wikipedia mobile strategy wikimania2011(kul)

Kul Wadhwa, All-Purpose Mobile Ninja Patrick Reilly, Mobile Software Ninja

Wikimedia Foundation

Wikimedia Mobile Strategy

What are we gonna talk about?

  Why’s mobile so important?

  Where we were…

  What we’re doing…

  What we’re learning…

  What’s coming up next…

Mobile Strategy for Wikimedia Foundation Jan 2011

WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION Why’s mobile so important?

About 2 billion mobile web subscribers in 2015

Source: ITC & WMF

27% of global population

Mobile web will overtake desktop web in 2014 Fi

gure

s ar

e in

mill

ions

Source: ITC & WMF

Facebook: one-fifth visit mobile, Wikipedia: .028% of page views/month are for mobile

20% of Facebook users visit mobile site

.028% of page views/month are for mobile

site

technology implications Where we were…

WAP Wikipedia

Current mobile implementation

Wikimedia Mobile App   Open code base

  Translated to over 25+ languages through community translations

  Geo-location of articles

  Over 150,000 downloads each month

One Way

Even Ninjas couldn’t contribute to Wikipedia Mobile

What the ^*#@$

%&! Why can’t you

edit Wikipedia on

that phone?

????

Current Mobile Traffic

2-15% growth each month for EN

What we’re doing…

Mobile Projections

Mobile site rewritten in PHP

MediaWiki Mobile Extension

Open Standards

Build out the Mobile Ecosystem

Wikimedia

Community devs

Dev Network

Partners

on IRC: #wikimedia-mobile

[email protected]

Get involved!

22 What we’re learning…

And the research begins…

ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDIES

QUANTITATIVE SURVEY

INDIA (Bangalore + Delhi) - April 2011 BRAZIL (Sao Paulo + Salvador + Porto Alegre) - June 2011 USA (San Francisco + Chicago + Atlanta/Miami) - August 2011

Diary Studies - 1 week of reporting on mobile, web, WP use 2 hour interviews in-situ interviews, 6-12 per city

LANGUAGES: English, Japanese, Spanish, German, French, Russian, Portuguese, Turkish, Arabic, Chinese in countries where these are the majority of language speakers.

Launch Date: TBD

Everybody needs

Wikipedia

By Adam Jones Adam63 (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Can we say redirect?

LANG, FONT, CHAR

SUPPORT.

SEARCH DISAMBIGUATION + TRANSLITERATION

Interoperability across devices for reading, people want print functionality,

most oblivious to its existence

Most of the time I copy paste it on Word to read it later but I can’t do it from my mobile. That is a key reason for not doing Wikipedia on my mobile.

Precise and concise summaries on mobile, not too much information

“No need to load the whole page every time – just the first paragraphs and the links to detailed content – I can click on whatever section I want”

Multimedia Content, Constantly Updated Content

“Need more pictures to make it more interesting and they are better than tables and theoretical part” Piu, 25, New Delhi

“Wikipedia is like a website from the 1990s,” David, 26, Salvador

“I struggle to use Wikipedia on mobile because there is no auto-complete option in Portuguese.”

Search integration in phone OS

Zero cost Wikipedia “I don’t access Internet on my phone because I don’t want to use my credit”

Addresses with more accesses: on the mobile, everything is faster and more superficial

On the mobile, they tend to make less changes in the configurations in comparison to the computer: keeping the home page, the browser and the search

engine

Is not mentioned spontanously as a portal accessed on

the mobile. When stimulated, part of the sample

says that it is commonly accessed

Wiki and mobile: possibilities and limits

Yes No

READING

 abbreviated information, summarized

 With a page adapted to the mobile

EDITING

 Notes – “post-it” effect – to be restored later on

the computer  Postage of pictures and

images  Comments about

mistakes or vandalism, maybe some corrections

Always in the perspective of the lack of a computer, in mobile situations, with a proper equipment (Android or iPhone)

EDITING

 Complete works/papers, demanding elaborated

production  Need of a simultaneous

reference to the internet itself, on wiki inclusive (e.g.,

translations)  Material that implies in

using a language that is proper for web editing–

Java, HMTL

37 What’s coming up next?

  Continued testing on various mobile devices   Interface improvements for greater usability   Editing and content creation on mobile

devices

Mobile Web + Apps

Feature Research

Unaware of features on WEB Wikipedia…mobile could build awareness…present an opportunity to create account and otherwise onboard…Watchlist…Bookmark…Save for Later…Email/Recommend..Rate synch between devices… require login? download, print, .pdf, email, tweet, sms, facebook…mobile summary? First paragraph…Micro content and micro contributions…photo uploads – commons…links to wiktionary…show/hide - hugely popular, too much content…too little content…overview vs. question oriented content…

More Partnerships = More Reach

Participation on all devices

More Ideas  Zero or low cost Wikipedia - Service providers  Offline Wikipedia loaded on mobile devices  Content providers (NYTimes, Tech crunch) - easy

links to WP  Partner with Browser developers for font/

language support  Donation campaigns  Niche markets and usercases: Local phone

manufacturers  Music, Movies, Cricket/Sports - other universal

content

WMF ninjas working on mobile

Kul Tomasz

Patrick

Mani

Parul

Amit

Wiki for Mobile work, open to all

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Projects

Kul Wadhwa – [email protected]

Patrick Reilly – [email protected]

WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION

Now…enough of us talking…it’s your turn!

! תודה

wikipedia mobile strategy wikimania2011(kul)

Technology

whys mobile

wikipedia mobile

mobile site

visit mobile

mobile projections

mobile web subscribers

current mobile traffic2

current mobile implementation