i don't think his intention is to move content, but rather just to make that content more easily accessible and visible to mobile users.

the problem with mobile websites is that they have to compete with the app store. if an iphone user wants a train schedule, are they more likely to open up a browser and search google for "train schedule iphone" and scroll around clicking on random sites? or would they just open the app store, search for "train schedule" and easily see all available apps, ranked and reviewed, easily added to their home screen with a single click?

i run such a mobile website for metra trains (http://metra.jcs.org/) but because i have no native app in the ios or android stores, it doesn't see much traffic. i've thought about developing an app that just embeds a browser and goes to the site, just so it can be listed in the app store.

apple does in fact have a listing of mobile web apps at https://www.apple.com/webapps/ but i doubt most iphone owners even know it exists. it's also not very easy to use from mobile devices, strangely enough.

When I want to look at the train schedule, I just touch the bookmark on my home screen, which takes me to the web page with the schedule.

And if every iPhone user understands bookmarks as well as you do, perhaps this service will fail.

But I hear rumors that a lot of App Store apps get lots of downloads, even if they're nothing but links to existing web sites wrapped in an app shell. Many customers don't understand bookmarks.

hey mark!

it was strange to me too at first, but we built it in response to the fact that we kept on getting asked about getting onto the "app store" by small business owners who were going digital and building Wordpress sites. Everyone wants an app nowadays - so we're filling a niche.

In the end, browsers are great but mobile safari doesn't yet let you have access to everything you can get in Cocoa. We want to open those features up to anyone with a Wordpress site.

Mike

> we kept on getting asked about getting onto the "app store" by small business owners who were going digital and building Wordpress sites.

Ugh, that makes my stomach turn, but I know it's true. And I don't fault you for capitalizing on it, but man is it irritating.

Mike, not the OP but which features are you opening up? This question is not attacking you, i'm just genuinely curious. I'm in the WordPress business (http://thewp.co) and would love to offer this to my clients!

> Everyone wants an app nowadays

Every merchant wants an app, but their customers couldn't care less. Not that it affects your business model in any way.

I feel like everyone with content on the Internet wants an app. My old co-founder wasted about 3 months worth of time talking with an Obj-C dev and drawing screens because he was obsessed with having an iPhone app. His proof that we needed it? Every time someone saw our icon on his iPhone (which just launched our site in Safari) they'd ask if we actually had an app. These people wouldn't even use our site in the first place, I'm not sure what made him think they'd use an iPhone app instead, yet he was dead set on getting one into the app store.

I think it's genius. WP site owners don't care about channel redundancy, they just want a push button method of putting their content into as many channels as possible. Catering to the "Look Ma, I made a mobile app!" crowd is a big market.

Although I agree - I'm not sure this is monetizable.

The real question - are these people willing to pay $500 to say "Look ma...."?

compared to the cost of an IOS dev. I'd say it's definitely worth a punt.

Supply and demand. As long as there is a demand for native apps then it doesn't really matter where we think things "should stay." I think this is a great step toward making Wordpress sites more accessible via mobile devices. Good work!