as the two actually go hand in hand. Mobile web-apps that are built well allow free navigation throughout the mobile web, letting users access them directly from mobile sites with a simple click versus a native app that forces users to close their browsers and open an app and vice versa.

Take for example a restaurant website. If the site is mobile optimized, diners can easily navigate the page for information like directions, prices, and menu options. Now, when they want to make a reservation, doing so is incredibly simple thanks to Open Table, which recently launched a web-based version of its app. Before the new web-app, diners would have to either call to make reservations or close the site and access the native version of Open Table, in turn taking plenty of unnecessary steps.

The evolution of mobile web apps has the potential to do what we all know the web is really intended to do, which is to make connecting and interacting from anywhere on the globe as simple and streamlined as it can possibly be. While Ringmark is only a test suite, Facebook has taken a huge leap in improving the mobile world.

Let us know what you think about Ringmark in the comments section below and make sure to follow us on Twitter @fiddlefly and check us out on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest for more cool mobile web developments.

The startup quandary: do we want followers or do we want fans?

There is a simple answer to the question above: we want both. What is not so simple of course is exactly what that really means.

With the bevy of tech conferences that have and will be continue to be going on throughout the past and coming weeks (SXSW, MWC, LWS, etc.), we’ve all been introduced to a host of startup companies all vying for their little slice of the public’s affection, and the truth of the matter is that many, if not most of them, will eventually fail.

While a sexy startup can attract plenty of attention from the public in a very short amount of time thanks to social media sharing, we’ve noticed that a surplus of followers doesn’t always equate to a long life in the tech industry.

Now, we certainly recognize the value of spreading the word about your company, and we’re not here to argue that getting hundreds of thousands of “likes” is a bad thing, but we do want to take a minute to think about what those “likes” actually mean. For an established company, say Coca Cola or Pepsi, Facebook likes are nice, but don’t really serve a purpose beyond providing the brand with one more stat to toss around. For startup companies, likes can help build a brand while providing marketing without having to spend money, however they also tend to be a bit over-valued. The main reason for this is that likes can get buried in a newsfeed (even with the new timeline format) and while they suggest that someone found something useful or interesting, these likes don’t actually represent any real connection they may have with the product or business.

In terms of Facebook a much more valuable strategy is striving to get people to share your content. Sharing is a much more personal means of spreading the word about something a person actually cares about, and immediately sparks conversation between not only current users and potential users, but users and the company itself.

The same philosophy applies to other social networking channels. Twitter is the obvious choice here as a bloated number of followers is often tossed around as an influential stat. What companies tend not to focus on however is who these followers are. If you run a startup company and you have 100,000 followers, you’re probably pretty excited. However if only 300 of those followers are actually interested in your product and the rest are just following because their friend retweeted a hilarious picture you posted, does it really help your business? This is why Twitter follower stats are the online marketing equivalent of hiring based solely on a resume: nice on paper but not necessarily true in practice.

So how do we solve this problem? Well there may not be a simple answer, but the one we like the most is to start conversations. While we love to see startups growing, we love it even more when we see startups building relationships with their customers. A great example of this was the social networking/design company Fab. When Fab saw its customer base ballooning, it launched an initiative to make customer support and interaction THE priority in its business model. Rather than sitting back and being enamored by the attention, the folks at Fab focused on building a product that was truly effective and creating a user experience that is extremely personal. The result has been Fab becoming one of the fastest-growing businesses on the web today.

Here at FiddleFly, we want to connect with users. Does that mean we want to shut our doors to the world and ask for a password through a tiny window? Of course not. What it means is that we want our followers to really be fans, and we want to be fans of our followers. This market is crazy exciting, and we never get bored talking about it, so we want to find people who are just as excited as we are.

To keep the conversations rolling, tell us what you think below, and if you’re interested in mobile web and all the amazing things it can be, follow us on Twitter @fiddlefly and check us out on Google+ and Facebook. Just be sure to keep in touch!

Keeping tabs on the Mobile World Congress

While we here at fiddlefly weren’t quite able to hop a plane to Barcelona for this week’s Mobile World Congress (MWC), we certainly made sure to keep close tabs on all the exciting developments that were announced from some of the biggest names in the mobile web community. While there were a few curveballs thrown in the way of specialty products, for the most part the announcements at MWC confirmed what most of us have been saying for some time: The future of mobile is increased speed, better connectivity, enhanced visibility, and of course, optimized web browsing.

The heavy hitters in the industry like Google and Facebook headlined the week’s events, but there were a few underdogs that were able to turn some heads. Companies like Nokia for example, which made big waves with its revolutionary new camera phone that outperforms most compact digital cameras, or Fujitsu who announced a new waterproof model phone, gave techies a glimpse into some of the fun new toys the mobile world has been waiting for.

While we all love checking out new devices, MWC is not just about the showroom. Some of the most important developments that come from the Mobile World Congress come in the form of speeches by industry gurus. Facebook’s CTO Bret Taylor’s speech for example, announced Facebook’s commitment to the mobile platform, and urged a major shift of all devices toward HTML5 to facilitate more effective mobile web browsing. Taylor also put a major emphasis on improving mobile billing technology, announcing a new “Pay Dialogue” billing system that will make purchase of apps more simple and streamlined.

Google, who many believe were the unquestioned juggernauts of MWC 2012 with its massive Android Market and numerous new products, sent its Chairman Eric Schmidt to give his keynote speech on the future of the mobile web. While Schmidt did sprinkle in a few teasers about some of Google’s upcoming projects (which let’s face it, we love to speculate about) his main focus was to drive attention towards not only where the mobile market is headed, but also how it will reshape the way we live and interact socially, with a specific focus on connectivity through cloud computing.

Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg from MCW, and while we could go on for days talking about great ideas and products that were unveiled, for now we’re just thrilled to hear so many brilliant minds in the mobile field talking about the same things we are. We know the mobile web is spreading, and while we don’t need to hear the report that there are 850,000 Android devices activated everyday, in order to take pride in what we’re doing, it certainly doesn’t hurt.

Tell us your thoughts on MWC12, the mobile web, and our blog. We’re always on the look out for interesting articles and ideas so be sure to connect with us on Twitter @fiddlefly and check out our Facebook page.

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