The term ‘Normob’ hits the big time
Dean Bubley over at Disruptive Wireless posed the ‘what is a normob’ question yesterday:
You know that feeling when you encounter a new word… and then within a couple of days you start noting it everywhere?
Well, if you hadn’t spotted it already, let me open your eyes to this particular neologism:
Normob = Normal Mobile User.
Where did the term come from? Well, I knocked it up as a term back in December 2006 when I was going nuts about the cost of New Year’s Eve texting. I’ve since setup normob.com as a repository for key normob-related posts from SMS Text News.
Regular SMS Text News reader and commenter, HeavyLight, has also recently started The Opinionated Normob to record his thoughts — definitely worth a read.
For the past few years I’ve always qualifed normob whenever I’ve used the term, like so:
normob (”normal mobile user”)
Do you think it’s time for me to be able to use the term freely without qualifying it?
Maybe once it’s included in the Oxford English Dictionary? 
Aha - I looked at normob.com yesterday, following the link from Disruptive Wireless, thinking “I’m sure Ewan coined this!”. Must have been sleepwalking cos I didn’t notice that it was an smstextnews site (even though, on revisiting, it says so right there at the top!!!).
Posted by MarkW on February 26th, 2008 at 11:18 am.I use it freely and quote smstextnews as the source.
Definitely (slowly) becoming an industry standard. Soon it’ll be just buzzwordy as ‘prosumer’.
Posted by James Whatley on February 26th, 2008 at 11:24 am.James Whatley’s last blog post..Reminder: Mobile Geeks of London III
It’s a great word, if you ask me, and one that I did dare to quote a lot. I’ll link to normob.com when I use it in the future.
Posted by Vlad on February 26th, 2008 at 3:18 pm.And yes, I think it can be used freely now.
Vlad’s last blog post..Anssi Vanjoki (Executive Vice President of Nokia’s Multimedia Division) on mobile gaming
Hi Ewan
Nice one! Glad to know where it all started.
Cheers
Dean
Dean Bubley’s last blog post..Starting to dismantle the Tyranny of the SIM card
Posted by Dean Bubley on February 29th, 2008 at 5:24 pm.[...] the iPhone for this. It’s raised ordinary consumer’s expectations of what a mobile phone can do. Normobs want iPhone-like features at the traditional “free with 2 year contract” price point. Carriers and [...]
Posted by The End of the Smartphone? at Wap Review on April 11th, 2008 at 1:37 pm.