… death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down. — Woody Allen (1935 - )

It’s too bad blogger ire can’t be harnessed as a source of power, because Russ would have himself a free energy machine - there’s your startup!

The good thing that came out of Russ’ exclamation that the mobile web is dead is that real metrics and numbers have been brought out of the closet for easy finding and comparing. Like…

Mobile Ad Spending

Greater Usability = Greater Usage

and many more!

Plus you can attend a MoMoNY event that will focus on metrics.

Here’s my small bit to add. I work with a lot of premium content (talking major media properties here) who get solid desktop web numbers. Their mobile numbers are ridiculously lackluster (I’m keeping vague here because I can’t disclose the actual numbers). But at the same time they’re getting somewhere in the neighborhood of $12 CPMs, and because of that, they’re going to do their damndest to try to increase that traffic. Wherever there’s money like that, there’s going to be effort to throw content at it to try to get people to stick.

On the formatting side, people want solid, rich experiences in their browsing. They want to feel like what they’re looking at was built for consumption, not just stripped down or transcoded quickly so people could have access on the go. Bespoke web applications for iPhone have driven this fact home, and now that people have seen what can be done on mobile devices, they’re not going to want to look at the basic WML/XHTML-MP stuff that has come before.

The mobile web is not dead, it’s figuring out how to come into its own. Transcoding is dead.

Mobile will converge with desktop to a degree, and you’ll see different strategies for mobile content adaption. Instead of Mowser-type services, you’ll start to see Javascript toolkits like Prototype and Script.aculo.us incorporate behaviors that gracefully degrade or migrate to specific device needs. When we base all webs on Javascript standards, we can start to do much more interesting things for device adaption than blind transcoding.

I wish Russ and Mike the best. Somehow I don’t think they’ll be hurting for opportunities.