The document discusses Wikimedia's mobile strategy. It outlines why mobile is important as mobile web usage grows. It describes Wikimedia's past mobile offerings as limited. The current strategy involves rewriting the mobile site in PHP, developing a mobile extension, and conducting research on user needs through ethnographic studies. The goal is to improve the mobile experience through features like search, editing capabilities, and multimedia content tailored for small screens.

1. Wikimedia Mobile Strategy
Kul Wadhwa, All-Purpose Mobile Ninja
Patrick Reilly, Mobile Software Ninja
Wikimedia Foundation

2. 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…

3. Mobile Strategy for Wikimedia Foundation
Jan 2011
Why’s mobile so important? WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION

4. About 2 billion mobile web subscribers in 2015
27% of global population
Source: ITC & WMF

5. Mobile web will overtake desktop web in 2014
Figures are in millions
Source: ITC & WMF

6. 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

7. 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…

8. technology we were…
Where implications

9. WAP Wikipedia

10. Current mobile implementation

11. Wikimedia Mobile App
 Open code base
 Translated to over
25+ languages
through community
translations
 Geo-location of
articles
 Over 150,000
downloads each
month

12. @$
th e ^*#
What
One Way  % &!
can’t
you
n
Why edia o
ikip
edit W one?
h
that p
????
Even Ninjas couldn’t contribute to Wikipedia Mobile

13. Current Mobile Traffic
2-15% growth each month for EN

14. 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…

15. What we’re doing…

16. Mobile Projections

17. Mobile site rewritten in
PHP

18. MediaWiki Mobile Extension
Open Standards

19. Build out the Mobile Ecosystem
Community Partners
devs
Wikimedia Dev
Network

20. Get involved!
on IRC: #wikimedia-mobile
mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org

21. 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…

22. 22 What we’re learning…

23. And the research begins…

24. ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDIES
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
QUANTITATIVE SURVEY
LANGUAGES: English, Japanese, Spanish, German, French,
Russian, Portuguese, Turkish, Arabic, Chinese in countries where
these are the majority of language speakers.
Launch Date: TBD

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

26. Can we say
redirect?
LANG, FONT,
CHAR
SUPPORT.

27. SEARCH DISAMBIGUATION +
TRANSLITERATION

28. 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.

29. 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”

30. 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

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

32. Search integration in phone OS

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

34. Addresses with more accesses: on the mobile,
everything is faster and more superficial
Is not mentioned
spontanously as a
portal accessed on
the mobile.
When stimulated,
part of the sample
says that it is
commonly accessed
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

35. Wiki and mobile: possibilities and limits
Always in the perspective of the lack of a computer,
in mobile situations, with a proper equipment
READING
(Android or iPhone)
 abbreviated information,
summarized
 With a page adapted to
the mobile EDITING
 Complete works/papers,
demanding elaborated
Yes production
EDITING No  Need of a simultaneous
reference to the internet
itself, on wiki inclusive (e.g.,
 Notes – “post-it” effect translations)
– to be restored later on  Material that implies in
the computer using a language that is
 Postage of pictures and proper for web editing–
images Java, HMTL
 Comments about
mistakes or vandalism,
maybe some corrections

36. 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…

37. 37 What’s coming up next?

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

39. Mobile Web + Apps

40. 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…
R ese arch
Fea ture

41. More Partnerships = More
Reach

42. Participation on all devices

43. 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

44. WMF ninjas working on mobile
Amit
Parul
Mani
Tomasz Kul
Patrick

45. Wiki for Mobile work, open to all
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Projects

46. !‫תודה‬
Kul Wadhwa – kul@wikimedia.org
Patrick Reilly – preilly@wikimedia.org
Now…enough of us talking…it’s your turn!
WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION