Potential of Mobile Social Networking
Human beings have always lived in communities and have extended the communities whenever they got an opportunity to do so. Internet was a great enabler for communities and people started to network with long lost friends and found new friends. Now mobile has unique features that can extend this experience for communities
Always on and always in pocket – Mobile is a ubiquitous personal device and is hence the best medium of access for social networking. The updates can be sent and received on the go. When accessing the internet on PC, one is accessing the information about some past event and not real time. In contrast, with mobile phone one can take part in the event, capture it, provide comments and share all this with others. Mobile phone therefore provides richer social interaction. Twitter is a shining example of being part of the event. During the Mumbai terrorist attack, the Twitter updates were faster than the media updates which increased its popularity in India.
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Camera – Camera on the mobile phone is a convenient tool in the hands of the users. The photos and videos can be directly uploaded from the mobile phone to the social networking website. In case of a digital camera, the process is not as easy as it is not connected to the internet.
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Location – Mobile phones are location aware and hence can add another dimension to updates which is presence or context. Even the non-GPS mobile phones can pass on the location data on the basis of triangulation of the cell site data. This would help the communities to develop around a certain location or geography. User generated context information on point of interests or restaurant reviews would be very useful to a traveler. Dodgeball allows users to set up publicly-articulated social networks of friends so that they can broadcast their location to the individuals’ mobile devices. For example, when users get to a bar or cafe, they can “check in” by sending a text message to Dodgeball such as “@ Irish Pub.” Dodgeball then broadcasts their location via text message to people in their Dodgeball network. Users can also be alerted when friends of friends who have checked in to Dodgeball are within a 10-block radius. GyPSii, Google Latitude and Pelago are other good examples of location based social networking. ABI Research estimates that by 2013, the global revenues from Location based mobile social networking would be $3.3 billion (Link)
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Phone Book – So far, mobile phone book was considered as an important asset of a phone. However, now there are phone directories on Facebook and LinkedIn as well. The users can use both the online as well as the mobile directory and it is possible that the users could soon stop using the phone directory as the online directory would be more up to date. Even the mobile phone book can be used as a starting point for creating a community. Zyb was launched as backup to the mobile phone is now a social networking site around the contacts. Zyb can be used to find out who has you in their phones as a contact and even discover friends of friends. In a survey conducted by Stratemerge Inc., 2008, 87% of the respondents agreed that the combination of Social Network services and phone address book would appeal to mainstream consumers (strongly agree:30%, agree:57%)
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Additional Access Device – Many users in the developing world do not have access to PC but have mobile phones and hence can use only mobile social networking. MyGamma, a social network run by the BuzzCity has over 3 million in Asia and Africa. These 3 million people have mobiles as the only way to get on to the internet.
What is the size of the Online and mobile Social Networking?
As per ComScore, over two-third of all internet users across the world are active users of social networking. There are 1.1 billion active internet users in the world and out of them 738 million people use social networking sites regularly (pure social networking sites not counting blogs. Including blog sites, 76% internet users use conversational sites). 42% of time spent on internet by users is on social networking sites. Almost 46% of Facebook users are over 35 years of age and surprisingly even the gender split is almost equal.
Considering that almost all the current internet users are mobile phone users as well, there is an opportunity of getting the current online social network users to mobile phones which in itself is over 738 million people. Add to this the millions of people in the emerging countries for who mobile would be the first internet access device, and then the opportunity is huge.
Visiongain believes that revenue from mobile social networking and user generated content will grow to around $60 billion in 2012
Advances in smart phone, browser and web application technologies are boosting the take-up and usage of mobile social networking sites through improved user experience and engagement. In a forecast last year, eMarketer had estimated that the mobile social networking users would exceed 800 million by 2012.
At Nokia Developer Summit 2009, MySpace reported that their mobile usage increased almost 450 percent in 2008, with 7 billion mobile page views per month. Vice President of Mobile Operations John Faith revealed
“We’ve seen greater user engagement in MySpace mobile applications than we have on the mobile web. Smartphones are creating a culture of expectations among users.”
400 K MySpace applications on Blackberry were downloaded within a week of its release. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook claimed at Davos in February, 2009 to have 25 million mobile users which is a five fold increase in one year and out of 25 million mobile users, 10 million users are in US alone. Facebook has over 8 million users on Apple iPhone and 6 million users on Blackberry.
There are over 4 billion mobile users in the world which far outstrip the internet usage (1.1 billion) and hence if the mobile social networking is adopted on mobile, it would help increase the mobile internet usage even for general surfing. This would be good news for carriers who are under EBIDTA and revenue pressures. I would write about the benefits of social networking to the carriers and what should the carriers do to increase its adoption in my next post. Till then stay tune!
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Thanks for the useful info. It’s so interesting
I liked your question and considering the age of technology we are living in nothing is impossible..!! Five years back from now, how many of us were aware of anything like social media/networking? So mobile networking can be phenomenal in coming time…you never know.
http://www.studentloaninfo.org/blog/
Mohit,
Thanks for sharing these insights.
On internet social networks, I keep in touch with my friends all over the world, but have never used such communities on mobile. I think ‘cost’ can be an important factor determining mass adoption. Can you please explain how are end users charged for mobile networking, is it the same as the cost of sending SMS, MMS?
Can the serivce be made free for end users for any amount of interactions, and the content and service providers earn through advertisements, like on internet?
Anshumaan
Hi Mohit, what I find most encouraging is the impact that smartphones have had on mobile web interaction.. roughly trebling the usage of those on non-smartphones. As more handset manufacturers race to emulate Apple’s success, the choice, availability and price of smartphones will fall quickly and reach critical mobile mass in the near future. With more purpose-built phones such as INQ for Facebook, I believe the user experience will continue to evolve..( it still has a long way to go..) and social networking among other apps will benefit..
but then again, as Sally said.. you never know in this space what’s around the corner
Hello Mohit,
I see your topic in 2 perspectives. 1) Access the existing social networking sites over mobile. Which has no differentiators! Here mobile becones an option to check their updates.
2) An facebook kind of application in mobile. This is where the next buzz is! For instance Vodafone has com up with a geo tagging and social networking over mobile (i lost the link for the article, will upadate you once i find that). the challenge here is to what extent we can make users to be connected to their peers!
I’m part of a mobile solutions company called Telibrahma. We are launching a location based social networking application called “BluHive”. We have a 1000+ network of bluetooth zones in India, US, UK and Spain.
Using BluHive a user in Barista Bangalore can chat and send scrap, gift an mCoupon to an user in Barista Mumbai!
For more details please visit http://www.telibrahma.com and http://www.blufimedia.com
Good day,
Manoj Kandasamy.
The market for social networking in general is experimenting, both with identifying the optimal combination of features and functions, and with developing sustainable operational models. Evidence for the former can be seen in the astounding proliferation of sites that differ only in a technological tweak or new feature, and in the tendency for established sites to add features proven successful by their competitors.
It will not be possible for social networking sites to survive indefinitely with the facilities that they are currently offering. Barriers to entry are very low. Unlike, for example, search sites, the current technological capability of successful social networking sites can easily be duplicated.
At the same time, it will not be easy for a single site to be all things to all people, thanks in part to the impact of search in defining priorities for a given site. I guess we will have a healthy population of content-based and special-interest sites to continue thriving well into the next decade. Acquisitions will continue, as search sites look to strengthen their positions and media properties look to establish new relationships with their audience in a post-broadcast world
Thanks for the nice insights. While I agree to your point Mohit about mobile adoption and others comments on costs coming down, but I think the key challenge is 3 fold.
1. there has to be an aggregator who reaches all the popular social networking providers.
2. build a common platform which the telcos can directly offer.
3. revenue sharing model – i know it is not very complex, but when we consider the multiple social networking platform providers and their already associated ad aggregators and when telcos also want to push their associated ads, the space becomes cluttered with too many players and opex is higher.
Hi all,
I present you a WEEGOH a great mobile startup based in geo locate social networking born is Argentina that present in the last MObile Monday Buenos Aires.
http://www.slideshare.net/ikensolutions/mooga-son…
Sorry I make a mistake this is the presentation http://www.slideshare.net/momobuenosaires/weegoh-…
Hi Nice comments
Verity Technologies is a Mobile Services Company in the domain of Authentication and Identity Services. It has historically been a provider in the Mobile Value Added Services and credited with participating in the setting up of the world’s largest and most sophisticated Data Service vending mechanism at Reliance Communications, India. Telecom, Financial Services (Electronic Commerce + Plastic Money) and Entertainment are among the 3 fastest growing market segments. Verity is positioned to harness the power of the mobile medium to deliver customer value around Entertainment and Financial Services. It has access to over 200 million mobile subscribers in India through its Mobile Operator Relationships. Also its content Brand ‘Mocazo’ is the first of its kind initiative that uses the power of Social Networking. Its ongoing relationship for service offerings with leading organizations across the globe reiterates Verity’s technical expertise and domain knowledge encompassing both mobile & internet technologies. For more details on Verity log on to http://www.veritytech.com
Nice article in general. Thanks!
I respectfully disagree with the particular opinion that developing countries (some or any relevant quantity) will see mobile phone internet access before PC internet access..
If this is a fact, I’d like to know “what” developing countries will see mobile phone internet access before PC internet access?
And if any, how relevant that really is?
In developing countries, the service is so expensive than it doesn’t make a difference whether or not that hypothesis makes sense to someone.
On the other hand, if this referred to the value of sending text messages only.. that’s a different story.
Regards,
Gaston.
Hi Gaston,
Thanks for your comments. I am from India and there are currently around 35-40 million internet users on PC and the PC base in India is around 55-60 million. Compare this to mobile, it has a base of 415 million an dout of these 415 million, about 100 million phones are GPRS/EDGE enabled. There are 35-40 million GPRS users though most of them download music and games from operator portals but the fact is that they are GPRS users. Now that the operators in India have stopped charging rentals for GPRS and encourge people to use GPRS for surfing net, I am sure there would be greater adoption of content light applications like social networking. Given the large base of mobile phones, I have no doubt that mobile social networking usage would soon exceed the pc based online social networking usage.
- Mohit
this is a really good article. it enlightens the topic clearly and provides a wider prospective of social networking.
Considering that almost all the recent internet users are mobile phone users as well, there is an opportunity of getting the current online social network users to mobile phones which in itself is over 738 million people.