Tom Scotney

I’ve always been a bit unsure about the obsession with the mobile phone as a platform for internet use. Until today, when I lost my phone, and realised quite how much of my day-to-day web use goes through it.

Now I realise that in a world of genocide, terrorism, warmongering, poverty, starvation, global warming and the rest it seems like the height of selfishness to complain about being denied the use of my Sony Eriksson for a while, but there you go.

Back to the point. In the fabulous world of the Birmingham Post I have to go to a special computer in the corner to use anything vaguely Web 2.0-related, as it’s the only one that’ll run it. And when I got there today (after a very hard day’s work naturally) I was presented with the dispiriting sight of approximately several thousand posts to read through, making me realise quite how much time I spend going through Google Reader on the phone in an average day, just filling up the gaps in the day checking the latest news, leaving comments, updating my facebook or checking email.

So it turns out I was wrong, mobile phone internet does have some use to people - me particularly. I’d be interested to hear anyone else’s views on how much they use the little internet button on their phone? What for?

One of the many lines of new media organisations seems to be integrating the mobile phone network under their umbrella and targeting mobile phone users as well as paper readers, website visitors etc. Looking at the number of people wandering round the streets glued to their mobiles it’s easy to see why.

But are any of these people using the internet or is it all about text and camera pictures? I want to find out how people use their phones, and what they actually want in terms of interactive mobile services from media organisations.