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Feeds
Jan
17
I had an interesting chat at a (alcohol fuelled) birthday party the other night with a couple of guys; one in the online ad and P2P biz and the other in the mobile business (he works for one of the major carriers in Canada). Both very smart guys.
The chat centered around mobile social networking (gag!) and Evite type apps (we all got invited to the birthday via E-Vite and some people were whining about it).
While the whole “social networking” craze makes me shake my head most of the time, for a number of reasons (likely more on that later), I do have interest in the idea of social presence (yes, vernacular circa 2003) centric applications - social connectivity/distribution, if you will.
The recent chat interests me for 2 reasons:
1.) Because of the ubiquity of cell phones in North America. I think it’s at 140 million+ in the States and over 13 million in Canada. That’s a fair volume of phones for a country of 265+ and 35+ million, respectively. Now it should be noted that the respective “buying” population is really only 6.5 million In Canada (I would assume the same % in the States) and that is further decreased by the fact that using a phone for anything other than a phone call is mainly a sub 34 demographic phenomena currently, but, you get the point, it’s still a fair sized market, right in the sweet spot of a number of key spending industries.
2.) Because the 2 guys I was speaking with could make some decent cash if they could work together and wrap their heads around it. One of them controls distribution, and the other controls “contextual” content (even if it is just advertising right now) These are the two sides on which I think you could likely build a decent small little business foundation.
The “social e-vite” service that immediately came to mind for me was in the US: http://www.dodgeball.com/ . A neat little mobile app that could add some value to consumers if they know how to use it.
In my eyes, it’s only a matter of time before some of the smaller players heavily involved in more localized social scenes (in T.O. / Canada = 49th street run by a good guy named Rob (I knew there was a reason I liked him…but what’s with the “beta”? 49th st web 2.0?), Martini Boys, etc) start trying to attach mobile social networking to their offerings to differentiate themselves and add value for their adopters. They’ve tried with straight up SMS alerts with limited success/adoption/acceptance. Adding this type of service to their offerings to generate interest and traffic and build themselves up for whatever exit strategy they have. …possibly driven by ad revenue in the SMS message stream to drive some smaller ancillary revenue to offset service costs. Evite will probably get into the game (they just bought a social networking company and have a DB of 66 million emails to market to and promote their offerings but mobile will probably be 2008/2009). 140 million+ cell phones in the US and 13 million in Canada are an attractive base.
The larger “portal” sites like Toronto.com may get into the game but likely too late….
I was thinking that if Rogers/Bell/Telus (in Canada) were to jump on it and really promote it, they could own friend/social distribution. The real question is do they want to, or is it really that wise to get into consumer lives this closely…might fit into the larger strategic plan of media aggregation, tv, internet, wireless connections…especially with all the content plays the carriers are doing these days….sorry…just thinking aloud 
Ultimately, the power of these applications is minimal due to the carriers lack of education / edutainment in proliferating text messaging, or more importantly, how it can be used…it’s growing in leaps and bounds but the carriers don’t promote it enough to make it anything more than its own internal social trifle to most consumers. It could be a lot more advanced if there was more education - e.g. I use AskMeNow.com’s service which actually aggregates valueable services but I’m an advanced user. These type of apps would be awesome as J2ME/MIDP applications but the networks are so locked down (4-6+++ years to figure out binary content anyone???) and users don’t know how to install and use these apps, plus the phone company interfaces (usability) to use the apps blow. E.g. Like I said above I have about 10 different apps on my blackberry including Askmenow.com’s answer tool and litefeeds.com ‘s neat little RSS Feed aggregator but I know how to use this value to enhance my life…most users don’t and don’t understand why they should, more importantly…the more effort is spent educating people that these things exist and we open up the networks to allow them to drive how they should be used, the more data we will see flowing around inside the carrier private networks and the more money everyone makes….
oh yeah…another thing would be the cost of data…prohibitive to the average consumer to make use of these services, but who’s counting, right guys?
Summary of three detriments to why it won’t happen (IMHO):
-Awareness/Knowledge/Education that these things are out there
-Simplicity (Usability)
-Cost
Then again…I guess those are the keys to everything. Finding that sweet spot is always a tough go.
There’s some neat research going on out there right now, but it’s only research or early stage:
http://www.seansavage.com/encounter-bubbles/
http://worcester.typepad.com/pc4media/2004/06/locationaware_s.html
http://www.spiderware.com/2004/06/familiar-strangers-and-location-aware.html
I seem to remember Razorfish www.razorfish.com, or whatever they are now developed an app back in 2003 that was pretty cool and trialed it in Germany in a number of different contexts
My last thought on this is how these applications can tie into social gathering places like bars. If you have digital signage in place with venue aware technology and “smart” Java clients, you can all of the sudden close that feedback loop with consumers…and then this becomes a valid spend area for agencies and brands (what are they calling this these days? behavioral grooming?)
There may be an opportunity here…although it could just be that there was too much “alcohol fuel” in the tank
[UPDATE - Feb 5, 2007: well, here’s the company I should have found the first time around. They do a great job with everything I discussed above: Plazes]
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4 Responses to “Social networking and the mobility effect”
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Hi,
Just saved your feed in my reader, have a nice day 
I found your blog via google by accident and have to admit that youve a really interesting blog
thx! now if only I could stop my mouth from running off
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