The Skweezer Blog

Visiting Bloglines mobile through Skweezer has been awesome for quite a while, but at long last the reverse is now true: visiting Skweezer through Bloglines mobile is also awesome. As of last week, Bloglines Mobile uses a custom version of Skweezer to optimize off-site links. This is highly exciting to us. The response on the net has been almost unanimously positive. Kevin has been covering the action, and of course we’re going to PR this properly I’m sure.

However, there was this reaction from Arne Hess of the::unwired, on the other hand:

Ouch, bad news! In my previous posting about Bloglines cooperation with Skweezer, I just wrote: “I hope, Skweezer isn’t trying to skweeze the::unwired since we are serving a mobile device optimized version already which doesn’t needs to be skweezed again.” and indeed, links from Bloglines to the::unwired articles are skweezed. Even worse, not the mobile optimized page is skweezed but the desktop version which results in a completely broken experience.

I tried it out, and sure enough, the::unwired serves up two different versions of each page depending on the user agent. As an experiment, I visited that post with the standard Firefox 1.5.0.7 user agent string, and then again with an old phone user agent, specifically the Motorola 551 (MOT-V551/01.02.03 MIB/2.2.1 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1). The former returned 54.94 KB of HTML, and the later returned the same page that was only 15.92 KB. It is clear that the::unwired adapts page content for mobile devices. As it is today, Skweezer appears as IE 6, and so sites like the::unwired can not perform their magic. I think calling it “a completely broken experience” is a bit over the top, however.

Here’s why. There’s a problem with the Motorola 551 specifically, but shared by many phones that are currently the majority of the current US market. The Motorola 551 simply responds with an error if it receives more than 10 KB of information: “413 Requested Entity Too Large”. Skweezer tries to respect memory limitations and split the content up into pages. Furthermore, if the device supports it, we apply gzip compression to the HTML stream. The end result is that yes, the Skweezer user gets the desktop version, but viewing that post through Skweezer with the Moto 551 UA, the resulting page is only 6.59 KB, well within that phone’s memory limit. Without Skweezer the 551 throws a 413, which is a broken experience, IMHO. Clearly there’s a place for Skweezer to improve even the::unwired’s mobilized pages, even if it does nothing more than gzip. If the::unwired chooses to cater only to devices which can handle more than 20 KB, that is fine. Skweezer will still exist for the rest of the market.

The art of mobilizing pages is always evolving. If you describe what Skweezer does to a programmer (just say “dynamic mobilizing web proxy”), it seems like a 2nd year CS student’s homework assignment. We’ve seen services and companies come and go in this space because, gosh, it just seems so easy. Yes, you can whip together a Skweezer-like service in PHP in 30 minutes if you know your stuff. That service will be 80% decent, and if you limit your testing to your own Treo and your friends’ $600 Smartphones, you may even believe that you’ve got a Skweezer killer on your hands. Believe me when I say that that other 20% is non-trivial. Personally I believe that Skweezer itself is between 90 and 95% complete. To clarify, Skweezer at 100% would be universal and unambiguous improved experience to raw mobile browsing on all mobile devices that have at least 1% market penetration worldwide, when viewing the top 10,000 web URLs. That is just the technical challenge of Skweezing; there’s also infrastructure and the business side of it as well. To sum up this paragraph: mobilizing is much harder to do well than it first appears.

Returning to Mr. Hess’ constructive criticism, however… We are open to adjusting the behavior of Skweezer to account for properly mobilized content as it becomes more commonplace and has better implementations. Last year a survey of sites that self-mobilize (like the::unwired) led us to conclude that masquerading as IE 6 led to the most consistent and user-friendly experience. It is our mission to bridge the gap between mobile users and the web content they’re trying to access in the meantime. I promise to regularly re-evaluate our stance on passing the original UA header, and we may very well do this in a future release. Another possibility is that we could present the user with a choice to leave Skweezer and view the page directly if we detect self-mobilizing, as Mr. Hess suggested. In the meantime, perhaps the::unwired could expand their mobile device definition to detect Skweezer. For the record, we set the “Via” header to “Skweezer”, and our server IP addresses currently start with 65.38.160.x.

Posted by Barnabas Kendall

IRVINE, Calif., September 22, 2006—Greenlight Wireless Corporation announced that its Skweezer technology, which optimizes Web content for mobile devices, has been integrated into the mobile version of Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/), the world’s number one online RSS aggregator.

Bloglines Mobile (http://mobile.bloglines.com) users now view “skweezed” versions of the Web pages they access through their favorite RSS feeds. This allows Bloglines to both accelerate download speeds and present content that is easier to view and navigate on the small displays found on cell phones and PDAs. With the Skweezer technology, Bloglines also provides mobile access to more content than ever before by using Skweezer’s paging feature, which allows Web pages to load that would otherwise be too memory-intensive for most devices.

“The Skweezer technology provides a significantly improved experience for Bloglines Mobile users by speeding download time and optimizing content for small mobile displays,” said Robyn DeuPree, Sr. Product Manager for Bloglines, a division of Ask.com. “Our Bloglines Mobile users love the current product, and the Skweezer technology makes the experience even better.”

“Bloglines is the industry-leading RSS reader with a proven history of innovation,” says Joey Lynch, VP of Business Development at Greenlight Wireless. “Once again Bloglines has taken a leadership position in the mobile RSS space and we’re very pleased to be contributing to this effort.”

Skweezer’s proprietary compression algorithms, developed and refined over the past five years, significantly reduce Web content typically to 15% or less of its original file size. This allows Web pages to load much more quickly and has the added benefit of greatly reducing network capacity. Skweezer technology is completely platform independent and can be used with Pocket PC, Palm, Symbian, MS Smartphone, Blackberry, PSP2, and XHTML-based cell phone devices.

About Greenlight Wireless:
Greenlight Wireless is a leading innovator of wireless technologies, providing mobile solutions for enterprise-level businesses, Web portals, and wireless carriers. Greenlight Wireless’ consumer-oriented Skweezer service optimizes Web content for handheld devices, providing a richer browsing experience and adding value to wireless data offerings. Greenlight’s Advertizer product is a cutting-edge advertising program for operators, search engines, and publishers who want to monetize their content in the mobile and desktop environments.

On the Net: Greenlight Wireless site: http://www.greenlightwireless.net/
Skweezer site: http://www.skweezer.net/
Advertizer site: http://www.advertizer.net/

Posted by Monica Sato

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There has been a lot of hype around “mobile advertising” this year, especially at CTIA in Los Angeles. However, what I learned from speaking to exhibitors was that most companies are really only starting to address the mobilization of content. Whether the content is built from scratch, driven out of a database into a template, or dynamically optimized like our Skweezer technology… most companies are just now wrapping their brains around making content, and distributing it effectively.

In talking with exhibitors, I had only one question for them:

Q: “How do you make money with your product/service?”

A: “Well, we __________________  [license, charge subscriptions, partner with carriers, or don't make money yet] on our content.”

Q: “What about mobile advertising? Are you guys exploring that at all?”

A: “Oh yes! We definitely want to do that, but we’re just now getting going with the product.”

The logical conclusion from this is there will be a HUGE wave of publishers in the next 6-18 months seeking out ad solutions to monetize their free content. With mobilizing content comes its inherent complexities:

• making content mobile-ready
• effectively distributing it
• producing good revenues
• leveraging hefty inventories

In terms of inventories—this will be the industry’s biggest challenge because distribution will outpace supply in the short-term. In other words, publishers will figure out how to mobilize their content faster than advertisers will become educated and willing to market in this medium. However, Publishers who partner with companies like us—who not only have an industry-standard mobilization solution, but a way to make money from it as well—will be the leading the way as the ecosystem matures.

To help better understand the mobile ad ecosystem, I created the COMP Square (Consumer, Operator, Marketer, and Publisher). In order for mobile ads to succeed, clearly all the pieces have to work together. Almost everywhere I turned at CTIA I encountered a company claiming “leadership” in this space. Yet, few had any kind of proficiency in one of the COMP quadrants, let alone having the whole puzzle figured out in its entirety.

The COMP Square has four interlocking pieces. Each quadrant is strategically connected with the “tongue” of the puzzle piece to the quadrant needed in order to grow. For example, Operators need Consumers to grow, Consumers need Publishers for content, Publishers need Marketers to ultimately monetize their content, and Marketers need distribution via Operators—since Operators basically control the whole overall ecosystem. Hence, there’s really not a direct connection between Consumers and Marketers, or Operators and Publishers without the intermediary quadrants between them. (And BTW—if you’re looking at an ad solution that does try to make that connection—run!—because based on our experience with this since 2004, these quadrants are a reality.)

Lastly, the arrows in the diagram represent what each quadrant ultimately desires from the other and has typically been a barrier for growth. Again, Operators clearly want adoption from Consumers because this creates a bigger bottom line. Consumers want content to be easily consumed; if it’s not readily available, the content will not be consumed. Publishers are game to make content, but only if they can effectively monetize it from Marketers. That means simple distribution, quick payments, etc. Marketers want to bring their innovative technologies into the mobile space, but Operators have a tendency to keep a GI-Joe Kung-Fu grip on their Consumers. So access to Consumer data is what Marketers pine away for.

Going the other direction, Operators have the Consumers, but aren’t usually so savvy in building out effective monetization models the way Marketers do. Marketers desire Publishers to become niche-oriented to make their targeting easier. Publishers don’t really have a problem with Consumers directly, but more with the handset OEMs who are making an entirely too fractured marketplace for Publishers to produce content. Lastly, Consumers just want good service from Operators where there’s little intrusion.

So, I hope this was helpful, and please feel free to leave your comments.

Posted by Kevin Perkins

Greenlight Wireless’ Advertizer service serves over 250 million mobile and desktop ads during the month of August.

IRVINE, Calif., September 12, 2006—Greenlight Wireless Corporation today announced that its Advertizer service, which provides advertisements for desktop and mobile environments, served over a quarter-billion ads last month.

The continued increase in ad requests is partially due to Advertizer’s steadily growing customer-base since its re-branded release in May. Several key distribution channels have also increased their level of service after initial months of Advertizer proved productive, which is another factor that has contributed to growth. While 72% of Advertizer’s traffic last month came from the desktop environment, mobile ad requests increased in August and are forecasted to be greater still in the month of September.

“We’re very pleased that Advertizer broke the quarter-billion mark last month, it’s a milestone that speaks to the stability and viability of the product,” says Greenlight Wireless President Mark Sieve. “The steadily increasing demand for mobile ads plays into Advertizer’s strengths as an advertising solution for converged content.”

Advertizer works by retrieving ads based on keywords or other user input from multiple top-tier ad suppliers, then providing a single ad feed that works across diverse distribution channels, such as mobile and desktop. These ads can be provided in a variety of formats, including CPC, location-based, and click-to-call, and can be delivered via commonly-used systems, such as XML, HTML, and RSS. Advertizer offers a 50/50 revenue sharing model and doesn’t apply the hidden charges and fees often associated with other ad providers.

About Greenlight Wireless:
Greenlight Wireless is a leading innovator of wireless technologies, providing mobile solutions for enterprise-level businesses, Web portals, and wireless carriers. Greenlight Wireless’ consumer-oriented Skweezer service optimizes Web content for handheld devices, providing a richer browsing experience and adding value to wireless data offerings. Greenlight’s Advertizer product is a cutting-edge advertising program for operators, search engines, and publishers who want to monetize their content in the mobile and desktop environments.

On the Net: Advertizer site: http://www.advertizer.net/
Greenlight Wireless site: http://www.greenlightwireless.net/

Posted by Monica Sato

Greenlight Wireless Corporation’s CEO, Kevin Perkins, and Vice-President of Business Development, M. Joey Lynch, will be on hand at this year’s CTIA WIRELESS I.T. and Entertainment® conference being held September 12th to September 14th in Los Angeles. Mr. Perkins and Ms. Lynch will be available for business development meetings throughout the conference. To schedule a meeting please contact Monica Sato at the Greenlight Wireless Media Relations department via e-mail at msato(at)gwcorp.net, or call +1-949-421-1558.

About CTIA WIRELESS I.T. and Entertainment 2006
CTIA WIRELESS I.T. & Entertainment, the fall convention, focuses on integrating wireless technologies into the enterprise and vertical business markets such as healthcare, government, automotive, retail etc. Additionally, the show reflects the explosive growth in wireless entertainment - encompassing everything from music downloads to digital cameras to interactive games.

The capabilities of today’s wireless devices continue to expand and improve across business sectors and personal entertainment, and CTIA WIRELESS I.T. & Entertainment effectively delivers wireless data solutions that are right for every segment of the market based on individual needs and budgets.

Not surprisingly, it is the most well-attended mobile data convention that attracts the user in search of solutions, the carrier in search of new revenue opportunities and the companies in search of new partners.

On the Net: CTIA site: http://www.ctia.org/

Posted by Monica Sato