Vanderbilt Builds iPhone Portal
Campus Technology is reporting that Vanderbilt has released a version of its website designed to be accessed via an iPhone:
Vanderbilt University has released a version of its homepage designed for the Apple iPhone. The site was created by the Vanderbilt News Service’s Office of Web Communications, which is working to optimize the university Web site for other mobile devices.
In some ways I think this is cool, but at the same time I wonder if this isn’t jumping the gun a little bit, as I still haven’t seen a whole lot of students walking around with iPhones.
There is also the ‘cool’ factor and the ‘we did it first’ factor which increases the ‘publicity’ factor. People are talking about Vanderbilt now. It’s perfect, regardless of how much it gets used at this point. But in 6-12 months as iPhone usage increases with the 2G launch, they will be positioned and ready to roll with their site, bug-free.
Oh, absolutely–I didn’t meant to underestimate the publicity that something like this generates. I guess what i find interesting about it is the decision to plan for for a general platform vs a specific platform. I think that no one would argue that in the very near future, more and more people are going to be accessing the web via mobile devices. Will that device be an iphone? I guess for me, that’s the part that remains to be seen. I wonder if it doesn’t make more sense for universities to create a site version that works on any mobile platform–iphone, blackberry, treo, what have you. That being said, the minute there is a verizon compatible iphone, i will be happily browsing the Vanderbilt site with one.
Hey Curtis,
Thanks for the shout out! You’re right - it’s still a small part of the market. We wanted to be part of that small part because we know our students are increasingly interested in iPhones, and also because the iPhone is a really nice way for us to showcase our iTunes U / YouTube content. And of course there was the cool factor : ) Once we had the idea, there wasn’t any reason not to do it–it didn’t take much time/ effort. As you said optimizing the site for all mobile platforms is the big end goal. Our site looks good on some, awful on others, right now.