Millions of daily uniques on mobile versions of Facebook, ESPN and New York Times have everybody impressed. Some even claim that this behaviour proves that mobile users are only interested in top content from top sites, unlike the “surfing” that’s typical to desktop. At Mobify, we believe that while top sites will stay popular, much of the growth in mobile will come from top “niche” sites, known as the “mid-tier” of the Web. Here’s why!
Mobile is a feature of the Web. In most cases this is true, as new publishing, communication and collaboration techniques enabled by the Web get a new mobile use case. Utility of mobile without internet connectivity is very limited as far as content consumption goes.
For a long time, this feature was very expensive. The reason why top Web sites are popular on mobile is because there was no other option. Up until now, only the chosen few could afford to develop a standalone mobile site or an iPhone application. While “keyhole browsing” of WebKit-powered devices is OK for general surfing, the experience was never perfect. So, traffic was even more skewed towards mobile-optimized top sites than it is on desktop.
Mobify helps unlock top-quality web content on mobile. Through magic of mobile views, creating premium mobile experiences becomes affordable. A couple of recent mobile views prove this. After A List Apart launched http://m.alistapart.com, powered by Mobify, one of their readers tweeted: “… A List Apart Mobile edition → http://m.alistapart.com/ That means less books read in public transport…”. While the infamous YCombinator HackerNews does not have a mobile version, our unofficial mobile view on http://yc.mobify.me is gaining traction, with one of the YC entrepreneurs saying “…it’s great. It’s now a permanent fixture on my home screen 
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The revolution in mobile content is here and it’s powered by popular specialized sites, which often have some of the best content and tightly-knit communities.
