When Mobile Sites Die

When using a smartphone, its nice to navigate to a website that detects your platform and then shows you a mobile version of their site. There's something really slick about that. More and more mainstream sites are adopting this model, and its become a standard convention now.

Imagine my surprise when I navigated to one of my favourite sites, tsn.ca. Usually, I'm presented with a very nice mobile version of their site, with the "latest news" being the default page. It was supremely user friendly, very easy to spend some poking around time on it.

This time I got this...

Now I have two choices:

(1) Navigate to the old desktop friendly website

(2) Download the app

I ended up downloading the app, but I felt like I was downloading it for all the wrong reasons. It felt icky. Is this a trend? Are websites now going to force you to download an app in order to view a nice mobile version of their site? I can see a future where my smartphone's home screen would be littered with app icons. Not sure I care for this.

TSN seems to be the exception, not the rule. CNN, for example, has a three-way approach to their web presence: (1) desktop site, (2) mobile site, (3) app. Clearly they have their act together.

TSN, why not give your viewers a choice? Either we can view the mobile version of your mobile site, or we can download your app. If we download your app, maybe we get one or two extra special features. Doesn't this seem better?

But I really hope this isn't an annoying trend.