Online Walled Gardens Are Tough To Maintain
Walled Gardens Restrict Choices.
Walled Gardens have always been tough to maintain. Those outside may have an appetite for what is inside but may be turned off by the associated fees. Those inside may hanker for the freedom to seamlessly wander both inside and outside the walls.
There were already signs that the walls were tumbling down and the latest Wall Street Journal article, Breaking Down the Walls Of Phones’ Web Gardens, lists a number of the reasons for this. The article perhaps places too much emphasis on the browser issues, although clearly the Opera Mini, the Apple iPhone and the Microsoft Deep Fish when it arrives, are all weakening the walls.
If anything the article attaches too much weight to current events and not enough to future developments. Current website design is too influenced by the current situation where the Mobile Web is only a fraction of the regular Web. Most web designers settle for an optimal design for a desktop PC and accept that the user experience will be inferior on a mobile device. Given that the mobile web will grow much more strongly than the regular Internet, this practice will have to change.
Many websites will have specifically-designed mobile versions, often on a dotMobi domain, that will provide a superior user experience. The other major influence here will be the launch of the Google Gphone. Although there seems to be almost ‘Harry Potter’ type secrecy about this, the business logic for it seems inescapable. When the Mobile Web adjusts to accommodate the Gphone reality, those walls around the phones’ web gardens will not long survive.
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