Nokia (NYSE: NOK) is beefing up its rather lame mobile web portal, Nokia.mobi, by adding a new lifestyle content strand aimed at the 18-35 age bracket. Here & Now offers news from Rollingstone.com, Reuters and Us Weekly, with article summaries linking through to full stories on the partners’ own mobile sites. There’s also downloadable music videos, links to other publishers’ decks and to augmented-reality mobile web drama Somebody Else’s Phone.
It’s a move designed to keep more visitors on Nokia.mobi for longer – a boon to its Nokia Media Network ad net. But ad inventory on Here & Now is so far limited to Nokia products alone, and there’s heavy emphasis for the handset maker’s own gadgets and services across the portal. Nokia claims over 100 million monthly Nokia.mobi users – the handset makers often leave content portal efforts to the carriers, but Nokia puts a Nokia.mobi link on all its new web-enabled phones. Release.