mocoNews covered it. The mobile url is m.tmz.com. I’m not a celeb-gossip nut so this doesn’t really excite me but I give TMZ credit for making this easy for their fans. I was able to reach the mobile site on my phone very easily and without subscription or opt in obstacles.
I tried both PerezHilton and People Magazine to see how they fared. Perez, who apparently has a blog worth nearly $50M doesn’t appear to have a mobile site. I guess it’s not a huge surprise either. Even though Perez appears to be running Word Press, he could use Alex Kings Mobile Plugin to auto-mobilize his wp blog. I’ll bet I can guess why he isn’t though… Pictures and Video! Perez posts lots of both and the images aren’t really ideally sized for the mobile user so everything would have to be re-worked to fit the mobile user.
People does sport a mobile site but I don’t see this being a huge hit for mobile content geeks, it’s third party hosted at limelife.com and the sign-up process is old-school. Mobile users just want to go straight to the URL don’t they? So I wonder how successful this is for People.
Once you figure out how to get there… you need to select your carrier:
Opt in by Texting to the short code or subscribing at the AT&T Media Mall… either way you’re paying $3.99 per month. I have no idea why that is, the stories appear to be free to read on the regular people.com web site. People should just mobilize that stuff don’t you think?
Oh and I’ll bet if you send the short code and your Carrier or Phone isn’t supported you’re still going into the Marketing Database… nasty trick huh? I wouldn’t advocate doing that. That’s gonna make for some very unhappy mobile users that won’t soon forget you in a bad way. I’m gonna try it and not sign up to see what happens.
