I doubt your web site is ready for the iphone – but your facebook profile is…

With the launch of the iphone 2.0 bloggers such as Nick O’Neill at the Social Times (iphone daze) are wondering whether mobile phones are ready to be the device of choice for web 2.0 and the social web.

I’ve had a Nokia N82 for a while. It has the key features that are in the new Iphone: Wifi, 3G, GPS, tilt screen, 5 megapixel camera and most importantly a decent web browser.

My pattern of mobile web usage recently has sky rocketed.This is what I’ve done in the last two months:

* checked and sent emails, I’ve even tidied up my inbox (thank you Gmail for the interface)

* purchased two books from Amazon (in the middle of meetings very conveniently)

* found contact details for a client office I was trying to find while on the road

* synchronised my Gmail calendar with my phone calendar

* looked at friends statuses with Facebook

* watched a youtube video

What’s interesting is that all of the above services (with the exception of my client web site) had mobile ready web sites and reduced interfaces.

Mobile ready, reduced interfaces are still essential if you want meaningful engagement from users of devices with tiny screens and slow keyboards.

For brands and web site owners still in web 1 with their own sites, this creates just one more technical hurdle to overcome – more cost and more expense.

For those brands that have embraced web 2 and social media they don’t need to do anything – it’s now the job of the platforms (youtube, facebook, google et al) to format their content for the new devices.