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October 27, 2006
Mobile Social Networking Exploding
According to Communities Dominate Brands and posted by moconews.net referencing a study and press release by Informa, Mobile Social Networking is worth $3.45 billion now and $13.1 billion by 2011.
From Informa:
"The meteoric rise of such sites as MySpace, Bebo and YouTube shows significant consumer demand for social interaction in the digital space," said Daniel Winterbottom, senior analyst at Informa and author of the report. "Adding mobility to these services represents a huge opportunity for mobile operators, who will benefit from a reduction in churn levels, as well as significant increases in data traffic," he added. To add further weight to the importance of this rapidly emerging industry, O2, the UK mobile phone giant, recently announced that it was examining options for getting Bebo onto its handsets, potentially emulating the US deal between Helio and MySpace.
Tomi T. Ahonen at Communities Dominate Brands says that mobile social networking is the killer app for 3G, and it is happening now. (BTW, the book looks like an interesting read. This is the first I've heard of them, so thanks to moconews.)
I like the title of the post: "told_you_so_soc.html." I guess I needn't throw my "told you so" log onto the fire, particularly since it is a bit early, and more importantly the "social networking" we are seeing is an evolution of SMS. The party really starts when existing (and newly created) social networking communities offer a feature-rich robust experience to mobile users. It is exceedingly hard to do, but next year is the year it starts to happen.
Incidentally, we have a plan for how to do so. Also, we have a new product I will be sharing in the next couple of weeks.
Have a good weekend...
Posted by Shawn Conahan at October 27, 2006 11:58 AM
Comments
Shawn,
A very large mobile social network exists today. Its called sms text messaging. The carriers have many users. Its a proven service. Its lucrative and can be made much more lucrative for carriers.
Is there room to improve the consumer value of sms messaging. Heck yes.
How? Make it free to users. Merchandise premium mobile content around the interface. Allow user to attach user generated photos and video to the messages. Allow users to synchronize their mobile messages across phone and pc.
Trick in this business? Will have to be a d2c platform that cobrands with carrier. Will have to be tested and launched across almost all phones in US market. The company that launches will have to be deeply integrated with carrier systems.
The company that siezes this opportunity will probably be the most profitable company on the planet.
Posted by: Todd at October 29, 2006 07:48 AM
The carriers hold the key to social networking since they control the price of messaging. The carriers just need to converge around a common external messaging platform that shifts monetization away from monthly fees to advertising and commerce.
In the market today we see a new social networking company entering the fray almost every week. Social networking model fails without scale. Carriers offer the key to scalability.
Merchandising advertising and commerce around a messaging interface to leverage every message created and received would be a very lucrative endeavor for carriers.
I think it would dramatically increase the monthly ARPU of carriers sms user base since so much of mobile content is discovery based rather than price driven.
Can you think of a better mobile media discovery position than on a free intercarrier messaging platform? Adoption rate and profitability would be insane!
The limitation of social apps today is that none talk to one another. A new model must evolve!
Posted by: Todd at October 30, 2006 06:45 PM