Funnels, Donations, NPR, and Apple

National Public Radio offers its radio shows at no charge, and hopes that enough listeners will donate enough money to make it viable. More broadly, NPR offers its content for free, on a variety of platforms including radio, the web, and iPad apps. There is the potential for more platforms to mean more consumers and hence more donations.

NPR has much in common with for-profit freemium services (such as WordPress.com). It can therefore use some of the same analytical tools, such as funnel analysis.

We can think of a funnel with NPR listeners toward the top. Fans of NPR, or of a particular show, are at a lower and narrower part of the funnel. Some of those fans donate; we might think of donations as money emerging from the bottom of the funnel.

What effect will iPad and iPhone apps have on NPR’s funnel? That’s what this 3-minute video is about. If it makes you want to donate to NPR, that’s good. The Changing Way Multimedia Studio is not currently seeking donations, despite this production’s use of crayon and handheld camera. The producer, however, is seeking work in the DC area.

The video illustrates, using the funnel model, an argument I made yesterday: that NPR was rather hasty in getting on the iPad bandwagon. I was prompted to make the video an following an exchange with Beth Kanter. We seem to agree that someone should write a post living up to the title: Apple or Android? Which One is More Nonprofit Friendly?. Neither of us has done it yet.

I’d be interested to see comments (or external posts) on the comparison of Apple and Android for nonprofits, on the use of the funnel model by nonprofits, on Apple’s policy toward nonprofits, or anything else arising from this post/video. Over to you…

Mobile Themes For WordPress

If you’re reading this on a mobile phone, you won’t be seeing this blog’s Simpla Way theme. That’s because WordPress.com automatically uses a mobile theme when displaying blogs on a mobile device.

What about self-hosted WordPress? I went over to the WordPress.org theme directory, searched for mobile, and was shown just one theme: Carrington Mobile. The thing is, a mobile theme isn’t much good without code to select it when appropriate.

So the mobile hotspot for WordPress is plugins, not themes. Of the many plugins tagged with mobile, here are those relevant to mobile themes (with at least a thousand downloads).

  • WPtouch iPhone Theme (299,390 downloads) “transforms your WordPress blog into an iPhone application-style theme… when viewed from an iPhone, iPod touch, Android or BlackBerry touch mobile device.” This theme in plugin’s clothing is used (with modifications) by WordPress.com for such devices.
  • WordPress Mobile Edition (100,296) seems similar, and is used (with modifications) by WordPress.com for mobile devices other than those on the WPTouch list.
  • MobilePress (38,818) allows device- or browser-specific themes, and allows development of custom mobile themes.
  • WordPress Mobile Pack (18,108) includes a selection of mobile themes.
  • Wapple Architect Mobile (6,186) sounds interestingly different. “Other mobile plugins for WordPress use a default mobile style… Wapple… retains the styling of your site from web to mobile.”
  • MoFuse (4,074) allows creation of, and redirect to, a mobile version of the blog.
  • Mobilize by Mippin (3,425) is similar to MoFuse in that it involves a mobile version of the blog.

My most mobile-focused blog, Android Icon, currently uses WordPress Mobile Edition. I plan to use that blog for a grapple with Wapple, and maybe a try of some of the other plugins listed above, soon.

AT&T Profits, GigaCrunched

It would be a dull web if everyone agreed. But I’d have thought that GigaOm and TechCrunch could agree on whether the profits of a public corporation like AT&T went up or down.

To make things even more confusing, the link from Google Reader to the TechCrunch post actually took me to a CrunchGear post called iPhone iPhone iPhone! iPhone. iPhone. As my astute reader may have deduced, it’s about the iPhone. Apparently, as well as being a phone, music player, fashion accessory, etc., it’s a double-edged sword. AT&T saw profits drop as customer acquisitions rose.

GigaStacey, on the other hand, reports a slight boost in profits. She agrees, though on Q3 iPhone activations: there were 2.4M of them.

Blog It From iPhone to WordPress.com?

Blog It is a Facebook application from Six Apart, makers of TypePad and other blogging tools and platforms. I’ve used Blog It once: that was a few months ago, to remark that I didn’t see much point in using Blog It to post to WordPress.com. David Recordon of Six Apart commented that Blog It is being enhanced, and hence the case for using it is getting stronger.

The case for using Blog It may recently have got a lot stronger. Earlier this month, David posted about Blog It for the iPhone, the iPhone/Safari version of the application. It looks like a pretty slick interface and it can be used to blog to the same platforms as can the Facebook application: that includes WordPress.com.

Having said that, I’m posting this from a PC rather than from an iPhone. Changing Way Labs technology budget doesn’t stretch to an iPhone. Anyone out there had a chance to try the iPhone/Blog It to WordPress.com connection?

Standards for Gestural Interactions

What do the Wii and the iPhone have in common, besides being two of the hottest gadgets of the year? You can communicate with each of them via gesture. We will probably see more such devices, and so there is a need for standardization of gestures.

Not owning either of the above-mentioned devices, I didn’t realize the need for standardization until Read/Write Richard posted about it. I don’t think I’ll listen to the podcast he recommends; podcasting about gestural interaction seems like one of those “dancing about architecture” things.

I did follow the link to Dan Saffer’s call to arms (or, I guess, fingers), and read it with interest. Perhaps gestures for “spread to enlarge” and “pinch to shrink” will become as familiar as cutting and pasting.