ME exec ed Tim Green on what Yahoo Mobile's toilet-browsing stats really mean...
Do you download while you download? Maybe I should put this more plainly. Have you acquired mobile content while sitting on the lav, the john, the khazi, the throne?
I ask because research by Yahoo last week found that 29 per cent of all Britons use their mobiles while evacuating their bowels. It’s not the most delicate of subjects, but I’m sure it resonates with a few of you readers.
Maybe it’s a male thing, this desire for some kind of distraction while coiling one out. Obviously, if you were to make a list of the reading matter you’d take in with you, top would be a really gripping novel you towards the end of: for me, a nice big Tom Wolfe is the perfect complement to a nice big Richard The Third.
Next would come the sports pages of a broadsheet newspaper the day after a terrific win for the Spurs. Thereafter, you’re on a sliding scale moving from the wife’s copy of Grazia through the Argos catalogue and, in the absence of anything else, the back of a bleach bottle (mmm, it’s based around a formulation containing sodium hypochlorite).
But like so much else that the mobile is cannibalising – alarm clocks, cameras, etc etc – these options are being sidelined by a browsing session.
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I think it’s the arrival of all-you-can eat data tariffs that have made the toilet such a compelling venue for mobile activity. Suddenly the whole world is available while seated, for one small monthly fee.
rmed with a mobile, you never need to experience the feeling of deflation that hits when you burst into the smallest room in the house, only to find that Perfect Homes magazine has been dispatched to the recycling bin – and another session with Cillit Bang awaits.
Overall, it’s another area in which mobile has improved our lives. However, it’s not a perfect solution to an age-old need. Fact is, a newspaper could not only be read on the bog, it could also be employed in the absence of toilet paper. Not really an appropriate use of your handset. Unless is a really old RAZR.
