Mobile social networking firms fight for pocket space

While these startups can hardly argue MySpace and Facebook’s success, vendors that don’t recognize the uniqueness of mobility inevitably will be left behind. Take for example YouTube, which last week made the move to complete mobility, offering any user with a 3G handset access to watch videos as well as upload videos of their own. As the third most popular mobile site, this news had the potential to be extremely significant; however, the service did not even work upon its launch. Fixed-Internet social sites need to take into account the environment they are in – one of small screens, cramped keyboards and restrictive search options – before they make the leap.

“We need to see those that really understand mobile and don’t just think of it as a PC,” said Andy Bovingdon, vice president of marketing for mobile content company Bango. “The ones where they tried to carry a PC community across to mobile, they are not bad – it fills a gap, but will it live purely for its mobile presence? Probably not – it lives just as an extension to its PC presence.”

Bango’s Web site, wap.com, as well as its stake in other Web sites in the form of a Bango button, allows users to publish Web content from images to wallpapers, music and podcasts on their mobile phone, and then share that content with other Bango subscribers. According to Bovingdon, the mobile sites that are typically the most successful are the ones that have a niche and a simple focus, such as Flickr’s photo sharing site. Finding a niche might become obligatory as real estate for these mobile companies in the North American mobile market becomes scarcer and start-ups begin to be pushed into one direction or another.

“Where their niche is really going to fit in is perhaps not necessarily in the U.S. market, where we are a very PC focused environment, but in more developing countries where the consumer’s first entry into the Internet is through their mobile phone, not their PC,” Aldort said. “For them, MySpace or Facebook perhaps is not on the radar screen, but an AirG might be more compelling for them, since it’s basically all they have access to.”

AirG, which has a presence on every major U.S. carrier’s network, including Sprint, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, counts on both its international and non-PC users to keep the service viable. These are the consumers that don’t view mobile handsets as a way to network “on-the-go,” rather it is their primary platform.

“Sixty percent of users in the U.S. don’t have a PC or they share a PC,” Ghahramani said. “Who is this user? It is not a ‘white collar worker.’ It is someone who works at Starbucks as a night security guard – the people who power America, not people who are working office jobs…They look at it as a way to get away, escapism five minutes at a time. Lack of PC ownership or lack or access to a PC is a primary driver to using data services.”

While the number of mobile phone owners is significantly more than PC owners, according to Yankee Group research, three quarters of teens and young adults are accessing social networks on their PCs, but only about 15% of them are accessing the same or other networks on their mobile phones. This could be because many mobile social networks require a monthly subscription or pay-per-use fee. Granted, this may only be a price tag of $2 to $3, but when coupled with all the other mobile data applications available, it is enough to bring the total mobile data price tag to more than $12, which studies have found is the maximum amount most mobile users are willing to tack on each month.

The fees are assuming a company can even get on a mobile carrier’s deck. Carrier relationships have been sited as an important factor in a mobile social network company’s success, yet most of these start-ups are not able to attach themselves to a carrier. The reason for this is largely a matter of space – there is simply not enough room on a crowded home screen for a carrier to endorse several different companies. Luckily for startups, this will be less of an issue going forward, Aldort said.

“[Carrier relationships are] becoming less and less necessary,” Aldort said. “We are starting to see more and more WAP-based sites from Facebook and even MySpace, so once you get to that level, you don’t actually need a relationship with a carrier anymore. The user experience might not be as rich as if you had a downloadable client application, but it’s available to the mass-market lowest common denominator subscriber because you just need a WAP browser on your phone.”

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