Facebook is King, We all know that.

however for niche communities, its not so great.
as it ..is what it is , a social network.


for example
one of my sites, is basically a B2B Trade magazine which I print and also provide a business listing website.

My site, which is primarily a profile listing site does have CB installed and configured to function in a very similar way as Facebook

walls, images and video galleries, friends, messaging..all the good socialnet stuff.

BUT in addition to letting my users create and surf profiles of those in their particular industry.

I need to communicate to them targeted information such as the latest trends for our industry, breaking news..new products, reviews, schedule of events, etc etc.

This business model is no different than many or most of our CB sites.


Now about two years ago..this was perfect, nothing could be better. CB was working flawlessly, news and advertisers were posting regularly. then with the addition of CBsubs, SimGallery & Super activity products, user interaction with the site leaped forward.

Now I want to advance even further. As the new trend is everything web related, must be made MOBILE
it must work with the iphone.

I sit at my desk all day managing my sites..I dont use my cell phone much.

but recently I got to visit a few clients and see how their businesses work.I found that most people 100% rely on their phone as their portal to the web.

These are the people that are out "moving and shaking" their own particular industries.

So sitting behind a desk is pointless for them. They arent just sitting at the desk and browsing websites, they are out and about.

so if my users are out and about, then I need to be in their pocket.

How do I reach these users and keep them.

It means my site needs to be mobile accessible, or a least part of it.


I know that there are a few joomla templates that are specifically for the iphone and other mobile devices, and you can assign which items appear when the phone visits your site.

but what about CB, we are going on something like our 4th year of iphone apps, and really nothing for Joomla yet?

there are a few that let you manage the backend, but nothing that entices users to download an app that connects to your organization.


Facebook has a very nice iphone app, and they also spent something like 50 million last year on development.

I am sure the Joomla community can clone this function in some way.


comments......