With these levels of growth, we're also seeing related mobile services getting a boost. App stores, both phone-based and carrier-based, are popping up left and right, mobile video usage is booming, and mobile ad markets are seeing dramatic growth, too. However, there's one area that hasn't yet benefitted from the mobile revolution: mobile e-commerce.

The indicators of increased mobile web usage are everywhere. Just this week, we heard Facebook reporting their mobile growth had tripled from December of last year to this past month, for example. And then there's AT&T, the carrier for Apple's iPhone, which is seeing so much data usage that they couldn't even keep up, having to delay the introduction of new iPhone capabilities like MMS messaging until they were ready to handle the demand.

Mobile Ads Doing Well

Mobile-dependent markets are doing well, too, at least for the most part. A recent Gartner report states that mobile ad spending will grow 74% this year worldwide to $914.5 million. But the real growth won't happen until 2011 when advertisers are expected to fully embrace the shift to mobile. By 2013, the firm expects the mobile ad market to surpass $13 billion with the Asia-Pacific region in the lead, followed by North America and Europe. Not only is the rise of the smartphone to thank for this trend, so is the rise in flat-rate data plans which make it easier for more consumers to afford mobile web connectivity. As more consumers go online, more web publishers begin to cater to their needs with mobile-ready versions of their websites. This, in turn, "is lifting mobile web access among non-smartphone users," notes Gartner analyst Andrew Frank.

Mobile Video on the Rise

Along with basic web surfing, mobile users are also finding entertainment via their handhelds, specifically in the form of mobile video. According to Nielsen's latest three-screen report, the number of people watching mobile video increased 70% from last year. Nielsen, which specifically tracks American media habits, says this increase to 15 million viewers represents the largest annual growth to date.

M-Commerce Struggles

However, not all mobile-dependent markets are doing well. Mobile e-commerce, for example, is struggling. Despite the massive numbers of mobile users, those using their phones to make purchases are still few and far between...at least here in the U.S. According to new data from eMarketer, more than 70 million U.S. mobile phone users will access the internet from their devices this year, but the m-commerce market remains immature. In an April 2009 survey by RIS News, privacy and security concerns are still at the forefront of both shoppers' and retailers' minds. This had led companies to drag their feet when it comes to introducing their mobile commerce plans. Says Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer senior analyst, "most retailers are either standing on the sidelines or in the midst of planning their mobile commerce strategy."

Another major problem is the lack of standardization in the mobile space. With the number of platforms now available, retailers find building a plethora of mobile applications not worth the effort. As InfoWorld recently noted, the smartphone market has become a "tower of Babel for developers." This means that mobile retailers have to carefully pick-and-choose the platforms they plan to support in order to see reasonable returns on their investments in this space. Despite the slow growth, it appears that m-commerce could be successful if only there were enough mobile apps and shopping opportunities out there.

Already, mobile payments firm Billing Revolution found that on-the-go consumers seem happy to purchase small ticket items like pizza and movie tickets, for example.

And a March 2009 PriceGrabber.com survey found that early m-commerce adopters were even buying up higher priced items like consumer electronics, apparel and jewelry.

In other words, when it comes to m-commerce, "if you build it, they will come." , or so it seems. However, developing m-commerce applications is only one part of the equation. For mobile e-commerce to be successful, we'll need to adopt a number of mobile payment platforms too.

For casual Internet users who are all over the social web but don't have the knowledge, resources, or desire to set up and market full online storefronts, there's PutACart, which democratizes the long tail of e-commerce, allowing users to peddle their wares from a plethora of the most popular social destinations online.

Here's what the carts look like on Facebook, MySpace, and WordPress, respectively:

Since this is for casual social-web users, Paypal is the only payment method for both buyers and sellers. And if a user makes changes to certain parts of his product list or account, he'll also need to update the embed codes on his social sites.

Mostly, though, it's a great idea with a kind of bad interface. Here's a look at my web-based store. Unfortunately, I can't customize the look and feel of this page, and I have no options for customizing my social web shopping cards other than toggling between thumbnail and extended product views. I have no control over how it looks, and social web users are very big on customizable GUIs. Especially for something that will be the commercial side of their personal brand, users need to be able to choose images, colors, typefaces, and layouts. They should probably also have some level of access to style the page/widget as they like. On this site, I didn't even have the option to crop my thumbnail, which came out distorted because the creators didn't give me any dimensions, either.

Also, the message sent out after a Paypal purchase is confirmed should without question be customizable. I, Jolie O'Dell, would never write something like, "We can't tell how much cooler you are for having bought something from us. Your friends will be jealous. Thank you!" And I'm sure a great many other vendors wouldn't, either. If you're sending out a message on my behalf to people in my social graph, it's imperative that I have control of what the message says.

Customization issues aside, it's a fantastic service for social web peeps who want to throw a few marketable products into the digital universe without committing to an online store, and we look forward to seeing what the PutACart team does in the future.

Also, this is a test store, so please don't try to buy anything I've posted! Do you really think I'd sell out all my tech scene bros for $0.99? That's my retirement plan.

But there's still a small problem here. Most Facebook applications aren't worth paying for. "It's sort of the chicken and the egg scenario," says Zuora chief executive Tien Tzuo, "we're providing the chicken, but are hoping it will hatch an egg."

It's not as if there isn't potential for a paid application marketplace. Facebook hosts some 50,000 apps and there are more than 600,000 developers on the Facebook platform. The problem is that a good bit of these apps are time-wasters, games, trivia, quizzes, and other somewhat non-essential applications - hardly anything worth your hard-earned money.

Z-Commerce, though, can imagine all sorts of applications that could take advantage of this new e-commerce platform. We would love to see professional, useful applications such as they ones they've envisioned - things like LinkedIn Recruiting, Relationship Managers, and other imaginary - but exciting - application ideas.

To get the ball rolling, Zuora is launching a contest for which they're seeking five Facebook developers to be the very first to build a subscription-based application with Z-Commerce for Facebook. Selected developers will receive free access to Z-Commerce for Facebook for one year. For more details, visit http://developer.zuora.com/facebook.

Eventually Google says it hopes to roll out e-commerce to support all kinds of industries, from music to movies to print to TV. TV, or course, knows how to sell advertisements; so even though TV is full of ads you still know you're there to watch video - not to go shopping. Such may not be the case with YouTube much longer, but maybe we all knew this day was coming - when YouTube was turned into the mall.

Exactly one year ago tomorrow, Google announced that YouTube videos would be offered inside of Adsense, something we thought was going to mean huge profits for the company. Apparently it hasn't, or else we'd have all heard about it in a press release.

Below: Overplayed, male-fetishized, wannabe-lesbian, mall-rat video with "click to buy" links at bottom.

Figuring out how to monetize YouTube is widely believed to be one of the biggest challenges Google faces, though in fact the $1.6 billion Google paid for YouTube was an all-stock deal and the hype of the buy alone raised Google's total stock value more than an additional $1.6 billion.

None the less, it's a huge property that the company obviously wants to monetize. We're not excited about seeing e-commerce links strewn all over YouTube, but if there's one bit of good news here it's that music sales will happen through both iTunes and the DRM-free Amazon.com. That way when you watch a cute video with someone lipsyncing, you can pay 99 cents and get that song yourself. Or, when you watch some pop-tart belt out the latest hit - you can buy that song for yourself. Instead of watching the video again or listening to it stream for free on MySpace Music.