Community mobile media resources

The mobile Web has gotten a bum rap. It spends most of its time either in the shadow of the desktop or playing the role of the native app’s frumpy friend. Luckily, we’ve got the tools to change that. Progressive enhancement, mobile-first and responsive design can help lead us towards a more unified, future-friendly Web. That’s the good news. The bad news? These tools are worthless if you don’t have license to use them.

Traffic from mobile devices is growing at an astounding rate — by some estimates, mobile visits now account for fully 20 percent of Web traffic. Every measure of mobile growth borders on exponential: Cisco estimates that global mobile data traffic will increase 18 times over between 2011 and 2016, the amount of mobile data consumed will go up 17-fold in the same time frame; mobile video will account for 70 percent of mobile traffic by 2016, 25 times more than in 2011. Global mobile data traffic more than doubled in 2011, for the fourth year in a row.

Compared with all that growth, mobile ad spending is still small, and even though it’s projected to more than double in 2012 to $11.6 billion, according to Strategy Analytics, advertisers will still spend nearly four times as much on online advertising.

Simply put: the world is going mobile, it’s hard to make money on mobile, and no one is feeling that more painfully than Facebook.