Although the company is not specifically marketing Mix as a dating application, it's clearly designed for mobile singles because - let's face it - who else would want to browse the photos and profiles of nearby folks and strike up IM-based conversations with those who look interesting? If that's not about dating, then it's just borderline creepy.

While Loopt Mix is not the first iPhone-based dating application - others like DatingDNA and Skout have beaten them to the punch - the company may have a leg up on their competition already, thanks to brand recognition alone. That's because Loopt was featured in one of the many iPhone TV commercials last year as a great way to stay in touch with friends. Given widespread exposure like that, Loopt is already well known beyond the early adopter set.

Loopt Mix Features

Like its competitors, Loopt Mix lets you tap into the iPhone's location-based features to see which other Loopt Mix members are nearby. You can browse their profiles, view and post photos and status messages, and start chat sessions - all of which is par for the course with mobile dating apps these days. In fact, there's nothing all that revolutionary about Mix's feature set, except perhaps for its ability to send you real-time push notifications - something that a few other social networking apps, Facebook included, have yet to adopt.

In Loopt Mix, the push notifications work with the app's built-in chat functionality, so you're notified when and if someone responds to you, without you having to sit there looking uncool while constantly reloading the page or staring at a blank chat window.

It's also worth mentioning that you don't have to be out on the town to take advantage of Loopt Mix. Since it simply locates people near you, you could use this anywhere - even in your own home - to find and connect to other interesting people. However, should you ever want to go offline, you and the other person would have to make arrangements to meet somewhere... just as you would on a "real" dating website like Match.com or eHarmony. The only difference with Loopt Mix is that, unlike traditional dating sites, the app is completely free. That, too, could help Mix grow - especially in this tough economy, where finding love for a fee is a luxury many can no longer afford.

Unfortunately Zensify doesn't work as well as we hoped it would. Its problems may be instructive to similar projects elsewhere or they may point to trouble inherent in this kind of social network user experience. Here are three interesting problems we see so far with this new app.

Zensify's baseline performance is not that great. Pageloads hang, searches sometime fail to catch up to the live web, but relaunching the app helps it a lot and despite the complex tasks it enables the UI feels a little clunky. We were turned off as soon as the app asked for our Twitter password instead of using Twitter Connect, but that's just one little detail on a long list.

The poor iPhone had to be struggling to deal with message intake, keyword tracking, tag cloud creation and more over multiple social networks - especially given that the Twitter, Flickr and Facebook accounts we tested with get updates from hundreds if not thousands of friends. It's becoming more and more commonly discussed that iPhone apps are sometimes slow to load and function because the iPhone is simply processor challenged. We ask a lot from those little phones and Zensify asks a whole lot for an app.

2. Sophisticated Social Network Analysis Needs to Be More Sophisticated

Zensify's idea of serving up trending topics among a limited group of people (your friends) is a fabulous one. Unfortunately, as many heavy Twitter users know, the bulk of all messages from all friends is not as useful as the strategic creation of groups. I'm following more than 3,000 people on Twitter and the most commonly used words across that many people tend to be pretty "lowest common denominator." They are words like "Life," "Business," etc. Those are pretty worthless "hot topics."

Zensify should support the creation of groups of friends (someday there will be a standard format that allows us to import groups created in Seesmic or Tweetdeck into other apps) and the tag clouds need to be granular on a sub-group level. That's asking all the more from the app and phone, though. As we go further and further into these kinds of details, it might make more sense for Zensify to have an iPhone-friendly web app.

Whenever you offer "hot topic" discovery you also need there to be "stop words" or words that are automatically excluded. We're sure there are some already, but they need to be user-editable. I'm following one high-volume Twitter account that just pumps out retweets that include the word censorship, for example. I barely notice it in all my other Twitter interfaces but half of my Zensify "hot topics" cloud is dominated by a few related words every day. Please let me exclude those words.

While you're at it, let me exclude Twitter with a click. It's so noisy that sometimes I'd like to limit my view to everything else. That's a very common problem among social network aggregation services.

3. There Still May Be Too Little Signal to Parse

Despite my following 3k people on Twitter, hundreds of people on Facebook and probably 20 on Flickr - the threshold for a hot topic is really low. Three or four mentions of one word across all my friends in the recent past put that word at the top of my hot topic cloud. The promise is exciting but the reality of that user experience is pretty disappointing. Throw one spam attack or senselessly repeated message into the mix and I end up clicking through a number of worthless faux-trends.

Zensify may not be storing enough messages from the recent past in order to offer meaningful trend analysis. For example, the hottest topic among my friends right now is the word "social," which has been used 11 times over the last 30 minutes. That's a uselessly common word and, really, it's hard to believe that thousands of people I know have only used it 11 times over the last 30 minutes. That doesn't seem credible.

Some of these may be problems with the very-well received Zensify app in particular, but we suspect that most of them are problems that would be found with just about any app ambitious enough to try to offer powerful cross-network social aggregation and analysis on the iPhone. Please, developers, prove us wrong!

Using the Wall

To get started, simply browse to the desired place and click the new Wall tab. Then click on the embedded Brightkite Wall to go full screen. Organizers can even customize the Wall beforehand, if desired. The message and location name can be modified, the shortcode can be selected for use within the U.S. or outside the U.S., and checkins can be turned on or off.

Of course, Brightkite has a much smaller user base than Twitter, which could have made this new feature a non-starter. However, Brightkite has that problem covered. With the Brightkite Wall, anyone can participate by texting a pre-defined shortcode provided for you by the service.

Better Than Live Blogging?

Brightkite's Wall may soon beat Twitter to become the microblogging platform of choice for live events because it offers a much richer stream of information. Instead of just displaying 140-character notes, Brightkite's Wall also displays photos. Combined with notes and checkins, this makes the Wall a much more engaging experience.

For those virtually attending the event, watching the Brightkite Wall could end up being even better than refreshing a blogger's post featuring their "live" coverage of the event. A live blog only gives you one point of view and set of images. Even if it's a group effort, it's not the same as being immediately tapped into the thoughts and reactions of all the event's attendees as you are with Brightkite.

Potential Problems

Our only concern for this new feature is that it doesn't appear to be any sort of administrative control over who can configure what. If some rogue conference attendee wanted to, he or she could highjack the Wall by customizing their own personalized greeting for all to see. That could lead to problems, especially if the message was profane or offensive.

Another concern is that there doesn't seem to be any sort of archiving system in place, so while the Wall may be a great real-time view into the thoughts and activities that are taking place at a particular point in time, going back to view older images and notes could be a challenge if the same locale (address) is used over and over again for subsequent events.

The Wall feature is still in beta, though, so as people begin to use it and submit feedback, it may be updated to even better reflect people's needs than it does now.

The series is based on a conversation I had with Gustav Praekelt, a mobile entrepreneur located in South Africa. In this post we explore how mobile technology is being used for social good in Africa. See also Part 1 here.

The Mobile Phone's Expansive Reach and The Massive Outreach Opportunity

Africa is an expansive and growing mobile market. With 300 million mobile accounts and more being added each day, the mobile phone presents a far-reaching outreach opportunity for marketers. However, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are also excited at the possibility of being able to send messages to 300 million people at the push of a button.

The Praekelt Foundation, a charitable outreach of Praekelt Consulting , is taking their knowledge of web and mobile technologies and finding ways to help Africa's needy. The Foundation finds, attracts, and incubates projects to reach out to Africa's under-served populations. Praekelt Foundation's current projects are all health-focused, but the organization is actively seeking other avenues to assist Africa's Mobile-based under-served people.

SocialTxt

SocialTxt is a project that utilizes Please Call Me (PCM) systems. To understand what a PCM message is, one must look at the nature of the African mobile market. In North America, the vast majority of cell phone customers pay on a postpaid basis, meaning most of us pay X amount of dollars for Y amount of minutes. However in Africa, the opposite as true, roughly 85-90% of customers utilize pre-paid SIMs to make and receive mobile phone service. In some African countries like Nigeria, pre-paid customers account for as much as 95% of the mobile market.

In these pre-paid dominant markets, when you run out of call credit, you can't make outgoing calls or SMS messages. To get someone to call you, you might ring them once or beep them. To respond to all this traffic generated on the mobile phone network, mobile network operators invented Please Call Me messages as a way to prompt your friends or family to call you back. A Please Call Me message is merely a SMS-like message that prompts the recipient to call the number of the requester. The PCM messages are free to send for mobile customers, up to 6 per day.

PCM messages are extremely popular in South Africa, of which 30 million messages are sent a day in a country with a population of around 47 million people.

PCM messages, in recent years, have been used by advertisers and marketers as a vehicle for marketing. Praekelt and his colleagues saw the PCM system as a tool for social change. The Praekelt Foundation thereby approached a network operator about a year ago and convinced the company to work with the Foundation to conduct a trial of positive social impact advertising.

The PCM message offers 120 characters that the Foudation and it's partners to utilize. For example, a message can be sent to encourage the recipient to call an HIV call center or medical center. The messages fill a need, as Praekelt said, "This is not fancy technology and most of the PCM message users are at the bottom of the social economic chain. These are people who don't have TV's, so programs such as SocialTxt give companies and groups a great way to reach these previously un-reachable portions of the population."

To enhance the PCM message, Praekelt Foundation, in partnership with health-focused NGOs, can insert a WAP link to a mobile website or a phone number to an interactive voice response system allowing for further health-related information to reach HIV-stricken patients.

With SocialTxt, the Praekelt Foundation has teamed up with partners such as the national HIV/AIDS Call Centeres, People Opposing Women Abuse, Netcare/Vodocom Cleft Lip Campaign, and Khomanani Zithande Campaign.

TxtAlert

HIV/AIDS is a health epidemic at the forefront of Africa's focus for health outreach. Of 33 million people in the world who are HIV Positive, 22 million of them live in Sub-Saharan Africa. Of those 22 million, 5 million are in South Africa alone. This means, as Praekelt points out, that roughly 10% of the world's HIV-positive population lives in South Africa.

TxtAlert is a project that uses SMS messages to remind HIV patients to go to the health clinic for their next visit. In addition to notifying patients of the upcoming appointments, TxtAlert also requests them to reschedule if they are unable to attend. These efforts are aimed at keeping patients engaged in their treatment programs and to deter them from discontinuing their HIV/AIDS treatment programs.

The Praekelt Foundation's research found that even though most of the partner clinic's patients were jobless, more than 90% of these patients have at least one working cell phone in their household. Naturally, SMS is a viable communication method in such a situation.

In addition to prompting patients to attend their appointments, TxtAlert is being used by health clinics to incentivize those who come to the clinic as well. After a patient attends an appointment, TxtAlert will send the patient a text saying "Thank you for coming to the clinic, remember your next appointment is coming up on ". The patient will then receive a reminder text 90 days before the appointment, 2 weeks prior and so on. Well performing patients get free airtime and cell phones as incentives for coming in.

The Praekelt Foundation and partner clinics are experiencing favorable results with SocialTxt. On average, a typical clinic will have a 15% no-show rate for patient appointments. However, when a clinic utilizes SocialTxt, those rates drop to around 3%.

Praekelt points out that a great factor about SocialTxt is that deploying the system doesn't require vast amounts of capital and infrastructure. The main building block is an electronic patient record system and the rest is done behind the scenes by the TxtAlert software. The system is highly scalable as usage and needs rise. The Praekelt Foundation is currently working with a pilot clinic with about 10,000 users on the system. However, they are adding more clinics and will soon be up to 120,000 users on the SocialTxt system.

A third project utilizing SocialTxt will be unveiled at the Pop!Tech conference in October. Pop!Tech gave funding to the Praekelt Foundation to send out thousands of PCM messages regarding HIV/AIDs education.

Mobilisr

Mobile messaging is a far-reaching conduit for reaching a mass audience. The Praekelt Foundation, along with co-lead organization Cell-Life, is working to build an open source, high speed and highly reliable mobile messaging platform called Mobilisr.

Mobilisr could be used for health-related outreach, but also be used by governments and public-safety organizations to send out messages relating to: human rights monitoring, elections monitoring, emergency alerts, conducting public surveys, or could even be used by a group to organize protests.

Prakelt also told me that Mobilisr is enabling customers to conduct SMS voting (much like American Idol's text messaging voting system). The problem with the existing SMS voting systems, as he explains, is that they are built on proprietary systems. Te Prakelt Foundation is working with NGO's (such as Cell-Life) to build SMS based pledge lines and incentive systems built upon WAP sites.

Mobilisr just launched on October 1st. It will be interesting to see how the technology is employed by NGOs and other groups for social good.

Conclusion

With mobile phone technology spreading so rapidly across the African continent, there are many opportunities to reach out to Africa's under-served population. Any vehicle that offers access to the population should be exploited. It's a shame that many people in these groups are being ignored, even though many of them have mobile phones.

It is great to see organizations such as the Praekelt Foundation working with mobile network operators, health clinics, and NGOs to connect Africa's under-served population with the care and services they need to be happy, informed, and perhaps more healthy.

About The Author

Photo: Paul Watson

The series is based on a conversation I had with Gustav Praekelt, a mobile entrepreneur located in South Africa. Part 2 is here.

Africa: An Emerging Market?

Running Through the Numbers:

Africa is a continent which is inhabited by roughly 1 billion people. Astoundingly, the "Dark Continent" has been a fertile market for the mobile industry, with 300 million Africans currently carrying an active mobile account. This is an adoption rate of around 30% on a continent that is not known for having an affluent population.

In some African countries, mobile adoption nears 80-90%. Specifically in South Africa, which has a population of 47 million people, 42 million carry and use mobile networks.

Like the rest of the world, excluding North America, most African mobile customers opt for pre-paid mobile phone accounts. In South Africa, only 10% choose to have a service agreement with a specific mobile network operator. In some African countries, pre-paid customers account for 95-96% of the mobile customer base.

Going High Speed

More people in South Africa have 3G high speed-capable handsets than traditional wireline broadband. Praekelt says "traditional broadband is just not going to happen here." He also added that South Africa was the second place in the world to receive an HSDPA network following only Germany. Because a strong traditional broadband infrastructure doesn't exist in South Africa, there aren't many Wi-Fi hotspots to accommodate wireless consumer needs. HSDPA gives customers high speed capable networks that are highly practical and portable at the same time.

Only a few countries on the African continent have 3G including Nigeria, Tanzania, Ghana, Mauritius, South Africa, and Swaziland. In the next year however, many new countries will come on board with 3G data service. However, not all customers will be able to afford 3G handsets right away.

With adoption numbers around 30%, how many of these mobile customers are using the mobile Internet? According to Praekelt, only 1-2%. However, some mobile websites based in Nigeria are attracting up to 200,000 users. Praekelt noted that when he was recently in Lagos, he saw people with 3G handsets even though such a network has yet to be built.

Finally, I asked Praekelt how many African's have smartphones. He replied by saying adoption is very low at around 5% at best. In some demographics, as much as 10% of mobile handset sales are smartphones. For example. his company built a mobile advertising platform that required a smartphone. The campaign, featured on a local radio show as a trial, drew 10% of 18-24 year olds.

Even though smartphone adoption may be low, 50% of African mobile customers use WAP services. Even though smartphones feature rich internet applications, most modern cell phones have browsers in them that enable users to download ringtones and use WAP sites.

Africa as An Inviting Mobile Market

Almost every African country has at least three major mobile network operators. However, initially in the 1990's, none of the major international carriers thought Africa was worthwhile to explore as a potential market. A few key mobile network operators including Vodafone, Celltell (now called Zain), and MTN explored certain African geographies, selected markets and, as a result, cleaned up in terms of market share. In Africa, Vodafone network has 7 territories, Celltell has 10-15 territories and MTN has 21 territories. Local companies understood the emerging environment and the challenges ahead and built out wireless networks. Now they are benefiting from these early bets.

It is astounding how these mobile network operators are able to thrive in markets where average revenue per user (ARPU) is relatively low. For example, in the North American market, normal ARPU is around $60-$70 per month. But in markets such as Africa and India it is much less. AirTel in India has the world's lowest ARPU, however, they area able to turn a respectable profit by making it up in volume with massive subscriber counts.

According to Praekelt, an inviting regulatory environment makes it possible for mobile network operators to come in and do business in Africa. Also, traditional copper phone lines take so long to get that wireless is a no-brainer to most customers who need communications solutions. The long wait for a traditional phone line, combined with firece wireless competition caused wireless phone service prices to go down, leading to success for mobile network operators.

Regarding Open Source and Mobile Handset Adoption, and the iPhone

I asked Praekelt what impact the open source on mobile movement would have in Africa. With developments such as the LiMo Foundation pushing Linux on Mobile, Nokia buying and open sourcing Symbian, and Google's Android now on the market, how will this impact emerging markets? Prawkelt replied, "In a word: nothing".

He expanded by illustrating that Finnish handset maker Nokia has gained such a solid footing in the mobile handset market, "almost everyone is on Nokia."

Nokia is successful in markets such as Africa because they make such a wide array of handsets with a plethora of feature sets and price points. Nokia has a huge market share because they market cell phones that are cheap, expensive, and everywhere in between. Nokia has been able to be successful on both the high and low end of the price spectrum. Plus, Africans like Nokia handsets because they find them easy to use. Oddly enough, the Nokia E90 communicator is quite popular in Africa because it is the one phone that can do almost anything, as Praekelt points out. A very practical device, the E90 features 3G connectivity, a full QWERTY keyboard, and a large screen, adding to it's popularity.

Additionally, application developers are attracted to the Nokia/Symbian platform because of its "openness". For example, a programmer working on Symbian can release mobile applications and services in a non-walled garden environment, unlike Apple iPhone developers. Many African mobile users depend on functionality that is locked out by the iPhone, such as full access to the Bluetooth stack and MMS capabilities.

In Praekelt's opinion, no one will be able to afford an Android handset. An entry-level Android handset might appeal to some Africans, but only if it's offered at a low price but only time will tell, as Praekelt stated.

Also, looking at the iPhone, Praekelt doesn't anticipate these devices taking off in South Africa as purchasing the Apple mobile phone requires a contract with a specific mobile carrier. Plus, at present, South Africans are unable to access the iTunes store for purchasing music and media. The iPhone will likely appeal only to extremely rich persons who are willing to pay $500 for a mobile phone.

This mentality regarding the iPhone carries over to other emerging markets as well. In areas such as Africa, India, and China, iPhone sales are not strong. This means you have 3 billion people who are overlooking Apple's iPhone. The iPhone has been effective in advancing usability in the mobile phone industry through competitiveness, however, the platform is too closed off for many customers in emerging markets.

How Africans Use Their Mobiles: Making Easy Mobile Payments

Africa is home to the largest mobile-based payment network in the world, M-Pesa is a mobile payment system that allows users to exchange money via SMS. A cross between PayPal and Western Union, M-Pesa works with pre-paid mobile calling credit. If you wish to pay a friend or colleague, you can simply use SMS to transfer money his M-Pesa account, resulting in a credit to his calling balance. You can even go to an M-Pesa agent and get cash payments from your M-Pesa balance.

What makes Africa a great environment for a mobile payment system? It's a matter of their economic and societal make up. Most of the one billion people in Africa do not have bank accounts. For example in South Africa, only 13 million out of 47 million people have bank accounts. Of these, only 2 or 3 million have traditional internet access that would allow them to log in to their bank account online to transfer money. For a population who deals mostly in cash, being able to transfer money via a mobile phone payment system presents a huge opportunity to them.

Leapfrogging PC's and Going Mobile

If you look at South Africa's mobile adoption, virtually 100% of the population has a mobile phone (actual adoption is at roughly 91%, but excluding children, it's close to 100%). This drastic adoption has occurred just 10-15 years after the first GSM network was launched in South Africa.

Western based companies who are building their website and web presence tend to think of their mobile internet site as an afterthought. What is often forgot is formating and structuring the site to appeal to mobile internet users in addition to 'traditional' PC-based Internet users. Mobile websites, in Praekelt's experience, are referred to as "the same thing" when in reality the requirements for mobile are quite different. This mentality is not relevant in mobile-heavy populations such as Africa. In a society where virtually everyone is reachable by SMS, new marketing opportunities present themselves.

Mobile customers in Africa are leapfrogging the "traditional" web and going straight for massive WAP and mobile web adoption. 3G phones are available in countries such as Ghana, Tanzania, and South Africa. Combine this capability with inexpensive 3G data rates and a fully-capable 3G phone such as the Nokia E90 Communicator, and you have a population of mobile consumers that sees the online world through an entirely new lens. As Praekelt stated, "with these capabilities, who needs a PC with web access?"

In the markets described above, traditional DSL or cable-modem based internet adoption is relatively flat and growth is linear. However, the mobile adoption is exponential year after year.

Conclusion

The adoption numbers and usage models found in Africa point to a population who has quickly taken an enabling technology and woven it into their daily lives. The next part of this series will illustrate how the Praekelt Foundation has teamed up with social organizations and NGOs to deliver mobile-based social marketing solutions for social good.

About the Author

Jason Harris is a technology and mobile enthusiast based in Portland, Oregon. To connect with Jason or read more of his posts, check out his blog at Techcraver.com.

Photo: Paul Watson

UPDATE: See also Africans and Their Mobiles, Part 2: Using Mobile Phones For Social Good

In order to use the new mobile photo upload feature, you must first log in to your MySpace account on the web to enable the setting. Once there, click on "My Account," then click "Mobile." You should see a section called "Send Photos From Your Phone." From here, you can set a password and MySpace will generate a unique, personalized email address for you to add to your phone's address book. The next time you take a mobile pic, you can just email it to MySpace using this address. The photo will show up in seconds. Unfortunately, there is no way to configure the mobile uploads to go into any particular album - they are all put into your "My Photos" album by default.

MySpace has had a mobile web site available for some time at m.myspace.com where you could interact with many of the service's features. However, there was no option to upload photos from that site.

Blackberry App Coming In "A Few Weeks"

In the comments of the blog post, everyone's friend "Tom" reveals some more news that wasn't mentioned in the original post. In response to a user's comment, Tom confirms that the MySpace Blackberry app announced last month is almost ready. Says Tom, the Blackberry app will be available "in a few weeks." (Wow, that's almost a year after Facebook released theirs!) Why is MySpace so slow to support mobile? Given Facebook's growing popularity, you would think that MySpace would have had these features and apps ages ago.

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.

You have to appreciate E's creative URL - it's memorable, but also makes you curious. E? What's E?, you wonder. When I first encountered the URL, it was in a tweet which read "I'm now using E to add friends to my Twitter account. More info on http://hellomynameise.com." Did I click though? You bet.

"E," as it turns out, is a new spin on digital contact exchange. Instead of using paper business cards, you use your phone to exchange data. At first, you may think that sounds very much like mobile contact service Dropcard, but it's not. The only similarity between E and Dropcard is that they both allow you to customize your profile online and share it with others, but the similarities end there.

To use Dropcard, you either text or use a mobile app which emails your contact info to the person you just met. With E, you go to a mobile web URL that lets you exchange a passcode with your new contact. The passcode is simply a five-digit code which is entered into the mobile web app itself. They show your theirs, you show them yours...that sort of thing. Once connected, you don't receive an email message with their contact info like with Dropcard. E goes a step further and actually adds that contact to all the services you've already integrated with E.

Service Integration

At the moment, E allows you to integrate Twitter, PICNIC (a network for the PICNIC conference), and Soocial. However, Delicious, European social portal Netlog, and LastFM are listed as coming soon. After you integrate these services with E, when you add a contact they're immediately added to all those other web services, too. And thanks to Soocial, an address book solution, E contact info can also synchronize with your email address book in Gmail, Highrise, your OSX address book, or the address book on your phone itself.

Barriers To Adoption

E faces one of the typical problems that many web 2.0 startups do - they don't work for you until a lot of people are using it. Just because you have a profile on E, that doesn't mean that those you meet do. And unlike a service like Dropcard, there isn't a way to use E without the other person's involvement.

In addition to the service itself, the developers of E came up with a crazy but interesting idea for a hardware device called the "Connector." With this device, you can exchange contact info with others just by touching the two connectors together. While gadget junkies and shiny object collectors may find this device appealing, it could easily remain a niche gadget that ends up sitting on the shelf next to your Chumby and Nazbaztag. To cross the adoption barrier, those at E would be smart to sponsor events where everyone gets a Connector at registration. After a few high-profile events, they would have industry movers and shakers on board, and that's always a good place to start. Sponsoring events may be just what the company is planning, though, since their site mentions that the "Connector will be released at large events in the near future."

Will It Work?

At present, the E service is very basic. Twitter integration is the only service of note that works yet. (Soocial looks great, but is in private beta). The profiles themselves are also not as flexible as those with Dropcard are. You can easily add and remove services with Dropcard, but with E, I wasn't even able to add a second company that represents my second job. The services section of the web site is confusing - it doesn't allow you to do anything more than customize which services are connected. The actual profile information is entered under "Settings," so you can't specify that only personal contacts get your home address, for example. It appears to be all-or-nothing.

E still has far to go to become a truly successful digital contact exchange service, but at least they're trying something different. Because they operate via mobile URL, not an app specific to any one device, they're better positioned for more universal adoption that a service that designates itself as iPhone-only, for example.

The service is in private beta testing now, but you have the opportunity to make an impassioned plea as to why they should invite you on the signup page here. (If you get in, feel free to add me: 17975.)

Check out the video below to see E in action:

Hello, my name is E from Renato Valdés Olmos on Vimeo.

Out of the 2.7 billion people with mobile phones, those not carrying a smartphone still represent the majority of handset owners. But these people deserve an easy way to access their email and social network notifications, too, even if they can't afford or don't want to pay for a sophisticated smartphone.

Says Michael Maguire, founder and CTO, who previously worked in the BlackBerry Applications team at Research In Motion, "My team and I think there are some great dedicated mobile email devices out there - but we're biased, because half of us helped build one of them. Unfortunately the rest of the world's 1.1 billion email users have phones with unusable, hard to configure in-built email that few people can be bothered to set-up. With BlueWhaleMail, we've gone back to the drawing board so that people can keep the phone they like and still stay in touch on the go."

At the moment, the BlueWhaleMail app is only available for Nokia Series 60 and SonyEricsson phones, but that list will grow in time as BlueWhaleMail branches out to serve the needs of those who carry "ordinary" mobile phones.

Where To Download

BlueWhaleMail can be downloaded from http://apps.facebook.com/bluewhalemail/ or by browsing to m.bluewhale.net on your mobile phone. The application is ad-supported and features a small banner ad at the top of the BlueWhaleMail message viewer.

To learn more about BlueWhaleMail, check out this video, where founder Michael Maguire discusses the application:

BlueWhaleMail Interview with Michael Maguire - video powered by Metacafe

With FriendMobilizer, you can view your friend's information and profiles, write on their walls, browse photo albums, approve friend requests, view group and event invites, read your new wall posts, read the messages in your inbox, update your status, and more.

Click Image to See Larger Version

The application is currently available for both Windows Mobile devices and Pocket PCs and can be downloaded from the web site at www.faceofmobile.com. However, according to the company, the generic software platform developed for FriendMobilizer will soon be ported to other mobile OS's as well. In addition, the company plans to build mobile apps for other social networks in the future.

Loopt actually launched back in 2006 after receiving funding from YCombinator as well as Series A from NEA and Sequioa. Back then, it was only available to Boost Mobile customers as a Java mobile client. In 2007, Loopt added Sprint Nextel to their list of carriers. However, it was this year when Loopt really started to grow, announcing more deals and a developers program which provides access to Loopt's APIs for building location-aware applications.

Today, Loopt has deals with all major U.S. carriers, including AT&T, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, Alltel, and Boost Mobile. Although some networks support more phones than others, Loopt has made a smart move by not ignoring the other big smartphone out there - the Blackberry. Loopt now works on Blackberry phones on Sprint, Alltel, T-Mobile, and AT&T.

In addition to Blackberry support, Loopt works with a handful of other popular phones, like Sprint's Razr and Razr2, but the big news of late was the reveal of the new Loopt app for the 3G iPhone which was featured during Steve Jobs' WWDC keynote.

How It Works

Like other location-based mobile social networks, Loopt lets you share your location, status, and photos with everyone on the service or just with your friends. A built-in mapping application shows you where your friends are and what they're doing. To send out updates, you can either use your Loopt friend list or use AIM, thanks to included integration with that instant messaging service.

As you move around, Loopt uses GPS to automatically update your location and status - a feature that some people (usually those in the older generation) find a little disconcerting. For additional privacy, this location updating feature can be set to "manual" mode instead. Of course, you're in control of who gets to "spy" on you - if you don't want to be stalked by unknown strangers, then you simply don't friend them.

A Loopt Map

The Problem With Loopt

Despite all the new Blackberry phones supported, there are still several models that aren't yet able to use Loopt. (My T-Mobile Pearl would be one of them). Of course, there are also tons of "regular" phones that are unsupported, too. Meanwhile, the service has to compete with other mobile social networks, like Brightkite for example, where the only barrier to entry is the ability to use SMS.

For Loopt, some questions remain: can a mobile social network really succeed if only a limited number of phones are supported? Can Loopt succeed if they only focus on smartphones?

Maybe, maybe not...but then again, it could be that Loopt is just betting on the fact that in year or so from now after everyone's contracts run out, we'll all just be using iPhones anyway. Because really, that Loopt app for iPhone is pretty hot:

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.

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.

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.

A couple of weeks ago, Brightkite launched into their private beta, inviting 100 people to join their network. As those users invited others with the five included invites, the network began to grow. Recent conferences like the Web 2.0 Expo and ROFLCon spread the word even more.

The service, a device agnostic, SMS-based application, lets you "check in" at various locations out in the real world and then see who else is there, has been there, and who is nearby. You can check in via text or via the web, but text is easiest if you're mobile.

After checking in, you can post updates in a Twitter-like fashion and upload photos to your Brightkite-enabled stream, available at a URL in the format of brightkite.com/people/username.

A Brightkite User's Stream

Places, like your local coffee shop or favorite watering hole can have a stream of their own, too. Their "placestream" is created by the notes and photos that the Brightkite users in that area have added.

What's nice about Brightkite is that they aren't trying to be a Twitter killer - they just add a layer on top of Twitter. Although they didn't originally think to offer this type of integration, they soon realized that Twitter integration had a lot of appeal for their users. Now, in addition to Twitter, the service also works with Fire Eagle. Both services can be optionally turned on in the Account tab.

Privacy Is Important

The way Brightkite works now is by letting you check in at various places, called "Placemarks," which you can set up either via the web or via SMS. These placemarks don't have to be specific - you can check in at a particular address or place of business if you want, but you can also check into a city, a state, or even a country - if that's what you desire. You can name your placemarks whatever you want - for example I might make "Tampa, FL" a placemark called home as opposed to sharing my actual home address.

When you add friends on the network, you can choose to "friend" them only, or friend them and add them as a "trusted friend." By offering the fine-grained control of "trusted friends," you can control who gets to see your exact location. This way, you can connect with people on the network level  - adding relationships very much in the same way as any other social network - as well as connecting with actual, real-life friends.

You can also edit each friend's detailed privacy settings as well, and turn on or off their ability to access your friend stream, text you, or email you, which allows for even more privacy controls.

Editing a User's Privacy Settings

There are also two modes in which you can post updates to Brightkite - public and private. Public mode is ideal when you're out and about and looking to meet new people and private mode is for when you want to restrict your activities to only being viewed by friends. By default in private mode:

• Strangers see your checkins at the city-level, and don't see your posts
• Friends see your checkins and posts at the city-level
• Trusted friends see your checkins and posts at full accuracy

However, all those settings are easily editable.

Using Brightkite

There are a lot of SMS commands to know if you want to fully use Brightkite, but a few basics will get you going without too much effort:

• Check in - @ address, city, zip, or placemark
• Post a note - ! your message
• Find a place to check in - ? business name
• Post a photo - Just email it in you're provided with a private email address for your account
• Message someone - m username your message

They also wanted to make sure that joining Brightkite was simple to do. Anyone can join by texting 80289 now (but due to the private beta, you couldn't use the Brightkite web site yet).

Current and Upcoming Features

Brightkite has big plans for gaining traction as a preferred mobile network. For one, they eliminate many mobile competitors by focusing only on competing with location-based networks. Even then they differentiate themselves by being platform and carrier agnostic and not focusing entirely on a niche crowd, like people looking for dates or iPhone users.

Also, with their "Placestream" feature, there is an appeal to anyone with a projector of some sort and a crowd. You could imagine a bar, for example, setting up an on-screen Placestream on a singles night to get people talking, but that certainly wouldn't be the only use.

Denver's Placestream

Brightkite reaches beyond the dating crowd by offering a way for anyone with similar interests to connect in real life. Always typing away at your favorite coffee shop? You can connect with others who do the same. And unlike Twitter, which relies on hashtags to group people in a place, Brightkite does so by its very nature.

Future plans for Brightkite include web site widgets that you can embed either on your blog ("what I'm doing") or that a business could embed on their site in "placestream" format.

They're also working on GPS-enabled tracking and cellular triangulation features, but will make sure that neither of these are continuously tracking you - if you want to participate, there will be a simple way to turn the feature on and off.

In a couple of weeks, Brightkite plans to offer an API that they hope third party developers will pick up on to build even more applications using their service, and an iPhone app will be available in June. Based on the SDK, Founder Martin May believes that the next gen iPhone may include GPS, which they plan to support.

They're also looking at options for data portability. They want to make it easier to for users to find friends and move their data in at out of the network, but haven't settled on whether or not that method will utilize OpenSocial features or something entirely new. They will also make RSS feeds available for all the various streams.

Will It Work?

Does Brightkite have a shot at winning the mobile social network space? Yes, it's very possible. By appealing to the Twitter crowd, they're growing their user base quickly and by offering moblogging features, they make theirs a versatile app.

Says Twitterer Aubiematt, "I was using Flickr to post pictures to my blog. Hopefully soon, I will be able to replace it with BrightKite." Twitterer igorschwarzmann agrees with Chris Brogan, who likes their privacy features, CDReed is "all for encouraging real world interaction," and jeffisageek likes the concept and being able to control everything from his mobile device. In fact, out of everyone I asked, I couldn't find anyone who had anything bad to say about Brightkite at all, only people looking for an invite.

So to those looking for an invite, leave your info below. We have 100 to distribute. (Remember, OpenID users, email might not be displayed so make sure you let us know what it is). Feel free to add me as a friend once you're in.