You need to phone it in

Your brilliance.

I read a wide variety of things at night on my cell phone. It's a Samsung Galaxy III, and I can't wait to update to one of the newer, and larger, models.

I've written on this before, but I was reminded the other day when a friend got the new iPhone 6 Plus, their big boy. It slips easily into his pocket. My son got one, too, and he bought a pretty large case for it, so we all had a good laugh when he pulled it out.

Don't laugh. He isn't.

Our previous inexorable laws were: everything that can be digitized will be, and everything that can go wireless will. Today we have to add: anything can fit on a phone, and it will. And you can lie on the couch to read.

So if you're not thinking mobile, you're already behind. For example, I don't read anything with popup ads, because it's just too difficult on my phone. Oh, I see that little X that will make them go away, but try hitting that with your big old fat finger.

Incredibly, some magazines still don't program their websites to adjust for the phone's small screen size. I don't read those, either.

Some sources I'd like to read are just a mess, and I suspect they're a mess on a regular PC, too. Too many graphics, interspersed with ads and overlaid with popups. I don't go there.

Here's the reality.

• Among all adult Americans, 56 percent reported using a cell phone and 29 percent reported using a tablet to access news in the last week. ~ American Press Institute
• US consumers spent over 2 hours 19 minutes a day using mobile phones last year – that excludes making calls – matching PC consumption. ~ mobiForge
• People are reading books on their phones. ~ ebookfriendly

I'm not thinking about advertising at all. I'm thinking about your thought leadership. I know it's a stretch from the elegant, glossy quarterlies and journals we've known in the paper age. But there it is.

Follow the eyeballs to smart phones

If you want the widest possible arc for your writing I encourage you to consider those of us who read on our phones.

I do a good bit of my reading that way. I have a Samsung Galaxy III, which has now been outdated by two new generations. I suspect the reading may be even better on those.

I'm going to generalize from my practice that many people read this way. That's a fallacy, of course: proof by example. But I'm a journalist, and that's what we do.

Turns out my hasty generalization is on target.

While Amazon doesn't break out sales for its Kindle e-readers, it's in the process of launching its first smartphone. The company has a lot of reasons for this, but the fact that more and more people are reading ebooks on their phones is likely a factor.

The device that's really killing the e-reader market is the smartphone. 

A Pew report from 2012 found that 29% of readers of e-books consume them on their phones. Now that bigger screens are the trend — the next iPhone is expected to have 4.7- and 5.5-inch screens vs. today's 4.1 inches — we can expect even more phone-based reading.

Just make sure everything you publish reads well on a smart phone. Some sites I'd like to visit haven't caught on to this yet. So I don't like to visit them.

Where have all the readers gone?

They've gone to tablets and smart phones, most everyone.

Henry Blodget, the CEO of Business Insider, shows the trend with this chart:

CNN has seen the light.

This will be the year CNN sees the majority of its online audience come from mobile devices. In 2013, 40 percent of the traffic to CNN.com came from mobile, so 50 percent isn’t some distant goal.

Pew Research says 63 percent of U.S. adult mobile owners use their phone to go online — all media companies are seeing a lift in their mobile stats. ESPN’s mobile audience surpassed desktop readers in late 2013; traffic to the BBC’s website is majority mobile on weekends. Major technology companies long ago passed that barrier — 48 percent of Facebook’s active users are now only using mobile over a given month.

I know that if you want to reach me in the evening you'll need to make your site readable on my phone. I can't even be bothered with my laptop. Heck, I even find my wife's iPad too clunky.

Are you reading this on your phone?

Your audience is increasingly going mobile.

A new survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project finds that nearly two-thirds (63%) of cell phone owners now use their phone to go online. Because 91% of all Americans now own a cell phone, this means that 57% of all American adults are cell internet users. The proportion of cell owners who use their phone to go online has doubled since 2009.

Additionally, one third of these cell internet users (34%) mostly use their phone to access the internet, as opposed to other devices like a desktop, laptop, or tablet computer. They account for 21% of the total cell owner population. Young adults, non-whites, and those with relatively low income and education levels are particularly likely to be cell-mostly internet users.

Reach out to the mobile reader

Say hello to your audience.

Next time you're in a public place look around. What do you see? I'll bet more than a majority of the people will have two white wires running to their ears or their gazes will be cast down at a phone.

If it's your job to reach an audience, you need to think mobile.

If you want to reach me, for example, I am reading on my phone more and more. It sure beats lugging a laptop around just to catch up on my reading.

The rise of smartphones means that more and more people are going online from a mobile device, Karen McGrane writes at The Harvard Business Review.

According to Pew Internet, 55 percent of Americans said they'd used a mobile device to access the internet in 2012. A surprisingly large number — 31 percent — of these mobile internet users say that's the primary way they access the web. This is a large and growing audience whose needs aren't being met by traditional desktop experiences.

Some more numbers:

Young adults: 50 percent of teen smartphone owners, aged 12-17, say they use the internet mostly on their cell phone, according to a 2013 Pew Internet report . Similarly, 45 percent of young adults aged 18-29 mostly go online with a mobile device.

Amazon, Wikipedia, and Facebook all see about 20 percent of their traffic from mobile-only users, according to comScore. A whopping 46 percent of shoppers reported they exclusively use their mobile device to conduct pre-purchase research for local products and services. Internal data from some finance, healthcare, and travel providers show similar mobile-only usage. If you're trying to reach customers who only shop, bank, and socialize on their mobile devices, you're missing out.

Do us all a favor and make your messages mobile friendly. If you're in love with an annoying popup add on your site, you're not mobile friendly.

Some apps for writers

Top-rated app.

I try to remember life before personal computers and the Internet and Twitter and blogs and all the things that are central to my life today. I have no idea how we coped.

Well, we just did a whole lot less. And the world survived just fine.

Today I have a smart phone so smart it's always burning up the battery. So I have an app, Juice Defender, that tries to preserve the battery. So far so good.

There are so many apps out there -- there's one to test my urine should I so desire -- that my phone has an app to suggest other apps I might like. I hate all the suggestions. They seem to be for people in some parallel universe.

I was delighted when I came across an article by Carla King, an author and publishing consultant, on five apps for writers, because I'm actually using some of them. I feel kinda cool.

Here are several.

1. Bit.ly: Efficiency and analytics. We writers browse the web a lot, especially when researching a book or article, Ms. King writes. And we know it’s important to interact with our “friends” and followers in order to build something called a “platform.” So along the way, when I see something that I want to share, I highlight it, then click the bit.ly extension in my browser. It pops up with a short URL and the text I highlighted, and asks me what networks I want to share it with: Twitter? Facebook? Do I want to email it to a friend? Yes, dahling. Yes.

It’s like having your own personal social media butler, except it won’t bring you a martini. But it will tell you how many people clicked on the link, which of course gives you insights on what’s hot and what’s not. (More motorcycle accidents, fewer grammar lessons.) So now I use bit.ly for almost every link I share on social media sites, blog posts, and newsletters.hash.k5JSV5Cz.dpuf

Feedly. I juggle book research with adventure travel and self-publishing journalism careers, and the fire hose of information coming in on both those topics is pretty thick, Ms. King writes. To stay up-to-date requires perusing the daily news and organizing the blogs and other RSS streams.

I moved to Feedly as soon as I heard Google Reader was being discontinued. It’s a much better-looking news aggregator, and the mobile app is awesome, too. I installed the Feedly bookmarklet on my browser toolbar, which is overkill because Chrome and Firefox embedded it in the bottom left corner of their web browsers. Best of all, when I go to Feedly I can desperately scan an uber-efficient list view, or relax and enjoy my feeds in rich visual mode, like I’m reading my own custom newspaper. 

Tweetdeck and HootSuite: For managing Twitter relationships. As a writer, I probably connect with more sources and readers using Twitter than any other social media site. I use TweetDeck all day long when I’m at my computer to share wisdom and links, to converse and congratulate.

TweetDeck is a desktop app, and HootSuite is similar, only it’s a browser-based app. They both manage your Twitter streams so you can keep track of friends, mentions, direct messages, and to track hash tags. They both let you schedule tweets, and cross-post to your other Twitter accounts and your Facebook and LinkedIn updates. The column-based format is great when I want to know what’s going on in #selfpub or @HuffPostBooks, but especially during live Twitter events. As a side note, TweetDeck is discontinuing its mobile app, but Hootsuite still has one. However, I’ve always preferred Echofon for mobile tweeting.

Like Ms. King I use HootSuite and Feedly, and I'm going to look at bit.ly and Echofon. On my phone I started using something called TweetCaster, because I've found the typeface on Twitter hard to read, and I can't seem to change it. I use HootSuite, because I have two Twitter accounts. It works well on my laptop and my phone.

Don't abandon paper just yet

Which will it be?

Send an email or publishing an ebook is much easier, quicker and cheaper than using paper. And so we tend to default to digits.

This, I believe, leaves an opening for those who wish to be different and stand out -- by sending an old-fashioned business letter on actual paper.

But is there any real difference in effect? Apparently so. Ferris Jabr, a science journalist and associated editor of Scientific American has a must-read article in that magazine that surveys what we know about reading on paper versus reading on a screen.

For many purposes, paper is still better, he says.

Evidence from laboratory experiments, polls and consumer reports indicates that modern screens and e-readers fail to adequately recreate certain tactile experiences of reading on paper that many people miss and, more importantly, prevent people from navigating long texts in an intuitive and satisfying way. In turn, such navigational difficulties may subtly inhibit reading comprehension.

Some studies indicate that screens reduce comprehension and long-term memory of what is read. It may be that people take reading on a screen less seriously.

When it comes to intensively reading long pieces of plain text, Jabr concludes, paper and ink may still have the advantage.

Keeping eyeballs attached to the screen

Researchers studying how people read on tablets offer us some design insights.

Tablet readers typically give a story about 78 seconds before deciding whether to keep reading or to start looking for a new story. The team suggested designers give readers a "gold coin" at the 78-second mark (what the team called the "bailout point") in hopes of keeping readers engaged. The gold coin might take the form of a pull quote, picture, graphic, or link to another story, anything to keep the reader reading. By way of example, think about Time.com's tendency to include graphics and stand-alone links to other stories between paragraphs.

Orientation -- 70 percent of those in the study preferred a landscape layout, which is a consistent result. Garcia said he's been involved in six tablet studies and 90 percent all participants start with a tablet in the landscape position.

Careful selectors v. not-so-careful -- People who went on to read a full story, fixated on an average of 18 different elements on a home page -- looking at headlines, subheads, pictures, captions, etc. -- before choosing which story to read. People who tended not to read full stories, looked at an average of nine elements before choosing.

Navigation -- The researchers found that 67 percent of readers used the browser's controls (e.g., the back button) to get to more content even though navigation tools were built in.

Scanners v. methodical readers -- About 75 percent of digital natives (those between 18- and 28-years-old) read used a "scanning" style to consume news on a tablet. Interestingly, this doesn't mean they don't read or read less, they just have a different search method. It's style of consumption, not amount of consumption.

Why your phone makes up your words

The autocorrect function can create some real howlers. Here's how Google intends it to work.

If you type “kofee” into a search box, Google would like to save a few milliseconds by guessing whether you’ve misspelled the caffeinated beverage or the former United Nations secretary-general. It uses a probabilistic algorithm with roots in work done at AT&T Bell Laboratories in the early 1990s. 

The probabilities are based on a “noisy channel” model, a fundamental concept of information theory. The model envisions a message source — an idealized user with clear intentions — passing through a noisy channel that introduces typos by omitting letters, reversing letters or inserting letters. 

“We’re trying to find the most likely intended word, given the word that we see,” Mr. Paskin says. “Coffee” is a fairly common word, so with the vast corpus of text the algorithm can assign it a far higher probability than “Kofi.” On the other hand, the data show that spelling “coffee” with a K is a relatively low-probability error. The algorithm combines these probabilities. 

I guess if you try to tweet that you're having coffee with Kofi Anan you're in real trouble.

Will a computer replace you?

Algorithms are producing a growing number of articles for newspapers and websites, such as this one produced by Narrative Science:

"Wall Street is high on Wells Fargo, expecting it to report earnings that are up 15.7 percent from a year ago when it reports its second quarter earnings on Friday, July 13, 2012," said the article on Forbes.com.

While computers cannot parse the subtleties of each story, Phys.org reports, they can take vast amounts of raw data and turn it into what passes for news.

"This can work for anything that is basic and formulaic," says Ken Doctor, an analyst with the media research firm Outsell. And with media companies under intense financial pressure, the move to automate some news production "does speak directly to the rebuilding of the cost economics of journalism," said Doctor.

Scott Frederick, chief operating officer of Automated Insights, another firm in the sector, said he sees this as "the next generation of content creation."

The company generates news stories from raw feeds of play-by-play data from major sports events. The company generates advertising on its own website and is now beginning to sell its services to other organizations for sports and real estate news. 

To mimic the effect of the hometown newspaper, the company generates articles with a different "tonality" depending on the reader's preference or location. For the 2012 Super Bowl, the article for New York Giants' fans read like this: "Hakeem Nicks had a big night, paving the way to a victory for the Giants over the Patriots, 21-17 in Indianapolis. With the victory, New York is the champion of Super Bowl XLVI." 

For New England fans, the story was different: "Behind an average day from Tom Brady, the Patriots lost to the Giants, 21-17 at home. With the loss, New England falls short of a Super Bowl ring."

Not much different than human sports writers.