There seems to me to be a two kinds of mobile social users: the Mobile Gamer and the Mobile Braggart.

If you're in the tech industry, as I am, you're one of these two whether you like it or not. It's merely a matter of personal preference. You can “think different” with all your iPhone buddies, look important on your BlackBerry or even hang with the new disciples of Android and still fall into one of these two categories, although I have my opinion which users fall pretty hard into the Braggart definition.

The Mobile Gamer
A gamer is an imaginitive individual at heart with strong escapist tendencies who loves to assume alternative personnas and waste valuable time acquiring vast hordes of e-stuff (read: treasure, coins, $, dead dragons, etc). I fall squarely into this category. The Mobile Gamer is interested in the actual game mechanics, the gameplay challenges, the refining of strategies and the satisfaction of winning.

We keep Zynga and Booyah in business.

The Mobile Braggart
A Mobile Braggart wants everyone, everwhere to know exactly what they are doing, where they are doing it and who they're doing it with. It can be as simple as getting breakfast on a Sunday morning with friends after a “crazy” Saturday night hopping from hotspot to hotspot. Checkin. Tweet about how awesome this event is. Checkin somewhere else. Tweet about how awesome the late-night food is. Checkin. Post a picture of your totally amazing Sunday brunch with friends. It really is that amazing. 

Foursquare and Gowalla get off on you getting off on getting everyone else off about your really interesting life.

Written by Ryan Nash (mobile gamer and escapist artiste)

Right now, we're working with several clients who are asking: Should we do a native (iOS or Android) mobile app or a mobile web app in HTML5?

Naturally, you'll always have to consider the business objectives such as experience, speed, and hardware feature advantages of native, but often the final decision comes down to budget. Curiously, we've found that a large portion of iPhone apps could have just been done in HTML5 and reach would have doubled. (I suppose iOS developers made the decision to go with what they know.) There are of course frameworks such as Appcelerator that allows native development and deployment to iOS, Android, and Blackberry, but such frameworks have natural limitations and may not work for your needs or turn out to be too expensive still.

For those of you on the fence, we found this to be a good primer on HTML5 vs Native mobile development. It gives you a fair idea of what the cost vs benefits are and it's a good framework for thinking about your priorities when making this choice.

Happy weekend!