I just came across these players in the mobile social networking sphere which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. Nic at The Equity kicker linked to above has a good list on some of the issues that these players face and what they will need to succeed:
- Vastly superior functionality - and they are looking strong here - the web players don’t seem to be working hard to leverage the phone’s uniqueness - e.g. address book
- Easy to implement and use - getting over the java download issue - maybe that problem is disappearing, or they will have to use WAP (my understanding is that Flirtomatic are now pushing their WAP service ahead of the java app)
- Zero marginal cost distribution - each new user costs virtually nothing to acquire. Essential when monetisation per user is uncertain. This is what has made the web players work well and has been difficult so far on mobile. I think mobile to mobile virality and sign up could be very powerful, although my instinct is text and mobile web rather than bluetooth.
- Minimal dependence on the operators, in the early days at least. Once there is scale the operators will rush to get on the bandwagon, but you will almost certainly need to find a way to get to that point without them.
- A co-existence strategy for the web based social networks
Without knowing much on the exact technology challenges that are there, I think that the one that will make a seamless integration between the social network usage through a mobile web browser and the contacts in the address book will have a very strong position. Zyb has come a long way, but not quite seamless yet. Ultimately these players should be the key to solving the problem of people owning their own social graphs.
Some people think that the next step of social networking is going to be mobile social networking. I don't necessarily agree and here is why.
Social networking is basically your social graph. The power is in the social graph, but not the graph it self, rather what you can do with it. Facebook really just showed a little bit what could be done. And that was in a walled garden environment. What really needs to happen, and what the DataPortability workgroup (or at least I hope) are working for, is that people get control of their own social graphs. My network is mine to own, and I don't want to spend another month or two adding all my friends from scratch!
The next thing that is going to happen with social networks is that your portable social graph should be a plugin to new services on the internet. Think Facebook Beacon, but instead of e-commerce sites publishing information about your friends latest buys in your facebook feed, you would rather get recommendations by friends in your social graph, when visiting e-commerce websites.
One of the most important things to recognize here is that the Social Graph is not the only graph that could be of interest being portable. For instance, another graph is that one you have on Last.fm. why should it be their right to own my music listening history. That's my music graph! Or make a list of all movies you have seen, rate them, and interconnect all movies with similar genres, actors, settings, themes, music etc etc... and you have yourself your movie graph. Now if you would be able to apply it to a music store for instance, you could get a list of all Soundtracks that you might be interested in. Services that will allow users to input their graphs will succeed in the future.
The problems the DataPortability workgroup are facing is how and where people should host/own their graphs. Well going back to the mobile social networking. What would be a better place to store your graphs than on your mobile phone? Your social graph is already there through your address book. The rest of your graphs should be easy to collect somehow.
Any takers?
