So everything has been said about the election, so let's start reviewing the pictures, not in the way of life magazine of old, these are much less polished, in fact they are deliberately overworked images. These are screenshots of what you've been looking at most of the time, your work desktop/laptop or your phone. You see the mobile story is not complete without both the sharer and the reader. Yes, we are reading opinion pieces, but we're also looking at newsfeeds of our friends, election term search keywords, election graphs, and mocking videos, probably more than the primary sources.  So while we work tonight to keep 1/3 of the mobile web up and running, we thought we'd share the olympic opening ceremony that we're seeing over the mobile web as well as where it came from on the desktop.

Citizen Journalism took off on the momentum of news traffic and the promise of mobile video that works in some cases from flip camera videos sent to Youtube and iReport and other times from mobile phone services like Flixwagon, Qik and Kyte, which made these sites like Ground Report's 'Video the Vote' and 12 seconds' mobile upload for video election discussion possible.

Wake up the Vote

http://12seconds.tv/tag/electionday

This election the results split into two specific content categories, a hunger for election results data, which on the desktop was dominated by http://fivethirtyeight.com and on mobile we saw many instances of election results sites for each property shift their homepage to the results page and braced for traffic more than 10x what they see regularly.

The second content offering was much more interesting in terms of new mobile behavior. We are now seeing an IMDB effect, where people are looking to more than data, but facts and well known personalities to win an argument while reading mobile content and potentially discussing issues with friends and colleagues. This year the elections spurred an interest in new news portals going mobile, such as yesterday's Huffington Post launch.

You'll see that the diverse content on the Huffington Post is always laced with political relevance, here's an example on the desktop of astrology linked to politics, (thanks Mary for this one). And below, the new mobile site which contains Huffington Post content from many of their desktop categories.

Maybe you are swapping graphs back and forth with friends who have different opinions to show how well you know the polls...

Outside the Beltway

Google Election Maps

(Thanks Andy for Wassup and many other links.)

Crisp launched an inaugural version of their Crisp Wireless Index today.  It is a first step in providing the industry an insight into the trends within the extensive publisher network via a quarterly published report. And what stands out? Mobile search isn’t that important as a traffic source for mobile sites!  Well, those are the statistics, but I hope many disagree with that conclusion. Search is vitally important on mobile,  but it's used differently, partly because a mobile device is harder to type keywords on, partly because the page ranking approach which works so well for the PC doesn’t work all that well within mobile search , and partly because, well gee, you're not futzing around at home on a sunday morning or late at night with endless time, you are on a street corner, at the airport, in a meeting, or even better, on the phone. Search needs to work for you, not the other way around.   So how can it work? In my opinion: API’s. In a previous post, I voiced my opinion that the mobile internet is a different internet. The mobile internet is more sophisticated in some ways because it is evolving to a faster,  with fewer frills  and distractions  to the user interface.  When you search on mobile, you’re don’t re-search.  On mobile, you one-search because you need to find it quickly.  This means that mobile websites have to audition for your attention, no more throwing every feature on the site and hoping for the best - just like trying to make it in NYC, you don't get a lot of space and you get few chances to make it happen. At last week's NY tech meetup Chris Phenner from Thumbplay quoted Ed Koch who once said 'New York is the place where the future comes to audition'. Mobile search truly embodies the spirit of the audition, if you don't have it, it's don't call us ... we'll call you.   How do you make search work on mobile? First, index the content in search engines with plenty of meta data. Second, make sure that whatever mobile site you happen to be on, there is a way to search the content directly, in a  way that makes sense for that content and for the reader's mode of behavior.  Major search engines should open up XML based API’s so mobile search is easy to integrate into various systems.  The fragmented technical platform for mobile content forces feeds and API’s even more to the forefront. It is great that this actually is starting to happen and it is not going to be long before publishers of popular mobile sites integrate search into their sites in order to enable visitors to find content on their site but also on other publishers sites.  The additional advantage is that search can be monetized really well on mobile. Combining the location aspect of mobile with very targeted ads and sponsored results based on the search keywords generates high yield monetization by giving the user what they are looking for. If you have questions about how mobile search can help your mobile strategy, contact Crisp Wireless.  To read the Crisp Wireless Index today, click here.