Is mobile Web replacing Internet?
November 7, 2008
Flirtomatic tapped Bango for mobile payments
Mobile users are becoming increasingly savvy about using their mobile phone and its Web browser, with 84 percent of Flirtomatic users claiming they use their handset to connect to the Internet.
Flirtomatic, a British mobile and online flirting service, announced some interesting results from a recent mobile survey it conducted with its users. Over 5,800 users responded to the survey and 87 percent of them completed the ten questions, two of which were free text.
"What surprised me most about the results is that 17 percent of that day's users took the survey, with no promotion," said Mark Curtis, CEO of Flirtomatic, London. "It was just a link of the homepage of the site. "We thought we would leave it up for a week but we took it down after
24 hours as we had more data than we could easily digest."
The Flirtomatic service is targeted at young adults and 75 percent of users are 18-30 years old. Flirtomatic operates a free and uninterrupted service across the Web and mobile, that enables users to flirt, meet new people and have fun online.
Users have the ability to discover members on the basis of their preferences, interests, location and other information stored in their multimedia user profile.
In May, Flirtomatic users were sending a million messages a day, generating 21 million Web page views and 130 million WAP page views.
A surprising 56 percent of respondents said that they use bookmarking in order to return to Flirtomatic, a figure much higher than initially expected.
Flirtomatic asked users which best describes their Internet connection at home.
A whopping 84 percent of users stated they usually use their phone, further evidence that the mobile Web is very much alive and growing.
"We're stunned at the response by mobile users to a survey that needed to be filled in on a small mobile phone screen," Mr. Curtis said. "We honestly expected maybe 500 responses, tops; but to get more than 10 times that is astonishing.
"The feedback and data we've received was very insightful on what our users think we're doing well and also, perhaps more importantly, what we need to improve on," he said. "We're working on these improvements and will release the first of them before the new-year."
The survey showed that the mobile phone is becoming more and more of a viral medium.
In fact, 38 percent of users have already invited their friends to join Flirtomatic and a 57 percent are considering it.
In terms of the feedback, there's a lot of other stuff which relates (as we wanted it to) to service
Specifics," Mr. Curtis said. "Suffice to say we got a very good understanding of what we are doing wrong and right.'
"The strategy behind this study was to find out more about our users and what they like and dislike about our service, so we can redesign key elements and make it better for them and for advertisers.
"Mobile is a response medium. Big time."