I’ve been toying around the idea of creating an official website dedicated to my interests in mobile technology, mobile web marketing & m-commerce. I don’t want to use my personal name domain as a platform for something that could easily grow beyond my personal thoughts and ideas.
The idea for mobLine hit me during Alan M. Weber’s keynote address at the 2006 LinkShare Symposium in New York. Alan shared his thoughts on how to successfully lead a business into the new era of commerce fueled by a global economy. He covered a wide range of topics during his keynote, but a few things really struck a chord with me; the use of information as a catalyst for change, the importance of speed in innovation, globalization is something to embrace, the way we do business is going to change and the world is shrinking because of The Internet. Even though his keynote was a bit ominous, I agreed with assessment of the future. Near the end of his keynote, Alan made a statement along the lines of; “The invention of The Internet was just the start. The next great innovation will come sooner than you think.”
Overall his keynote was thought provoking. It got me thinking about how I could embrace this new era of commerce in a global economy. I really liked the idea of making use of web enabled mobile devices to help create my stateless business. Then it dawned on me how open the mobile web was ripe for new business ventures. I viewed it as Columbus’ New World, an undiscovered country with huge potential. I thought of the name mobLine as a cleaver play on words to distinguish / brand the difference between shopping on the World Wide Web and shopping on the mobile web. Instead of shopping online with your computer, you would be shopping mobLine (Mobile + Online = mobLine, get it?) with your phone. Unfortunately I got wrapped up with other things after the conference and I never did anything with this idea.
4Q of last year I launched a mobile version of The Woodwind & Brasswind website on the mPoria Mobile Commerce Platform, which I highly recommend if you are looking for a painless solution for mobile ecommerce. Two things quickly became very obvious to me; people are willing to buy musical instruments from a mobile commerce site and true multi-channel integration is tough because the tools, services and technologies are still young. As an example I want to create a mobile version of my email to add into my multipart newsletter. I think it be great if someone subscribed to my newsletter and when they viewed it from a web browser they got my .com links, but if the viewed the same email from a mobile device it would have my .mobi links instead. Current web standards for email do not allow me to pull this off.
The mobile industry is still young and standards are still being defined. My goal with mobLine.org is to create a shared resource for all things m-commerce. The site is not live yet, but it should be soon. I’ll keep you posted as things develop. I’m looking for help if anyone is interested.
