Don’t make me use your half-baked mobile channel

Don Day July 19th, 2008

There’s a new trend among news sites. I guess it’s driven by a perception of what makes good user experience, but in the end, it takes away choice. Several sites I visit have decided to foist their stripped-down, (sometimes) photo-free mobile channels upon my iPhone. Some give me a special iPhone only version (fine) - while others force me to use the lame mobile channel that also works on some plain-Jane Samsung phone that’s about eight pixels wide.

I bought the iPhone so I can look at your REAL website. Is the mobile version handy? Sure, but you better give me an easy link back to the real site. The big offenders: MSNBC.com and Newsweek.com. I cannot load their normal sites on my iPhone - period. CNN.com and Time.com also give you the mobile channel by default - but both give you options to get to the main site (Time.com at the very top - bonus points). CBSNews.com has a custom iPhone channel (yay!) but no link to the normal site (boo!). ABCNews.com loads up the normal site by default.