What's Plaguing Your Mobile Social Network?
While social media services such as Twitter and Friendfeed are great ways to start making connections, nothing compares to face-to-face interaction. Mobile social networks like Brightkite aim to bring users together by allowing users to connect with others that are in the same location and interact more honestly with one another beyond the virtual world.
However, the very reasons that such networks exist are also proving to be their weakest points. In this post we look at the current market for mobile social networks and try to understand some of the issues they face.
Location, Location, Location
While mobile social networks promote and encourage users to meet offline, this is also the biggest obstacle for networks to overcome. GPS may not be a requirement, but honestly, who's in your neighborhood and using these services?
The majority of the users of mobile social networks congregate in one specific city and rarely move outside of it. These areas are normally cities that the product premiered in, or a city in California (Silicon Valley anyone?). However, step outside such hot spots and users will hit a desert that stretches across many states.
Marketing To Mainstream
It's no secret that most mobile social networks are not catering to mainstream users. Take a look at the who's using Brightkite and we'll guarantee that the majority of users are part of the early adopter crowd. While this is fine, mobile social network developers need to realize that such products don't have to run into the same issues that hinder services like Twitter or Friendfeed from going mainstream. The mobile market is already mainstream, with over 1.8 billion cell phone users worldwide!
Compatibility issues
Anyone can sign up for mobile social networks such a Brightkite, Zyb, or Groovr, regardless of whether or not an invitation is needed. However, the majority of users are greatly disappointed afterwards because phone compatibility is another issue that plagues mobile social networks. They aren't the only ones with this problem either. Even services such as Qik have limited compatibility with mobile phones. It seems that if you aren't using the latest high-end phone made by Nokia, which runs well over $400, you're given the cold shoulder by these services.
Bleak or Bright Future?
Unfortunately, mobile social networks still have a long way to go. Other outside issues such as network compatibility can also affect the number of active users of mobile social networks. Despite these issues, we continue to look forward to the development of mobile social networks and services. However, developers need to take a moment and look closer at the problems that they may be creating just by developing networks that are as immobile as their users.
In the next post we'll review some of the aforementioned mobile social media contenders.
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It's not the lack of services for my mobile social network ( Fire Eagle powers my Twitter location updates just fine, thank you very much ) the problem is the near vacuum of hardware.
The iPhone, while a really nice piece of hardware, runs on Edge ( WTF?!!! ) and no worthwhile mobile social networking can EVER come from a slow data network. Android? Not a physical, real world device in sight.
This is not a "chicken or the egg" issue. It's the evil carriers doing everything they can to prevent Consumers from using the handsets/devices they want. Awesome hardware would lead to awesome mobile social networks.
I am not sure what kind of future they have. If someone is "mobile", meaning they are walking around the city, they will not be constantly looking at their phone. If they sit at a cafe, then maybe they look at the phone.
I guess I just don't see the hype of the mobile social network yet. That and most people have one already, they are called friends :)
Although I have just started using the generic mobile version of Brightkite http://m.brightkite.com on IE Mobile, I have been having NO TROUBLE using it with ONLY SMS so I don't understand why you say that phone compatibility is an issue!
@Rob D : the most clever post i've ever read on the whole internet.
I had a quick look at http://m.brightkite.com, but have found the full site works reasonably well in Opera Mini.
I guess there is a slight barrier in that you need to know how that browser works, and when to refresh the page view, rather than waiting for an Ajax update to occur. Kind of like a screenreader I guess.
Follow up on my opinion that all Mobile Social Networks will suck without fast data network and awesome hardware, well worded too:
Google's Android Frenzy Hides Mobile's Dirty Little Secret
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/11/googles_android_2.html
The "nothing like face-to-face" argument is getting tired. Have you considered that some may be using social networks because it's impractical to have an in-person relationship? or maybe some prefer social media.
@Corvida Your points are well taken. I would love an opportunity to show you what we are doing to create a series of LBS mobile apps across key handsets. So far, we already released two - Fon11 and Open Landmark iPhone Web apps. Also, we moving forward to share (open) our Open Landmark platform and tools to other developers.
Email me if you want to talk before your next posting.
Couldn't agree more. All these apps require everyone to have gone to the trouble to install these apps on their phone. Most people just won't care or will never hear about them. Take for example those apps that will tell you if someone in close proximity to you in a bar is 'compatible'. This is never ever going to happen unless the apps is installed on the phone by the operator and turned on by default.
Read my opinion in How BrightKite Could Evolve to Web 3.0: by adding more features:
http://www.arabcrunch.com/2008/05/how-brightkite-could-evolve-to-web-30.html