thinks

I’m not sure, but I think Michael Arrington isn’t a fan of the new Sprint website. My biggest problem with the site has less to do with its recommendations - or the fact that it doesn’t sell iPhones. It’s that it’s built to drive “buzz” and “social juice” but you can’t embed it in your site and you can’t forward your results to a friend easily, via email or text. You can try it out from your mobile phone, though, so at least they got the “mobile” part of “mobile, social, local” right. My biggest beef with the site though, is how detached it seems from where Sprint’s target demographic is today. Sprint is marketing to a 2007 customer using 1999 tactics. If they really wanted to capture their customers correctly, this wouldn’t be a website. It would be a Facebook app.

By the way, I’m a Globe Hopper. Now where is my passport?

Twitter, a commerce engine? Interesting. My fear is that ideas like this reflect a return to interruption marketing, devaluing what Twitter (and its ilk) provide. Admittedly, folks would have to opt to “follow” your offers. But, are you prepared to make it worth their while?

You gotta love the Future Now guys. Far too smart - and they give stuff like this presentation on optimizing e-commerce product pages away for free. I want to be just like them when I grow up.

I knew something like NoSo was coming. Maybe not this implementation, but certainly the idea that folks would want to unplug. What’ll be interesting is to see how many people attend. Of course, with everyone unplugged, there’d be no way to track those numbers. Damn.

OK, so the US lags other countries in use of the mobile web. Still, the flip side is that 35% of US mobile usage is for something other than calls. And with over 200 million mobile phone users in the U.S. - visiting 12 sites a month - that’s rather a lot, don’t you think?

So what are these folks doing with the mobile web? Twitter-ing, for one thing. Which, according to Fred Wilson, is due for a big boost. And soon, receiving email from their friends on Yahoo. Yahoo knows it has lost - for now - the PC-based Web to Google. Clearly, the company is trying to gain a foothold in the mobile web to beat its rival to the punch. And the profits. So long as Twitter doesn’t get there first.

It’s not the iPhone. I love what Fred calls it: “…a mobile browser that supports voice.” Sounds a lot like the device of choice going forward.