Phones Curate Our Lives As Mobile Web Changes Everything

The world’s Sturm and Drang, German for Storm and Stress, only goes in one direction – MORE. We are on an infinite loop of more. Each time we pass GO we pickup $200 and go around the board faster, always faster. 

Smart Phones are shields, accelerators, game consoles and curation tools.

Our days are marked by devices: we wake up to iPads, drive with Smart Phones, work on desktops, lunch with laptops, drive home with Smart Phones and finish our work on laptops finally curating dreams to come with our iPads. Mobile’s coming tsunami is undeniable:


•    90% of Americans are within 3 feet of their mobile phone 24/7/365.
•    Smart Phones will more than double PC sales by 2015 says Gartner.
•    The next generation spends TIME on their phones:

Mobile And The Death of Free Time


We are on our phones all the time. We don’t stand in line anymore. We look at our phones in those restless pockets of time when we used to look out the window or take a breath. Google’s fascinating mobile search chart (below) shows this always on, always more appetite of mobile.



See the dips in the blue search demand line below? The sharp dips are Christmas. We search right up until we take a break. See the bigger bows down? Those bows are the summer when we are at the beach and so not searching as much. Now look at the constant voracious red line.

Mobile searching doesn’t take a break, slow down or take a vacation. It just keeps growing because when we are on vacation in a new place we need things. We use our phones to find restaurants, snorkeling equipment and flip flops. Our phones guide us around unfamiliar roads to make sure our vacation is restful.

Our phones don’t get a break at Christmas. We work them harder during holidays making sure a distributed family knows what we are up too.

 Mobile devices are different. They demand simplicity, speed and relevance. Relevance has the added dimensions of time and space.

If I’m standing on the corner looking for a pizza my hunger exists NOW and I want a pizza joint in walking distance. These are new search dimensions, new with mobile. Time and place on a desktop are less immediate and less determined. On my desktop I may be looking for a Pizza later at home. On the corner chances are good I want a pizza now.

Mobile changes time and place so it changes everything. We can’t simply move our desktop thinking to a mobile empowered world. We leave our desktops. We never leave our phones. Our phones curate our lives. We use them to:



If it seems like everything is changing again in Internet marketing that is because it is. Mobile brings more than just new devices. Mobile brings new demands for:



•    Speed.
•    Relevance (in new time and place dimensions).
•    Simplicity in a mouse optional world.
•    Speech.
•    Semantic web (speech in context).

Regular Scenttrail readers will recognize Google's chart of their "winning" mobile foundation as More and More, Faster and Faster, Better and Better.

Mobile and Email Marketing

We use our phones to curate our email. Mobile devices make it easy to stand over the garbage and throw away junk mail. If your email marketing isn't mobile friendly then opens rates will be down and money to the bank less.

The mobile revolution will curate our lives, change everything including how and what we call “websites”. 






Marty