A Mobile Weekend

I spent this absolutely beautiful weekend in NYC. My college roomate’s 25 birthday party Friday night, and an afternoon and evening of exploring the upper east side with my girlfriend. Almost everything we did was facilitated by my mobile device (Verizon BlackBerry 8830). I love this phone, its my second BlackBerry and a HUGE upgrade from my last.

Regardless of the device, we used it for just about everything we did (even a bit of navigating in Central Park). On the train we read about a dozen different reviews to get a sense for what we were in for. We used its GPS functions to give us directions to the Club we went to Friday night (Azza @ 55th and Lex), after we got in the cab. Saturday, we looked up the Pope’s schedule using the browser (yes we saw him in the flesh, along with his 4 block motorcade). Then we found an excellent Brasserie on 79th Street using the Google Maps App. As we waited for our food, we looked at a Map of Central Park to figure out the best path for where we were heading (Belvedere Castle - man what a beautiful day). On our way home, we looked up Movie Showtimes.

The point of this story is that in the past 48 hours I used a mobile device to facilitate 3 transactions, and to find and research essential information that I otherwise would have had to look up prior to leaving my apartment. Each one of those was an opportunity for an advertiser to reach me, while I was interested, while I was about to make a purchasing decision, literally at that moment. How valuable would it have been to the Brasserie across the street from the one I found online? - $38. How much was it worth to Azza to get us there and not have us stop somewhere else? - way more than $38.

Why are people still so bearish about mobile? Nearly everyone in NYC has a mobile device capable of using the internet, millions of people are purchasing them everyday, and the state of Mobile in Japan and in Europe is way ahead of ours. And the Instant return for advertisers must be so appetizing to marketers.

The iPhone, BlackBerries, and all the new broadband capable mobile devices are facilitating easier access to valued information via the mobile web. Once marketers figure out how to reach this growing base of mobile users (which they are beginning to , see Amazon), its going to get hot. And quickly. Mobile has to be the next arena of growth, because everyone else is doing it.

Almost everything I do, I use my mobile device to help me do it better or faster. I read the news, blogs and email. I get directions to my appointments and meetings, I get the latest scores on demand.

There is so much that I do that I am transitioning to my phone. Remember when people started transitioning to the web? I see that happening with mobile.