Rant: Responsive Design vs. Mobile First

Not only are people behaving differently on mobiles than desktops, they’re also expecting different responses. eMarketer’s July 2012 Mobile Roundup notes that “the shift toward immediate ‘just in time’ information access means that marketers and content providers must meet demands for mobile-optimized content.”  Responsive design has been the answer so far to multimodal users seeking immediately relevant, actionable, utilizable content.

It’s considered by many as a great achievement in website development but if you want my take, responsive design is most often the euphemism for stretching production so that, at best, the website won’t look broken or just ugly on smartphones and other devices. I’d argue that when you don’t develop specifically for mobile, that is, when you try to take web and artifact it into mobile rather than the other way around, you fail to fully leverage the platform. In short, you fail to win. I expect a lot of TL:DR at this point, but stick with me to follow the argument.

Weekly Roundup 8/7/12

Last week’s focus turned an eye to finding your tech-soul and investing in others as they find theirs:

•  Pre-IPO companies with big valuations
• The decade of the angel investor.
• Google Developers interview with Kevin Rose looking at start-ups, teams,  and angel investing.
  
• Funding the impractical.
  
• Interesting take on hiring the right team.

Next week’s round up will include impressions from the 2012 Mobile Media Summit and Un$exy conferences in Chicago and Silicon Valley respectively this week.  Check out the hashtags at #mobilemediasummit and #unsexy in the meantime. Note–the #unsexy hashtag may include an interesting NSFW mix so review at your own risk. 🙂

Weekly Roundup July 23-27, 2012

Let the games begin. A look at the Olympics consumption in the era of social and mobile:

• A breakdown of NBC’s complete social and digital Olympic coverage
  
• NBC & Facebook second-screen partnership: data from Facebook Talk Meter reflected in broadcast 
  
• NBC partners with Twitter with Olympic Twitter Tracker with tracking done via official Olympic page launch, aggregating content on the #Olympics event page from Olympians, @NBCOlympics, @Olympics (IOC), @USOlympic (USOC)
• GE sponsors Olympic Twitter Tracker on NBCOlympics.com and creates #healthyshare to focus human and athlete health insights
  • GE and the Social Olympics
• Despite extensive on and offline coverage, NBC still requires proof of subscription to access livestreams. Here’s how unplugged users adapt with crowd-sourced answers.
• As we see NBC’s strategy to drive viewership and interest, here’s a recap of SocialTV on SlideShare, and voice over below:

• With the Marissa Mayer move, discussion stirs around the CEO and ‘having it all’.
• Mayer’s evergreen 9 Principles of Innovation (2008)