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Rise or Wall of the Mobile Social Network

One of the major themes at Mobile World Congress 2009 is that of "openness." It's a long held belief within the mobile industry that 'open standards' are a good thing. Certainly, many are attached to the dogma that openness allows new technology or services to be adopted faster, with lower costs and greater interoperability between platforms and hardware. It's a path that, arguably, has enabled GSM and its evolutions to become the defacto mobile communications standard over the past 20 years. Yet, a nascent part of the industry -- mobile social networking -- is growing in a highly fragmented way as a plethora of different systems and approaches develops.

MWC 2008 was a showcase for many early stage start-ups who were hoping to attract new users, investment and partnerships with their take on a mobile social business model. The range of models on offer included subscription based and advertising funded services, off deck and on portal, incorporating, video chat, dating, location and peer review.

It's a sector that the industry is placing many a bet on. The 2008 Global Mobile Award winner for social networking, for example, was BuzzCity's myGamma.com, a free service that allows a global community of users to exchange messages, photos and update their 'status' in much the same way many fixed line social networks do. Equally innovative were services such as JuiceWireless' JuiceCaster, which launched its European version at the show, and allows users to swap videos on the go. Meanwhile, another start-up GyPSii announced that is was integrating location with social networking, enabling users to find people, places and events in their local area. Elsewhere, off-deck services such as Mocospace, Go Fresh's Itsmy.com and Peperonity have reached huge mobile only audiences, while Bluepulse, Zannel, QIK, Shozu, Whrrl and many others each have their own take on community, video, pictures and location respectively. Others predict that messaging and aggregation services such as Fring, Xumii, or Nimbuzz will come to the fore.

Despite the range of viewpoints, there is one certainty - the coming year will bring changes that will create a vastly different landscape by MWC 2009, as the inevitable shake out of failed models, market consolidation and even the odd unforeseen success unfolds. And while the innovative start-ups shuffle for position in a crowded market, lurking on the horizon are the big hitters of the internet social networking industry, together with mobile operators and handset vendors, who are each seeking their piece of what the industry hopes will be a lucrative pie.

Even with the erosion of the walled gardens of mobile content over the past year, operators remain integral to the mobile content industry, and the services they choose to integrate into their portals will inevitably shape the industry as a whole. The world's second largest operator, Vodafone, makes much of its support for Bebo, MySpace and Facebook in its advertising but perhaps more significantly it is building its own technology too, having bought Zyb for more than 30m euros earlier this year. It's a pattern followed by others in the industry -- 3 UK has seen conspiculous success with SeeMeTV, a kind of YouTube for mobile. Meanwhile,  O2 is making a major push with its rebranded eyevibe suite of services, which is set to include chat and games as well as video. Indeed, both operators have partnered with Bauer group subsidiary YoSpace as the technology behind the service.

Meanwhile, fixed-line social networking giants MySpace, Bebo and Facebook have all launched m. extensions of their websites. With more than 90m active users internet users, Facebook remains the 800 pound gorilla, and their relationships with some 15 global operators means that their presence will continue to be felt in both off and on deck worlds. Despite the company's troubles, Yahoo! remains an innovative player, with oneConnect offering a messaging and community aggregation service, and much excitement being generated by the launch of Fireeagle, a location enabled service.

Handset vendors too are keen to retain brand equity with the younger audiences who use social networks. The world's largest handset vendor, Nokia, has been strategically morphing into a services-oriented company over the past two years, and has built social networking elements into its photo sharing platform MOSH, launched a synchronisation service Ovi, which promises to bring flickr and iTunes-like functionality to the mobile phone, and bought German social networking company Plazes. Meanwhile, the Apple Appstore promises to turn every iPhone purchased into a user's social networking hub, perhaps negating the need for fixed line or operator portal services at all.

While operators and handset vendors each seek to extend their reach, the question of openness remains central to the development of the industry. The ubiquitous Google, whose own foray into social networking has been limited to the somewhat 'under-the-radar' purchases of Orkut, Zingku and social messaging pioneer Dodgeball cannot be ignored. Perhaps the biggest question on the industry's lips is where Android fits into the picture. While the open OS is yet to take any kind of significant market share, the internet pioneer is sure to see the adoption of the platform on upcoming handsets such at the HTC 'Dream', as an opportunity to integrate some OpenSocial functionality into mobile. If Google's goal continues to be to provide information to its users via whatever medium they can access the internet then the Mountain View, CA, behemoth is sure to be a major player in the mobile social space.

Whatever the approach, the principal questions for all these players are, as always, monetisation and scale. The m. extensions of Facebook and others offer a huge ready-made community of potential mobile social networkers, while many of the aforementioned niche services will acquire what advertisers like to call 'premium' communities until they are bought or go bust. But if openness -- and not the walled garden -- remains the future of the sector then it is the adoption of the full internet on the mobile, through the Safari or Opera browsers for example, which may provide the greatest clarity to the eventual direction of the industry.

Posted by Ed Barker on September 9, 2008 at 9:46 AM