A Short Story about the Long Tail
By Thomas Ford. Thursday, 6. April 2006, 08:16:28
Ajit Jaokar, one of the leading Mobile Web 2.0 pundits and authors, recently visited Opera to learn more about our efforts with Opera Platform and Mobile AJAX. It was a great day for both sides and we were excited to see his blog post describing how mobile AJAX (and Opera Platform) will help target the Long Tail.
The Long Tail is a useful image that shows how niche information rules the Web. While some content - like stock quotes, news headlines and sports scores - appeals to a majority of Internet users, much more of the Web's content is targeted to smaller groups. In Ajit's post, this could be lawn bowling fanatics. It could also be magicians. Or rabbits in hats.
The beauty of the Web is that tailored content for these groups exists. The beauty of Web 2.0 is that technologies like AJAX make it possible to connect this content and merge it with other services to create rich media applications where the imagination of the designer - and not the availability of content - is the limit.
Extending this capability to mobile phones fundamentally changes the way people interact with Web content. Mobile AJAX frameworks like Opera Platform make it easy to develop mobile applications or even tweak existing Web applications for mobile devices - without coding separate applications for each phone OS. Is that cool or what?
Opera is hard at work on a collaboration with FAST and Telenor that will bring location-based Web services and applications to mobile phones. Imagine entering your destination into a mass transit server. Since the app knows your location, it can tell you not only that the bus stop is two blocks up, but that the bus you want arrives in 20 seconds. Now your mobile might really mean it when it says sprint.
This is awesome stuff and we're curious - what are the mobile apps you'd like to see?
The Long Tail is a useful image that shows how niche information rules the Web. While some content - like stock quotes, news headlines and sports scores - appeals to a majority of Internet users, much more of the Web's content is targeted to smaller groups. In Ajit's post, this could be lawn bowling fanatics. It could also be magicians. Or rabbits in hats.
The beauty of the Web is that tailored content for these groups exists. The beauty of Web 2.0 is that technologies like AJAX make it possible to connect this content and merge it with other services to create rich media applications where the imagination of the designer - and not the availability of content - is the limit.
Extending this capability to mobile phones fundamentally changes the way people interact with Web content. Mobile AJAX frameworks like Opera Platform make it easy to develop mobile applications or even tweak existing Web applications for mobile devices - without coding separate applications for each phone OS. Is that cool or what?
Opera is hard at work on a collaboration with FAST and Telenor that will bring location-based Web services and applications to mobile phones. Imagine entering your destination into a mass transit server. Since the app knows your location, it can tell you not only that the bus stop is two blocks up, but that the bus you want arrives in 20 seconds. Now your mobile might really mean it when it says sprint.
This is awesome stuff and we're curious - what are the mobile apps you'd like to see?
WIDGETIZE
NoobSaibot # 6. April 2006, 09:20
Helmers # 6. April 2006, 10:55
MTKnight # 9. April 2006, 03:02
"I couldn't bring up the Web on my phone, so I had no idea when the bus would show up!"