Craigslist Tops U.S. Mobile Browsing......Followed by eBay, Myspace, Facebook

Mobile Web surfers in the U.S. spend more time on classified-ad site Craigslist than on any other Web site, and they spent nearly twice as much time browsing as their British counterparts in March. Those are among the findings from a study by mobile research company M:Metrics in which client software installed on participants' smartphones gleaned information about user activity. It found U.S. owners of smartphones -- not even counting iPhones or BlackBerry devices -- spent nearly 4 hours, 38 minutes using their browsers in March. U.K. subscribers spent just under 2 hours, 25 minutes, on average. The survey tracked 3,500 users of Symbian, Palm, and Microsoft Windows Mobile smartphones in the U.S. and U.K. The devotion to mobile browsing in the U.S. has a lot to do with the wider use of so-called "unlimited" data plans in the country, M:Metrics said. In the U.S., 10.9 percent of smartphone users have data plans that don't charge them per bit or per minute for browsing, the researchers said. In the U.K., only 2.3 percent have such plans. Mobile operators in Europe have been slower to adopt all-you-can-eat pricing, said M:Metrics analyst Mark Donovan. U.S. users spent about 1 hour, 39 minutes per month on Craigslist, M:Metrics said. The site has two big factors in its favor as a mobile destination, Donovan said. It's text-based, so it's easier to load with a weak signal, and it emphasizes local information. Donovan believes mobile users are visiting local listings for events such as yard sales along with the site's popular personal ads. E-commerce giant eBay was the second most popular destination, with smartphone users spending about 1 hour, 26 minutes per month there, closely followed by social networking sites Myspace and Facebook. The Walt Disney Co.'s Go.com entertainment portal was fifth, with 1 hour, 7 minutes.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/05/23/Craigslist-tops-US-mobile-browsing_1.html