Well, doesn’t time fly? Just over a year ago I posted on One Web and what I think it means. A year or so later, what has changed? Well, firstly I think that there are a lot more made-for-mobile Web sites. Secondly, the term “One Web” continues to be used to describe the consumption of desktop oriented sites on mobile devices. For example, a post from Alan Patrick last weekend:
there are currently 2 main schools of thought – (i) define a unique "mobile web", and (ii) make devices better at coping with existing web content. The problem with the mobile web option is the expenditure given the low pull through …
Alan characterises i) as the “Two Web” school and ii) as the “One Web” school.
Nic Brisbourne quotes him on his excellent Equity Kicker blog and commends the description as being admirably succinct. The problem is, though it is succinct, it is not right, to my mind.
Alan goes on to say:
We suspect the endgame will actually be more "One Web" owing to the economics – its easier to build a better webphone (iPhone and successors) than to get millions of websites, digital media players etc to write for a "mobile web" – but with players designing web services specifically for mobile functions.
I’m not convinced that Alan is right on that one. Take, for example, The New York Times, which is discussed in Alan’s piece. Its Full Fat version (www.nytimes.com) has a total download weight of 325.5 kb across roughly 50 different files and contains an amazing 412 links. The mobile version, (mobile.nytimes.com) by contrast, has a total page weight of 20kb across 8 files and 60 or so links. Dave Winer’s nytimesriver.com, which Alan points to in his post, weighs in at a relatively beefy 83kb but in only two files and a surprising 225 links.
This is not unusual. Without wishing to bore unduly with numbers: Der Spiegel (www.spiegel.de) has a total page weight of 540 kb over 80 files and a staggering 590 links. By contrast, spiegel.mobi has is 45 kb across 17 files and 50 links – and for that matter www.timesonline.co.uk and www.usatoday.com tell very similar stories.
The idea that this is representative of “Two Webs” is not really right. To quote the Mobile Web Best Practices – “One Web does not mean that exactly the same information is available in exactly the same format on all devices.”
What One Web does mean, most importantly, is that if I access a Web URL on my mobile and send the bookmark to my desktop, or vice versa, that bookmark will work and that the presentation that I get will be appropriate to my context, which includes the capabilities of my device and network and also my likely interest at the time. The key point here is that the fact that there are two presentations doesn’t mean it’s not One Web (sic). One Web is not measured by having a single presentation – it’s measured by the fact that URIs are re-usable no matter what the device is.
Even if I am using an iPhone, or actually, especially if I am using an iPhone, I could be accessing a Web site either by means of WiFi or by a rather slow and tatty EDGE based data connection. Going back to the figures I laboriously cited above, in the first case (WiFi) I might want, or at least be happy with the desktop presentation on the iPhone. It’s at least a manageable experience, especially in landscape mode, if not ideal. But if I am away from the WiFi connection I am definitely going to want the mobile experience, aren’t I?
For the foreseeable future, no matter how much costs come down, and so on, retrieving half a megabyte of stuff, and making 80 retrievals is going to take a substantial amount of time and result in a inappropriate and hard-to-use experience. In this case, the idea that a bookmark works to give me either the Full Fat or the Low Fat content depending on my circumstances is even more compelling. If I’ve bookmarked Der Spiegel, then I’m certainly going to want the Low Fat version when I am on EDGE but then again, may want the Full Fat version on WiFi.
In reality, of course, I am not likely to be using an iPhone an N95 or whatever, I am likely to be using a less functional device. Even with the sales of iPhones being in the 10s or 100s of thousands, that is not really a very big drop in the ocean. Sales of high function devices that can theoretically access desktop oriented sites will not satisfy the users of those devices in a substantial number of cases (like they are paying roaming data charges). It certainly won’t address the very substantial market of less capable devices, on which you would need to use the four way key to step through the 500 link choices to navigate to your next page. Given, of course, that you had the patience and budget to load the home page in the first place.
Contrary, I think, to Alan’s claim, over the last year a fairly substantial number of sites have gained a mobile presence. Newspaper Web sites, for example, do appear, in one form or another, to have decided that a mobile experience is worth having and that the mobile experience is different from the desktop experience. No pull through? That’s not my perception.
What is missing, right now, is not that people aren’t motivated to build mobile sites. To my mind the missing link is that the “One Web” aspect of having URIs that work gracefully across device types is taking time. Let’s not forget that the choice is not binary. It’s not actually “Full Fat Web” vs “Low Fat Web” – there are a series of gradations which depend on the user’s device and circumstances. What’s missing today, except from really very high end development environments, is a way to make implementing those gradations practical.
Realising the One Web vision on a more widespread basis will require the arrival of cost-effective content management and application server solutions. I believe that the arrival of such tools is not that far off. Closer, I think, than the mass adoption of mobile devices that have acceptable presentation of desktop content – take the recent announcement of Volantis Community Edition, for example. Closer too, for that matter, than the arrival of acceptable cost and performance of operator networks.
Be that as it may, once again: "One Web does not mean consuming a desktop oriented presentation on all devices in all circumstances."
