Mobile Front-end
I don’t know that I care that much about Apple’s new ad platform, but this quote from Steve Jobs on the topic got me thinking:
“On a mobile device, search is not where it’s at, not like on the desktop,” he said. “They’re using apps to get to data on the internet, not generalised search.”
I guess I knew that (the app thing), but I had never thought of it in quite those terms. What are the implications if the internet is all really just data for apps? How does that change the content we create and the way we design it? (If at all.) Not sure I know the answers (or I’m just too tired right this minute), but it’s certainly an interesting concept.
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Whereas we used to create content, optimize it for (a) browser and (b) Google — both of which could happen with the same codebase — potentially now we have to optimize our content for that many more applications. Of course, all those apps (on the iPhone/iPad at least) will easily integrate with Apple’s new ad system, which is why you can almost envision the tented fingers and “Excelllent.” at the end of that quote.
I agree with the assertion that one box searching on mobile isn’t the same as it is in the browser, I don’t know the future is either apps or search; in fact I know it will have quite a bit of mobile browser-based experience. Maybe he’s lumping that in with the apps — but it’s all going to be outside his walled garden, and certainly an area that Google can and likely will make significant advances on, with our without AdMob.
But yes, to answer our questions, the shift has been happening in how we distributed our content (reflected in the proliferation of XML feeds and APIs), and it would sure seem like a good idea for people to create and design with the notion of content redistributed into a million formats they can’t control. It should impact everything from headlines and text to imagery and how we integrate things like video and audio. And I think for a lot of people, that change has already happened.