Mobile Web Performance Still Frustrating, Study Finds

Despite huge advances in mobile Web browsing, most users remain frustrated by the slow speed at which Web pages are delivered on their smart phones, a study by Compuware suggests. The 2011 survey of 4,014 global mobile web users found that 71 percent of users expect websites to load as quickly, almost as quickly or faster on their mobile phone compared to the computer they use at home, up from 58 percent in 2009.

Some 57 percent of mobile web users had a problem in the past year when accessing a website and 47 percent had a problem accessing an app on their phone.

Nearly 60 percent of web users say they expect a website to load on their mobile phone in three seconds or less, and 74 percent are only willing to wait five seconds or less for a single web page to load before leaving the site. 50 percent are only willing to wait five seconds or less for an application to load before exiting.

If you remember browsing on a mobile phone several years ago, it was a fairly unpleasant experience. There was no effort to render a page the way it would display on a PC. In fact, the strategy was to strip out as much formatting as possible and render the text and basic images to allow the user to get the content of the page, but not the presentation.

That changed in 2007 with the iPhone. Web pages could be rendered very close to how the desktop did it and, with zooming, you could easily navigate the page and read the content. Mobile Web Performance Still Stinks, Users Say

Download the study here.

American Express Gets into Social Shopping

American Express is getting into the social shopping, or local commerce or daily deals space (depending on how you prefer to describe the business). American Express will be bringing personalized deals to Facebook through its "Link, Like, Love" platform.

American Express Gets into Social Shopping

Online payment company WePay targets small retailer e-commerce

Online payment startup WePay is launching WePay Stores, a new e-commerce solution for small businesses with zero tech prowess, one might argue.

It is billed as a simple solution for merchants without programming experience or technical ability. It takes a few minutes to start a store and retailers don’t need a merchant account.

WePay handles payments, hosting and shopping cart. There are no set up fees, contracts or monthly fees. Merchants sell items by uploading an image, adding a description and setting a price.

“Most merchants, including those that use PayPal, have to go figure out two different companies, one that offers payments and another that offers an online store,” says WePay CEO Bill Clerico. “It’s up to the merchant to get them to work together, and figure total cost. Instead, we hold your hand through the design and payment process."

WePay

Telecommuters Use UC, Not Backup

Nearly one in three telecommuters say they never back up their data, according to a recent survey from Staples Advantage, the business-to-business division of Staples Inc.

Telecommuters say they rely on email (96 percent), instant messaging (68 percent), video conferencing (44 percent) and unified communications technologies (25 percent) to stay connected. While more than two thirds of telecommuters said they didn’t receive IT security training in preparation for home office work, many are applying good judgment and security best practices. About 95 percent say they install operating system updates right away and 84 percent don’t store personal data on their machines.

Telecommuters Rely on Unified Communications

DSL "Obsolete?" Nuances are Important

Nuances are important. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson told an audience at a meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners that copper-based DSL broadband technology is “obsolete.” That's an unexpected quip, but likely has to be put into context.

Stephenson apparently was answering a question from an audience member about how state regulators should think about new technology cycles when they are considering things like the universal service fund, and Stephenson undoubtedly was emphasizing faster technology cycles these days, where five years is about the useful life of a new access technology.

Consider wireless networks, where 3G networks are being replaced by 4G networks. The point is that access providers often cannot make investments that are amortized over 10 to 15 years. Digital Subscriber Line is not the same thing as the latest version of U-verse, nor is cable modem access of a decade ago the same thing as DOCSIS 3.0.

AT&T’s CEO calls DSL obsolete

FTC Chief: Consumers Should Control Their Data on Social Sites

"We think generally people ought to have control over their data," says David Vladeck, head of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection. "If you wanted to leave a social-networking site at some point, you ought to be able to." That would mean the ability of a social network user to port his or her own data to another site. But Vladeck does not think that is required by law.

In fact, under U.S. law, it is a hard thing to determine who actually owns social network data. The FTC is one of the agencies that could ultimately be called upon to settle issues of data portability between social networking sites, an important issue for Facebook, Google and all other social networks as well.

Consumers Should Control Their Data on Social Sites

A New Kind of "Network" for AT&T, Verizon, Sprint

If you ask Trevor Healey, new CEO of Amobee, what role mobile operators or telcos can play in the mobile advertising business, you have to understand that there are segments within the market. Local and small businesses will use different tools, and run different types of campaigns, from the largest brands that traditionally have used "Madison Avenue" agencies. Telcos might not have natural advantages in the "small account" portion of the mobile ad market.

But large telcos are Fortune 500 companies. That means telco CEOs have opportunities to "hang out" with other Fortune 500 CEOs, the ones whose firms spend the most money advertising and running very-large campaigns. So re-imagine the CEOs of large, global service providers as the linchpins of the relationship selling needed to generate business from the largest and most-sophisticated accounts.

Of course, the platform has to be in place. The skills and capabilities have to be there. But that done, mobile operators, especially, could have an important and substantial role to play in mobile advertising campaigns used by the largest brands and firms. Someday, people might think of Verizon Wireless, AT&T and Sprint as "networks" in a new way. Networks of the NBC, Fox Network, Discovery Channel sort, with scores of millions of people engaging with their screens every day, everywhere they are, all day long.