cybersurf should be looking seriously as this
Portals make grab for mobile devices
Although unwired Internet is a couple years away from
popular consumption, the portals don't want to wait
The race is on among Internet portals to be the leader in providing Internet content to wireless
devices like cell phones, pagers, and PDAs.
By Elliot Zaret
MSNBC
Nov. 8 — The promise of Internet-enabled cell
phones and devices like the Palm VII — that
users will be pointing and clicking anywhere, any
time — has all the top Internet sites salivating.
For the Internet portals the devices mean more
traffic, more places to put ads and more
e-commerce revenue. But with mobile Internet a
couple years away from popular consumption,
the portals don't want to wait. And they're
finding a way to get into the pockets and onto
the belts of their customers today by sending
messages to regular pagers and cell phones.
IN RECENT WEEKS, the portal players have been
trying to one-up each other with ways to put their content
onto users' mobile devices. From Microsoft's MSN
dropping the charge for sending news clippings and stock
quotes to pagers, to Excite offering a way to synchronize its
address book and calendar with any cell phone, the portals
are making a virtual land-grab for what is a very small piece
of real estate.
(Microsoft is a partner in MSNBC.)
Just how small? Well, most text pagers and cell phones
limit messages to only 100 to 120 characters. That makes
advertising practically impossible — and the inability for a
user to interact with the Web site makes any other revenue
models all but impossible.
So why all the fuss?
“We have to be first to market or early to market for a
lot of these things because we want to grow,” said Yahoo!
Everywhere producer Sadhana Joliet. “A lot of it is just so
you can get Yahoo everywhere… We think [the potential]
is tremendous. A lot of projections show Internet-enabled
devices are going to surpass the number of PCs, so we
think it's explosive.”
It was just that potential that led Yahoo to partner with
Online Anywhere in April. Through that deal, Yahoo has
been offering news, stock quotes and e-mail on pagers and
cell phones, as well as notification of bids and new items on
Yahoo's auction site.
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