I heard an interesting comparison today.

During a video conference with our corporate brethren, someone compared the use of mobile technology to the use of internet in 1998. While I think that’s accurate, I think that there’s an important distinction to make.

Namely, the speed by which the landscape changed in the last ten years is not a constant. The users are not going to continue to evolve at the same rate. The general acceptance of the internet into daily life, combined with the rapid advances of technology/infrastructure guarantee that things will change at a different pace.

So when do I think “Mobile 1998″ penetration will catch up to current traffic patterns/usage of traditional web sites? Realistically, I’d say about 24 months.

What that means is that we’d better get off our collective asses and start developing a real strategy for all of our web sites and applications that take full advantage of the mobile platform now.

Seriously, 24 months. Now that says a lot when you consider that my current traditional sites generate roughly 40 million page views per month and over 2 million unique visitors, while our mobile footprint is a fraction of that.

It doesn’t matter whether we can quantify the development resources needed at this juncture in time or not - it’s about protecting the future of our businesses and organizations.

Either we embrace mobile now, or be undercut by others who will have less to gain by relying on existing technology. Really, it’s the same argument that we made with print media 10 years ago - evolve or risk losing your market share to someone else.

In 24 months were going to be looking at digital devices that can deliver high speed video, perform every function of current web sites, and maintain advanced social networking - in the hands of more than half of the people in the United States, and more than that in Europe/Japan.

Better get started, because we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.