Emily Chang - eHub Interviews

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Visit Mobilicio.us, originally added to eHub on Mar 05, 06.

eHub Interviews Mobilicio.us

Thanks to Rob Shields and Jason Coleman, creators of Mobilicio.us for this email interview posted April 7, 2006.

eHub: What is your web application/service about?

Mobilicio.us: Mobilicio.us is a mashup combining the del.icio.us online bookmarking service with Google’s Mobile Search tool. This allows you to browse through “mobilized” versions of your del.icio.us bookmarks from your phone browser or other limited-display browsers. It also prevents you from having to enter long URLs into the Google Mobile search in order to “mobilize” a site. Let’s face it: entering anything using the phone keypad is a pain, especially when not using T9!

eHub: Why did you start this project?

Mobilicio.us: Rob Shields: Initially, for selfish reasons on my part. As mentioned in our blog, I do a lot of surfing from my phone when I’m away from my laptop or a wifi hotspot. When I first discovered the Google Mobile functionality, it seemed like a godsend. But after having to use my little phone’s numeric keypad to enter the URL time after time, I thought there had to be a better way to reach these sites. Perhaps I could implement some sort of personalized shell on top of it. I mentioned my idea to Jason. He thought about it for a bit and realized he could make my idea a reality.

Jason Coleman: After hearing Rob’s idea, I told him “I could program that this weekend.” I was so excited about the challenge of it. The basic technology behind the site did end up taking about a weekend to program. Of course we’re now working out all of the bugs that have come up with specific phones and browsers.

eHub: How much time do you devote to its growth? Do you have a day job?

Jason: Both Rob and I are full-time consultants for a large consulting firm. I’ve spent one full weekend and about 2-4 hours a day since working on programming and marketing Mobilicio.us.

Rob: Jason tends to do most of the technical work while I conduct testing and answer any user emails we receive. We both contribute to designing the site, blog entries and other site content. And I bankrolled the project, spending the whopping $9.95 for the domain name.

Jason: Don’t forget the hosting. I pay for the hosting. ;)

eHub: How large is your team and what are your backgrounds?

Mobilicio.us: Rob: I received a BS in Systems Engineering at the University of Virginia and then went to work for Accenture. In 2000, I joined Evolve software, hoping to make my millions in stock options (which obviously didn’t work out). When the dot com bubble burst, I was hired by BearingPoint as an Enterprise Integration consultant and then eventually came back to Accenture in the fall of 2004 in the SOA practice.

Jason: I am 23 years old and have been creating web pages in some form since I was 14. From 2000-2004, I attended school at Haverford College near Philadelphia as a computer science major. While in school, I made extra cash building websites for the academic departments and as part of my web design company Stranger Studios. I was also part of a great student group at Haverford that created the wildly successful student portal still in use today at http://go.haverford.edu. I work now as a consultant doing mostly non-web work, getting my fix after hours.

eHub: What is your design philosophy?

Mobilicio.us: Jason: Mobilicio.us is meant to solve two key problems, and our design philosophy revolves around how to best solve these two problems. (1) How can I access my online bookmarks from my phone? (2) How can I make the content behind those bookmarks more readable/usable on my phone?

Rob: I agree. It’s all about mobile usability. First, getting the user to the site they want to view in as few clicks as possible, with the minimal amount of data transferred. This is particularly important since browsing mechanisms on mobile devices are often difficult and data plans can be costly to the user. Second, the minimalist approach must be balanced by features and efficacy. It does the user a disservice to minimize the data if we also limit usefulness in doing so.

Jason: We’re constantly thinking of new problems, and it is our task to decide if we should solve them through Mobilicio.us or through some other means. For instance, we also want to read RSS feeds from our phone. Should we build an RSS reader into Mobilicio.us, tell users to link to one through their del.icio.us links, or recommend another mobile RSS reader? These are the kind of questions that drive our design sessions.

eHub: What technologies are you currently using?

Mobilicio.us: Jason: Mobilicio.us would not be possible without the incredibly efficient (and generous) del.icio.us API. On top of the del.icio.us API, Mobilicio.us uses a version of mySQLicious which has been modified to support caching del.icio.us bookmarks for multiple accounts. Links displayed through Mobilicio.us are altered to use Google Mobile to “mobilize” the site.

eHub: What are the most requested features from your users/community?

Mobilicio.us: Our most requested feature is to “make this work with my phone”. There are a lot of little snags that have come up with regards to compatibility with certain phones and browsers. We’ve been tackling these as they filter in. Thanks, Kyle Chen! (Kyle is a user in China and was very helpful in sending us error information early on.)

The next most requested feature is to connect with other online bookmarking services such as furl, spurl, or del.irio.us. We are currently looking into this as well.

eHub: Does your user base reside in a primary geographic location or is it distributed?

Mobilicio.us: Rob: Our user base is extremely distributed. We have had visitors from every continent on the globe (except Antarctica).

eHub: Where do you see the project heading in the next 6 months? The next 2 years?

Mobilicio.us: Jason: Our current user base is a very small intersection between people who use del.icio.us and people who browse the web from their mobile device. Our goal over the next 6 months is to encourage and make it easy for mobile browsers to adopt online bookmarking. Adding compatibility with other online bookmarking services will also help expand our user base.

Rob: As for 2 years from now, it’s really hard to tell. One challenge going forward will be to remain relevant. As mobile browsing becomes more common and the technologies improve to the point where phone browsers mobilize sites automatically, Mobilicio.us will have to adapt to stay useful to our user community.

eHub: What is the greatest challenge to your success?

Mobilicio.us: Jason: The truth is that our technology is not very proprietary. If I could program it in a week, a smart guy at Google or Yahoo could put together a competing product in at least a month. ;) This kind of service is going to be standard pretty soon. We’re focused now on building as large a user base as possible with the hopes that we might be able to market the application for its users rather than its technology.

eHub: What is the one thing you need to get to the next phase of the project?

Mobilicio.us: Jason: Time.

eHub: Do you have a business model? If so, what is it?

Mobilicio.us: Jason: We have links to Amazon on the Mobilicio.us homepage that, if anyone ever used it, would generate some affiliate income for us. The problem is that it’s pretty inconvenient to browse traditional shopping sites from a phone (even when mobilized).

Rob: We’re also showing Mobilicio.us recommended bookmarks in addition to your own bookmarks. Advertisers can pay to have their URLs posted in the recommended section. Our ad “rate” is either a mention in an article or blog post, or $10 per 1000 monthly visits. The blog mention will buy you a link in the recommended section for one month.

eHub: If you’re able to disclose this information, how much traffic or usage do you see on an average day?

Mobilicio.us: Jason: As of right now, we’ve had just under 400 del.icio.us accounts login to our service and we’re getting between 150 and 300 visits per day. About 25% of that traffic is to the project site and blog. The remaining 75% is to the application itself.

eHub: What is the one thing you’re most proud of about the project?

Mobilicio.us: Jason: How fast we were to release a working product. I had just written a post in my personal blog about how frustrating it was that new web applications are released so quickly these days. I have a few other projects working on the back burners now, and I’m constantly worried that someone will release a site with my same model before I can. Mobilicio.us went from concept to alpha release in under a week.

Rob: I’m extremely proud of feedback we’ve received and our opportunity to help people have a better web experience on their mobile devices.

eHub: How would you describe the shift that’s occurring with the web right now to future generations?

Mobilicio.us: Jason: I wouldn’t try. It may be sad, but the nature of the web 5 years from now will be dictated by all the 15-year-olds hanging out on MySpace today.

Rob: I could give you the whole “web 2.0” spiel, but I agree with Jason. Adolescents have an amazing amount of insight into future web functionality. They aren’t encumbered by notions of making money or having a business model. They’re more concerned with “how useful is this going to be?”

eHub: What site(s) do you visit everyday other than your own?

Mobilicio.us: Jason: I’m an avid reader of eHub and TechCrunch. Most days, I checkout Penny Arcade and what’s kicking at the InvestorGeeks forums.

Rob: eHub, Engadget, Gizmodo, BoingBoing, Slashdot, Lifehacker, Google, Joystiq, Hackaday, BBC

eHub: How many hours of sleep do you get a night?

Mobilicio.us: Rob: Anywhere between 4-8 hours. Personally, I think sleep is the biggest waste of time, but it’s a necessary evil. I try to get at least 6, but sometimes life just takes priority over sleep.

Jason: About 5-7 hours weeknights. When I can, I’ll try to make that up Firday nights by sleeping at least 10 hours.

Thanks to Rob Shields and Jason Coleman, creators of Mobilicio.us for this email interview posted April 7, 2006.

Visit Mobilicio.us
Originally added to eHub on Mar 05, 06

» More eHub Interviews

eHub Interviews is a series with the creators of Web 2.0 applications and services by Emily Chang, author of eHub, designer, and co-founder and principal of Ideacodes, a strategic web consultancy in San Francisco that she co-founded with Max Kiesler.

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