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.

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.

This is further supported by data about what consumers do when mobile social networking. Checking for both comments and messages from their friends register above 50% for mobile social network users and 45% of users post status updates. In other words, they're doing the same sort of things on their phone as they would do if at their computer. The phone is just an extension of their online social networking life, not a separate and different platform for new types of interactions.

The survey, which was conducted 2Q, 2008, interviewed 500 users of online social networks. Out of those users, only 1% had visited a social network on their phone only. A mobile social network, for example, would be phone-only. Yikes. That number is low.

So Where Does This Leave Mobile Social Networks?

At first glance, we have to admit, these numbers don't look promising for mobile social networks. Although it's possible that some of these social networks will stick around thanks to strong and supportive niche audiences, it doesn't look like any today are poised for mainstream success.

Then again, it could just be too soon to tell. Given how long it takes for mainstream users to discover any new technology, it may be just a matter of time before mobile social networking really takes off. With the recent explosion of new touchscreen smart phones (iPhone, Android, , HTC Dream, Instinct, LG Dare, etc.) designed with web surfing in mind, mobile social networking could still be right around the corner.

Still Limited

While we have little doubt that mobile social networking will become a big market in the future, today's reality is still rather bleak. Because of the limitations in the current hardware and software implementations, a lot of the location-based social networks like Loopt, WhosHere, Pelago's Whrrl, and others feel limited and at times rather gimmicky.

Also, most of these networks simply suffer from the fact that they don't have many users and that the chances of finding any of your friends on them are relatively low for now.

What About the Established Networks?

In the near future, mobile social networking is only really going to grow once the big social networks like Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, LinkedIn, or MyYearBook start releasing location-aware applications for mobile devices.

Overall, we don't put too much stock into the ABI report. Thanks to highly targeted location-based advertising, there is a good chance that a mobile social network that manages to attract enough users (or any of the already establish social networks that releases a location aware application) will be able to be financially successful. For right now, however, with a market that is barely establish, trying to put a number on the potential success of these networks is almost silly.

According to Jill Meyers, an In-Stat analyst, "there are three primary methods of revenue generation for mobile social networking applications-- advertising, subscription services, and premium upgrades."

Although the subscription services and premium upgrades may work for some of these networks if what they offer is truly high-quality or unique, the businesses that choose to support themselves with ad revenue instead may have the most luck. It appears their customers won't mind, either - so long as the ads help subsidize the cost of the service.

Another study, this one by U.K.-based Mobixell Networks, showed the possibilities for growth in the area of ad-supported mobile social networks. They reported that 35% of 16-35 year-olds would use more ad-funded multimedia messaging services (MMS), if those were offered for free or at a discount and 29% would use more video services. The demand is there - now it's just a matter of businesses finding the right balance of ads and content.

Even though mobile advertising is still in an experimental phase at this point, the revenues generated in 2008 are predicated to be over $1.5 billion. By 2011, it's reported that number could be closer to $150 billion.

The mobile social network industry is certainly one we should all be watching. If you want to check out some of the more promising mobile social networks, go here to read a review of four of our favorites.

Internet Use and Social Media

That's not to say that there aren't some technology addicts that aren't social isolated - around 6% of the adult online population would fit in this category, having no one with whom they can talk about those important matters and who say they don't have anyone "especially significant" in their life. However, this figure (the 6%) has not grown as access to technology has grown over the years - it has remained virtually unchanged since 1985. This points to the fact that perhaps those who are socially isolated individuals would be so anyway, regardless of what sorts of tools are provided to them, be those mobile phones, PCs with internet access, etc.

For the majority of the online population, technology - and especially social media - has led to more diverse networks than we've ever had before. The report notes that those who participate in social networking services such as Facebook for example, are more likely to interact with people from different backgrounds, different races, different political parties, etc. Specifically, blogging and general internet use was tied to having more racially diverse networks while online photo sharing was tied to having more diverse political discussion partners.

Those who use the internet tend to have 15% more network ties who aren't family members and those who use instant messaging services have 19% more non-kin members in their core networks.

Mobile Phone Use

Along these same lines, the ubiquity of mobile phones hasn't led to decreased face time with family and friends, but just the opposite. On average, a person spends 195 days of the year having mobile phone contact with others, but face-to-face interactions occur on about 210 days per year. In addition, mobile users have around 15% more family members with whom they can discuss important matters and tend to have 25% more core network members who are not family members. Overall, those who use mobile phones have core networks that are 12% larger than those who don't.

Despite all this good news about how technology leads to having larger, more diverse networks, the researchers also found that our networks' size has actually shrunk over the years. Since 1985, there has been a decrease of about 1/3 in their size. The researchers don't suggest any specific reasons for this shrinkage, but they do point out that they can now rule out one possibility for sure: technology.

Mobile social networks have a very desirable demographic for advertisers. Over 60% of the users at MocoSpace, for example, which is one of the largest mobile social networks, are between the ages of 18 and 34. And 25% of US citizens under the age of 25 rely solely on mobile phones as their main means of voice communication.

What's more, users of mobile phones are more likely to engage with advertising. UK ad-supported mobile service Blyk, for example, saw an amazing 29% average response rate on ad campaigns -- with one campaign -- for a book, no less -- receiving an incredible 67% response rate on the service. M:Metrics found in February that mobile users were more likely to respond to advertising than regular Internet users, and 27% more likely to say they are tempted to buy an advertised product then the average person.

Clearly, there is a huge opportunity for commerce on the mobile platform, and social networking on the mobile seems to be the best way to target consumers. In November of last year, we asked how many of you were using the mobile web. Not surprisingly, a majority of ReadWriteWeb readers were -- just over a third loading a mobile site daily. But surprisingly, 30% of you were not mobile web users. A lot can change in 6 months, though, so we'd like to ask again. And if you're looking for a mobile social network to try out, check out Corvida's recent look at four promising options.

"Integrating with Frengo was a breeze and we really appreciate their experience and expertise in mobile. With Frengo we can extend our social experiences to people on mobile phones around the world," said Jia Shen, CTO of RockYou, a launch partner with Frengo on the toolkit. RockYou's "Horoscopes" application is available to mobile users via the Frengo toolkit. Other customers of Frengo include Slide, I Can Has Cheezburger?, Serious Business, and Frozen Bear.

Lance Takuda of RockYou recently confirmed to us that there are slight differences in the Open Social deployments on MySpace and Hi5, and the Facebook platform deployments on Faceook and Bebo. He told us there's about a "20% overhead in supporting" the different deployments of each platform (though going platform-to-platform basically requires a rewrite). It seems likely that because of these differences, the Frengo toolkit includes slightly different bits of code for working with each social network.

It is, of course, not out of the realm of possibility that social networks could build mobile functionality directly into their platforms. Both Facebook and MySpace have been pushing their mobile versions hard recently -- MySpace just partnered with Sprint and Verizon and RIM just announced a million Facebook users on Blackberry -- and it is plausible that they could push developers to the mobile space themselves. Facebook especially has some serious mobile chops with Joe Hewitt on staff, whose iUI is already one of the most popular iPhone frameworks.

While the mobile browser accounted for more visits, research shows that the social networking app audience has grown five times faster in the past year. While the mobile browsing social networking audience has grown 24% to 42.3 million users, the mobile social networking app audience shot up 126% to 42.3 million users in the past year.

Mobile Social Networks' Audiences: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn Come Out on Top

The Facebook mobile audience is fast approaching 60 million users. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn grew their mobile audiences by at least 50 percent in the past year. Facebook's numbers have risen 50% from the previous year to 57 million mobile users. Twitter's audience jumped 75% to 13.4 million users, and LinkedIn's mobile audience grew 69% to 5.5 million users.

What Does This Mean For Brands on Social Networks?

With the proliferation of daily deal sites, location-based social networks and sites like Groupon Now, which offer location-based deals-on-demand, it's increasingly important for brands to engage with their customers on social media. According to the comScore report, in August 2011 a total of 80.3% read posts from people they know personally, while 69.5% posted status updates from their mobile devices.

People are increasingly checking social networks more from their mobile devices. More than half (52.9%) read posts from organizations/brands/events. One of three mobile social networkers snagged a coupon/offer/deal, and twenty-seven percent clicked on an ad while visiting a social networking site.

17 Golden Rules

Here are the rules:

Pay Attention to What You Post and Upload:

• Consider carefully which images, videos and information you choose to publish
• Never post sensitive information
• Use a pseudonym

Choose Your Friends with Care:

• Do not accept friend requests from people you do not know
• Verify all your contacts

Protect Your Work Environment and Avoid Reputation Risk:

• When joining a social networking site use your personal e-mail address (not your company e-maill address)
• Be careful how you portray your company or organization online
• Do not mix your business contacts with your friend contacts
• Do not let anyone see your profile or personal information without your consent
• Do not leave your mobile phone unattended
• Do not save your password on your mobile phone
• Use the security features available on your mobile phone

Protect Your Mobile Phone and the Information Saved on It:

• Be careful what you publish about someone else

Inform Yourself:

• Read carefully and in full the privacy policy and the condition and terms of use of the social network you choose

Protect Your Privacy With the Privacy Settings:

• Use privacy-oriented settings (check who can see your pictures, who can contact you and who can add comments)

Report Stolen Phones Immediately:

• Be careful when using your mobile phone and pay attention to where you put it

Pay Attention to Location Based Services and Information of Your Mobile Phone:

• Deactivate location based services when not using them

What do You Think?

Most of these rules seem quite reasonable, but are you really going to use a nickname for your social network profile? Do you find it hard to keep your private life and work life separate on Facebook? Let us know what you think in the comments.

With the rise of smartphone-based computing, applications like Brightkite, Loopt, and others were slowly growing their user base, letting friends share posts, photos, and other information with each other as they moved from place to place out in the real world. Accessed via mobile applications or SMS, these sorts of networks provided the framework for connecting people to the places they visit.

However, it was too soon to determine whether mobile social networking was a space that would ever really take off. As studies showed, the social networks that most people accessed on the go were not specialized "mobile" networks, but the usual ones - Facebook and MySpace. Having to recreate a friend graph on new mobile social networks was not something everyone was up for...at least it hadn't been not so far.

Without any easy way to import MySpace and Facebook friends to these newer mobile networks (like via Facebook Connect for example), our mobile social networks were filled only with an odd mix of friends: some early adopters and maybe a handful of tech-obsessed locals. But that being said, the networks still had potential assuming they could have ever gotten over the initial hump to gather critical mass. They were offering something unique, and that boded well for them. Being able to tune into the world around you and see who was there, who had been there, and what was going on was a type of augmented reality that was never possible before the advent of modern mobile computing.

Google's Potential to Dominate

Now that Google has come onto the scene, friend graphs already intact, one has to wonder about the impact this will have on these smaller networks. How will they survive? Google is already a mainstream service and Latitude was just covered by the Wall Street Journal. Needless to say, any mainstream users out there intrigued by mobile social networking will now just go try Google's service.

Yet where the smaller networks had the cozy feel of you and handful of friends, any service maintained by a behemoth such as Google immediately has a "Big Brother" feel to it. No matter how many opt-out features and privacy controls they offer, some people just won't be able to shake that feeling that Google is just a little too omnipresent in our lives. But will "fear of Google" alone be enough to keep people from leaving the small mobile networks in favor of the larger one?

According to Martin May, Brightkite founder, though, Google didn't even come close to killing his service. "With Brightkite," he says, "we are primarily focused making meaningful connections with people you didn't necessarily know yet, around places. Latitude seems focused on showing you where your existing friends are at. Functionality-wise, Latitude does very little beyond sharing a latitude, longitude and accuracy with friends at the moment." But even May admits that may change down the road.

Wait...Our Real Friends Aren't on Google

What's strange about the mobile social networking market, though, are the missing players. The major missing players. Where is Facebook? Where is MySpace? Why is it that the biggest social networks on the planet have decidedly shunned any attempt to add proximity and mapping to their mobile services?

If anything our real friends are here, not on Google, whose friend network includes random people from our Gmail accounts, interesting folks from our RSS readers, and the occasional visitors to our blogs (thanks to the Google Friend Connect widget). Those may be people who we work with, people who wanted to share feeds with us, or fellow bloggers, but they aren't necessarily our real-life friends. And since they're not, why on earth would we want to share our locations with them?

The ability to connect to all our real-life, real-world friends and family - friends that include mainstream web users, mom, dad, and the kids - is something that just isn't here yet. No matter which mobile social network you end up using, including Google's, you're only going to see a slice of your actual social network. A true mobile social network would integrate friends from all the major social networks we participate in, plus our bevy of work colleagues from the social network hidden in our email, and, for all those non-participants out there, it would let us add them via their mobile phone number. But that really would be creepy, so we sort of hope it never happens.

Interestingly, not a single one of the top mobile search terms appears on Yahoo's top 10 list of searches on its regular search engine.

	Mobile Searches	Regular Searches
1	MySpace	Britney Spears
2	Facebook	WWE
3	Craigslist	Barack Obama
4	Movies	Miley Cyrus
5	Weather	RuneScape
6	Olympics	Jessica Alba
7	The Dark Knight	Naruto
8	Kim Kardashian	Lindsay Lohan
9	eBay	Angeline Jolie
10	AIG	American Idol

There are no real surprises here, but these results definitely stress the difference between what mobile users are looking for when they do searches compared to regular Internet users.

Getting to relevant information quickly is definitely the most important aspect of mobile search for mobile Internet users, who don't seem to be very interested in browsing the web for the sake of it. Hence, mobile users are obviously more interested in local and timely information like movie showtimes and weather than female celebrities. Social networks, which give users a quick dose of updates from friends, also fit in well with this style of Internet use.

Mobile users also seem to rely on search as a substitute for bookmarks more than regular Internet users.

Strangely, none of the top mobile search terms were related to the recent U.S. elections.

Wondering who's actively using geosocial and location-based services? Take a look at this handy infographic after the jump.

Now it's strange to think that your phone might not know where you are at this very moment.

Infographic via FlowTown. Image via Flickr user qthrul.

While these numbers are still relatively small compared to the total number of Facebook users (under 10%), it's huge for mobile social networking. Facebook has a really good mobile site and it looks like it's only getting better.

Facebook Mobile is now probably bigger than the entire userbase of Mixi, Japan's leading social network and a site that is very frequently accessed by mobile. Last week 6 leading Japanese social networks, including Mixi, MySpace Japan, Yahoo and others, announced that the companies are forming a mysterious alliance that could include content and widget sharing across their mobile sites.

We're curious how that kind of strategy will work compared to Facebook's strategy of building up a huge siloed web based social network and then creating a simple but extremely usable mobile version.

Commenting

It's interesting to see Facebook highlight the addition of commenting to its mobile interface. Non-users might not recognize what a big deal this is, but anyone who regularly uses mobile social networks (this authors' favorite is FriendFeedToGo) knows how frustrating it is to view but not interact with friends' content on your mobile. It's hugely liberating to be able to comment from your phone; it's a game changer, a feature that helps the technology move from not being worth using to being a pleasure to use.

It's early days for mobile social networking, but it's great to see market leader Facebook making great moves in feature development and user growth.

Thanks to the always-fabulous mobile blog Textually for bringing this announcement to our attention.

We've already profile Brightkite as a winning mobile social network in the arena. Brightkite allows for your network of friends to keep track of where others may be at any moment. Since no GPS is required, users can send updates to the service via text messaging or email, to update their profile with location updates, pictures, and notes. With a host of privacy settings to prevent any form of stalking, Twitter users are increasingly using the network to update friends with status locations sent to their Twitter streams. Brightkite may be one of the best mobile networks to use, especially when going to a conference or big event in town.

Update: We've got 100 Brightkite invites for you. Just leave us your info below. (Remember, OpenID users, email might not be displayed so make sure you let us know what it is).

Zyb

Taking a different approach from Brightkite, Zyb aims to be a mobile contact organizer for your social network. While we already have our address books for this, Zyb looks to provide a way for you to backup and synchronize your contacts online. You can store your phone numbers, calendar and texts, manage this information online, and transfer your information to a new phone if there ever comes a time. You can also use Zyb to find out who has you in their phones as a contact and even discover friends of friends. Think of Zyb as an expansion on your Facebook pictures and contacts only more mobile.

Groovr

Groovr is your mobile network's night out on the town. Post a picture, message, or video to your Groovr profile and have it sent to all your friends too. Instant chat? Groovr's got you covered. However, some of these features are redundant. Can't we already send messages, pictures, and videos to our friends without a third party? The only feature we found remotely unique is a city's Explore page on Groovr. All of your posted items are sent to the corresponding cities Explore page. Here's a peek at San Francisco on Groovr:

Fon11

Developed by MoBlast Technologies, Fon11 could become the hottest mobile social network for the iPhone. With a nice UI (of course) and great features like the ability to see just how far away your contacts are from you, availability status messages, visibility settings and more, it seems Fon11 has a lot more to offer than the rest of the pack. Fon11 has already been ported to Android and Nokia Web Runtime with development plans in the works for J2ME and Windows Mobile platforms. While GPS remains an issue through no fault of Moblast, we've been assured that there are many strategies in development to find a resolution.

Has the Future of Mobile Social Networks Arrived?

With so much to offer, it's not hard to envision mobile social networks taking off on the coattails of the social web. Brightkite is already seeing a steady climb, Groovr could become the best mobile social network for finding out what's going on in town, and Fon11 may see its moment of fame well before the 3G iPhone hits. Has the future arrived? We'll leave that for you to decide, while we sit and wait anxiously for more.

The paid partnerships between Google, Microsoft and Yahoo with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and more that were launched last Fall could provide a model, but location provides new opportunities, as well. Isn't it amazing that on a Web so dependent on Google, there are emergent new kinds of websites so valuable they can charge giant search engines for their content? Here are some things Google might do with that content.

Related:

• Why We Check-in: The Reasons People Use Location-Based Social Networks
• Foursquare's Location Layers - This is Big
• What Twitter's New Geolocation Makes Possible

Real-time search

Last fall Google started including Tweets, fresh blog posts and more in a live scrolling box on the search results page for particularly hot search queries. Mobile location-based social networks, their comments and tips could help populate those kind of search results for certain keywords or venues.

Searching for the big basketball game? Why not include the notes and tips of people checking in at the game right now in the results? Check-ins in general have a lot of potential. Google-backed social TV app Miso or entertainment check-in app GetGlue could power media check-ins that would make search results much fresher.

Super Social Maps

Why not annotate map search with live and archival location check-in notes, annotations, tips, etc.? Imagine searching for directions to a venue and being told how many people and which friends were currently checked in there on Loopt, Whrrl and Foursquare. Seeing not just restaurant reviews from CitySearch and Trip Advisor but quick tips from location networks? Sounds like a great idea to me.

Mobile Search

No need to go into too much detail about this: Check-in app content would be a very logical addition to mobile search results. The growth of branded layers of content annotating locations means that a Google mobile search could become a search for nearby content published by the Independent Film Channel, the Huffington Post, etc. That makes mobile search and location networks more appealing for everyone.

Privacy, monetization, relevance, personalization, temporal strategies and other matters still need to be figured out. These networks are still very small. The largest among them, Foursquare, has a reported 2 million users. That's less than 25% the size of StumbleUpon, for example, and just over one third the size of curation blogging platform Tumblr.

The potential for location-based social networks is huge, though. And the search engines know it. That's why they are talking to the startups. For these little startups, this kind of monetization could be an important life-line to fund their continued innovation, too.