International Law

The weekend web

Business Week describes the weekend web:

There's only one Web. At least that's been the standard response in many tech circles to the emergence of the wireless Web. The point? No matter how you get online, be it by PC or smartphone, you'll still do the same things on the Web, using roughly the same sites and services. Really?

David Witkowski missed that memo. Witkowski, an executive at a Silicon Valley startup, behaves very differently when he uses the Web on a PC compared with when he's surfing via cell phone. From the office computer, "I pretty much live on Google," Witkowski says. But from his Research In Motion (RIMM) BlackBerry, the amateur radio enthusiast spends a lot of time searching for gadgets for sale on Craigslist, especially when he travels and on weekends. He also checks local weather forecasts and airline schedules.

Welcome to the weekend Web, where people are spending a bigger slice of time online via wireless devices?and using a different set of sites than during the workweek. "At Google, we see the majority of our desktop traffic [in the U.S.] during weekdays," says Matt Waddell, chief of staff for Google (GOOG) Mobile. "On mobile, the situation is completely reversed." Mobile browsing surged 89% in the past year, with mobile page views increasing by 127%, according to researcher M:Metrics. The increase reflects growing availability of all-you-can eat data plans and increasingly sophisticated handheld devices such as the Apple (AAPL) iPhone.

On Saturday, Classifieds Rule

Of course, most Web surfing still happens via PC, but M:Metrics' research shows that when it occurs by way of mobile, much of it takes place on the weekend. The number of unique visitors to the mobile Web spikes on Saturdays, according to March figures compiled by M:Metrics. The number surged to 4.17 million on Saturdays, an 8% increase from Fridays and 4% more than on the next busiest day, Monday, according to the study, which tracked behavior by 1,861 U.S. smartphone owners.

And like Witkowski, lots of U.S. cell phone users flock to a different set of sites via handheld.

Read more here.

Full post as published by Freedom to Differ on May 30, 2008 (boomark / email).