Did StumbleUpon and Digg just miss an emerging market?
Written on 16th October 2008
5 COMMENTS 
Joop Dorresteijn, East Asia correspondent
It’s interesting to see that so much attention is going to the iTunes Application store, don’t you think? When ‘experts’ stated that applications, email and games moved to the web, I never imagined something like the Itunes Applications Store to happen with such impact. With Android coming up, we can only expect more potential for application designers, good news! Granted, we discussed a number of amazing applications for the Iphone in the last few weeks but haven’t really touched upon handheld-ready websites here. Reason for that is that the browsing experience on these new handhelds are SO good – We never had the urge to find ‘n list optimized websites for the shiny gadget. When I got my device, I started looking for links to good websites but couldn’t find that much, actually they are hard to find. Here are some applications for you to discover new websites on your shiny gadget, and please while you are at it, leave your favorite mobile website in the comments!
StubleUpon
Quite frankly, I got a bit dissapointed when I discovered that StumbleUpon doesn’t have an website ready to go for handhelds. I mean, if one company can launch a handheld specific website, it should be them. Granted, there is a way to see the stumbleupon toolbar by navigating to stumbleupon/demo, but the sites you land on are often created for a bigger screen. I did some Google searches, and found that there are people out there that actually want a handheld specific site, but it seems that stumbleupon is focussing on their current operations only.
Digg
While StumbleUpon left some opportunity, Digg reacted in 2007 with an optimized website. Very nice to see the most popular content, nicely listed! I like to scroll and see what is ‘hot’ when I am bored while traveling with public transportation. But again, a chance missed! There is no special category for handheld optimized websites, a shame since the people behind Digg are obvious Apple lovers; one would expect that they at least blogged about an iPhone optimized category.
Justhit.it
While searching, I just came across a cool web service for iPhones called justhit.it. This website does one thing and that is showing you optimized websites for handhelds. I tried it out for a while and came across some funny websites. I think the site is very simple (and I am known to like that) and effective, but I am unsure how websites are being presented to the users. I expect the algorithm to present random sites (not optimized), and people are expected to submit pages with e-mail!
I guess that Digg and StumbleUpon see no market in supplying handheld specific content yet or maybe its outside their strategy. The idea of justhit.it does exactly what I want – supplying random optimized websites to entertain me when I am bored, and besides some minorities it does the trick rather well! Am I the only one that appreciates a iPhone specific website, or did Digg and StumbleUpon miss this opportunity? For now, I will try to add thenextweb (iPhone optimized) to justhit.it, I will blog about the results later. For now, I wonder: What is your favorite website for your handheld?
Do you know any other sites for handhelds?
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By Patrick de Laive on Oct 16, 2008
On the mobile phone I don’t come a lot further then facebook (the iPhone app), twitter (via twitterific), and some dutch news sites (nu.nl).
I’d like to have a mobile optimized StumbleUpon function, especially for youtube movies.
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It’s there.
you now can random hit youtube movies. :-)
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By Joery on Oct 16, 2008
Hey there,
Nice post Joop. I’m interested in things like justhit.it.
Keep it simple must have been the thought when developing this website.
I like the initiative, it works fine on my iPhone and it shows nice info & games. A bookmark for me.
@ Joop, did you already find thenextweb.org on it?
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By Igor on Oct 16, 2008
Basecamp: http://www.basecamphq.com/?source=37s+home
Pipelinedeals: http://www.pipelinedeals.com/
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By CasaMan on Oct 16, 2008
I like the way you’re thinking but there are some problems. Digg is all about sharing interesting stories and not interesting websites. The number of interesting stories in mobile format is not enough to justify a new category. Secondly, creating a category for “mobile (content)” will probably confuse users too much. Does stories need to be in a mobile format or is the topic mobile content. All the other categories are topics. The only way it will work is to create a sub site (like news, videos, images). But the mobile content would not mix in well with the rest of the content so you can’t use the mobile content on the digg.com homepage.
When this mobile browsing really kicks off, a lot of content providers will offer the content in a mobile format to mobile users. If they don’t we still have the fully capable mobile browser on our device. We can access the sites pretty comfortable. There will never be a need for it.
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