Wikimedia Mobile engineering/Strategy

This page is intended to provide a high-level overview of current and future Wikimedia Foundation strategic thinking on mobile projects, and to catalog the most up-to-date targets and goals of the WMF mobile team.

Summary

The mobile team is currently focused on improving the mobile Wikipedia experience for readers and editors, beginning to experiment with mobile contribution such as media uploads, and making Wikipedia available free of excess data charges to more readers all around the world.

General mobile priorities for the Wikimedia Foundation, 2010-2015

The following are the highest priority areas of focus for the Wikimedia Foundation that are related to mobile, as outlined in the five-year Strategic Plan of 2010-2015.

Accelerate impact

1. invest to improve our mobile applications
2. build partnerships that increase our mobile reach globally and support scalable offline solutions for those who will have limited connectivity over the next five years
3. create the capability to recruit and support current and prospective volunteer developers, as well as to support volunteer-created applications and widgets

Broaden reach

1. make improvements in accessibility and usability of Wikipedia on mobile platforms
2. develop ways to enable participation via mobile devices
3. create new products and partnerships to expand the reach and participation of users who are not able to connect to the Internet via a PC
4. develop partnerships with mobile providers and entrepreneurs to enable wide access to Wikimedia's mobile products by users without expensive smartphones
5. invest in technology improvements that enhance mobile features, functionality and access
6. create new offline products and partnerships with the capacity to distribute offline versions of Wikimedia's products to large numbers of users with limited connectivity at low cost

Mobile in the 2012-2013 Annual Plan

The following are goals and targets related to mobile that appear in the most recent Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan.

Mobile Photo Uploading

• Develop “mobile photographers” as the first cohort of mobile contributors. “Wiki Loves Monuments” (September 2012) will be the pilot
• If successful, we will integrate uploading functionality more deeply into the mobile app/web experience.

Mobile Contributions

• Experiment with micro-tasks and simple text manipulation.
• By the end of Q3 we will start piloting mobile editing/micro-contribution functionality and begin prioritizing successful contribution features.

Wikipedia Zero

• Mobile partnerships with operators in the Global South to offer Wikipedia for no data charges to their users and generate interest in Wikipedia.
• Serve 200 million page views/month at no charge via Wikipedia Zero partners in the Global South

Reach 4 billion mobile page views per month by June 2013 with at least 15% from the Global South

• initiate and launch partnerships with mobile operators representing 600 million subscribers in 2012/13

2013-2014 Annual planning

• 2013-2014 planning etherpad
• 2013-2014 Q1 planning etherpad

See also

• Product strategy, 2011-2012