Social networking made the leap from desktops to mobile phones a long
time ago, and a new report suggests that MySpace and Facebook still
dominate even on the small screen. Too bad the two market leaders may
be doing more harm than good to mobile social networking.
The report, published by ABI Research,
says that nearly half (46 percent) of social networking users have
visited one such network on a mobile phone. Among these mobile
socializers, almost 70 percent of them visited MySpace, while another
67 percent hit Facebook. Even though the mobile social networking
landscape is rich with competitors, especially those innovating with
location-based services, no other network garnered even 15 percent of
mobile adoption.
It should come as no surprise that the most important activities to
mobile socializers are checking on new messages and comments from
friends (50 percent of users), and posting status updates (45 percent)
to let others know what they are doing.
“The social network is increasingly becoming a central hub for
communication across online and mobile domains for many consumers,”
said research director Michael Wolf. “To a degree, it allows them to
centralize messaging, communication and even digital media consumption
through a centralized property on various screens. We believe this
centralization of a consumer’s digital lifestyle through social
networks will only increase adoption of mobile social networking in
coming years.”
While
the experiences of mobile social networking websites and applications
like those for Apple's popular iPhone are certainly growing
increasingly sophisticated, they are also hindering the adoption of the
next holy grail in social networking: location-based services. Facebook
and MySpace have yet to harness the advantages of location technology
even on the desktop, and a storm of location-based social networks are
capitalizing on the fact that these two giants are asleep. Networks
like Whrrl and Yelp are offering location-based reviews of events and restaurants, while others like Brightkite and Loopt
allow friends to easily tell the world where they are for meeting up
and creating public gatherings. Location information is a powerful
thing, and our gadgets are finally at a point where they can harness it.
Unfortunately, all this innovation may go to waste once Facebook and
MySpace finish their research and steamroll the market with their own
location-based features some day. After all, MySpace has been a bit
preoccupied with a return to its musical roots, and Facebook seems to have become gun-shy on privacy after the invasive advertising snafu of Facebook Beacon. In the meantime, smaller innovators could very well be lining up to have their shoulders stood on by giants.
From : http://arstechnica.com/
