anders.tyckr.com

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?

Last week something odd happened. Or how often would you say that two of your friends start the same business idea - separately - without them knowing about each other. One was started in Sweden, and the other in San Fransisco. I think we have ourself a match.

The two companies are Tuurf.com and Zkout.com. I don't know any details of the business ideas, but I do know that both are operating in the mobile social networks market. They are not alone, and reports keep coming in that the mobile social network market is going to be huge.

What is really interesting here is that the two companies have taken two completely different approaches to creating their businesses - one silicon valley style, and one European style. During Seedcamp we discussed that European startups are usually to humble in their approaches to solving a problem. That Europeans do not aim big enough, and on the other hand, US startups go super big with sometimes very crazy ideas. But crazy ideas are only crazy and funny if they are done with bad timing.

Tuurf has not yet taken any funding, and that is not because they can't but due to strategy. Zkout has on the other hand taken an angel round and are hiring at least 10 people from what I've heard. Tuurf does not yet have any full time employees and it is treated as a project as the founders all have other jobs or are still in school.

So what is the best strategy in this situation. Either you go full speed and work in the market and closely follow all developments in user trends, burn though a lot of cash fast to try and get an early piece out of a growing market? Or do you watch this market grow from a distance, and try and get a trend line on the direction of the market without following all ups and downs, and let others do the dirty work of breaking in the market?

As I'm all for the "go big, or don't go at all" kind of mentality my first thought would be to go for the more aggressive Zkout. But then again, I think this market is still a bit too immature for even early adopters to use these types of services. So, if Zkout are to come out a winner in this fight, their pockets better be deep, or they will run out of cash before the market is ready.

On the flipside, Tuurf might miss out on some key trends by not being focused enough, and might not have the manpower to scale up in time when the market is ready. Going too slow might be a problem, and is probably as hard to fix as going too fast.

I'm not that passionate about the mobile market, so for me I might not even be an early adopter for these types of products. But looking at this match in terms of business strategy, I would not want to miss a minute of the action to come.