Paramendra wrote a post last night that got me thinking about a class of apps that I'll call "mobile first web second". He mentions Twitter and Foursquare and I would agree that both of them are mobile first web second.
Back in the early days of Twitter, I sent and read most of my tweets via SMS. I signed up a lot of users by telling them to text "follow fredwilson" to 40404. Evan Williams said in a blog post yesterday, "46 percent of active users make mobile a regular part of their Twitter experience." I am surprised it is not higher. I use Twitter on the web and mobile every day, but I use it a lot more on mobile.
Foursquare's web app is not particularly useful, at least not yet. Most of the value from Foursquare is delivered in their mobile apps. I've used the Android and Blackberry apps. And my kids use the iPhone app. All three of these apps are high quality mobile experiences. Foursquare is most definitely a "mobile first web second" experience.
The thing I like about these kinds of apps is they are with you all the time and can be used in moments of downtime. As such they lead to higher levels of engagement. But because they are also web apps and connected to a web scale network, they can offer a lot of value that mobile only apps cannot.
I think we'll see a lot more of these kinds of apps going forward. I'm curious what other "mobile first web second" apps you all use.
