#mobile-only

More than 16 million Nigerians use Facebook every month

According to a recent survey, over 16 million Nigerians log in to Facebook every month. That is 1 million more mobile users from 5 months ago.

On a daily basis, 7.2 million people visit Facebook with 7 million on mobile. And of the over 16 million monthly users, 100% have logged in via mobile. There’s more:

44% of Nigeria’ Facebook users login to the service everyday. Of those daily active…

3. Mobile is not a thing; it's everything. 

"""Joe McCann speaks at Full Frontal 2013

Nobody has successfully done CostCo on the internet...until now?  Meet Boxed -- possibly the next Amazon competitor.

I love the idea.  I like to buy online.  I like to buy in bulk.  I like to save money.  Most of the founders were from Astro/Zynga, and seem to have built a solid backend system.  Interesting stuff that not everyone can do, even if they had the "let's do CostCo on the internet" idea.

But Boxed illustrates what I was talking about yesterday: so-called mobile internet use is usually not mobile.   You cannot buy from Boxed on the web.  You have to use their iOS or Android apps. 

But you cannot become a first-time Boxed customer on your phone.  Trust me, I tried.  I'm excited about the idea and would love to buy from them.  But you have to buy $75 for free shipping, and -- since I don't have a tablet right now -- I have to use my phone to find stuff I want to buy.  They only have about 600 products right now and I just couldn't find enough stuff I wanted to buy.  No Skittles?  No little peanut butter cups like from Costco? I gave up searching on my phone. 

So Boxed is a "mobile-only" app that you can only use when you're on a tablet, eg not really "mobile."  Maybe that's too strong -- I could see myself re-ordering on my phone.  But that first time purchase and going through their inventory -- very few people will do that on a phone.  Even enthusiastic people like me.  Which brings me to my next point.

Who is Boxed's customer?  They're the internet version of CostCo -- but CostCo started with small businesses as their customer.  Since Boxed is mobile-app only, most small businesses aren't going to use them because they are mobile-only.  I read somewhere that they started with the idea that 20 and 30 something males purchasing energy bars would be their main customer, only to find out that young moms are their main customer (maybe because that's who has the iPad out?)

The above link is for a survey that I put together to learn about how I can make the Internet work better for people who use mobile phones as their main or only way of getting online.

The Pew Research Center has published extensive data about how many mobile-only and mobile-mostly users there are, and who they tend to be. That is quantitative research. It's very interesting, and it tells us that, for example, mobile-only and mobile-mostly users tend to be young, they tend not to be white, and they tend to have lower incomes than users with laptops and/or desktops.

What seems to be missing, is the voices of the mobile-only and mobile-mostly users themselves. So I made a survey. It's not scientific; I don't need a huge sample size (although the more, the better). It's not meant to be quantitative, since the Pew center's numbers are already great. It's just a qualitative survey, to get a sample of opinions about experiences from the users themselves.

There's no marketing or gathering your personal information (although you have the option to provide some demographic information for context). The information that I get will be written up and the overall trends and conclusions will be freely shared online with anyone who wants it. In particular, web designers and developers will be able to use the information to make websites that are better for mobile-only and mobile-mostly users.