The term ‘Normob’ hits the big time

By on February 26, 2008 in News

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? ;-)

About Ewan

Ewan is Founder and Editor of Mobile Industry Review. He writes about a wide variety of industry issues and is usually active on Twitter most days. You can read more about him or reach him with these details.
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  • MarkW

    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!!!).

  • http://whatleydude.vox.com James Whatley

    I use it freely and quote smstextnews as the source.

    Definitely (slowly) becoming an industry standard. Soon it’ll be just buzzwordy as ‘prosumer’.

    ;)

    James Whatley’s last blog post..Reminder: Mobile Geeks of London III

  • http://www.ssixty.info Vlad

    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.
    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

  • http://disruptivewireless.blogspot.com Dean Bubley

    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

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