How big is your handset? Mobile Social Networking is it only about flirting?
So, I am in two minds. I like mobile social networking -but what is killing me is that everyone is talking the same talk. We have Flirtomatic, 3G Dating, Peperoni. Is this it? Can you flirt that much? Do you want to flirt on a mobile device is that what mobile social networking is about?
Priya Prakash Head of Product Flirtomatic gave a presentation today about mobile and flirting with an operator bashing. It was a great presentation, but I disagreed with the most of it. Not because of flirtomatic, but because social networking doesn’t get the power of search. Mobile players in the content space are to quick to say the mobile portal is a “dud” - because they don’t get the concept of search within the operator dynamic.
I don’t want to single out Priya as everyone on the panel before this (3G dating, IRL and the presentation from itsmy.com) fell into this trap. While it is easy to dismiss portals - it doesn’t make a lot of sense. The wheels are turning for eco-systems and services and content applications that will form their own community pockets. What is key now is not simply driving one aspect of the “pocket” but finding ways to pool interests and engage consumers even if “flirting” is not the main criteria.
Flirting is niche. I am not interested but adding equations to the model will drive revenues from advertising as if the content was search-able within a community I might want to “add a comment” or “interact” with a medium that wouldn’t personally go to.
That is how mobile social networking will grow and that is the only business model worth considering for mobile.
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2 Responses to “How big is your handset? Mobile Social Networking is it only about flirting?”
Bena-
Your observation about “finding ways to pool interests and engage consumers even if flirting is not the main criteria” is spot-on.
Flirting is a way of getting to know people who you might not know, if they werent part of your friend circle. Chatting with people who share/match your interests does potentially lead to either more conversations and eventually becoming friends. We regularly observe this happening within our community. Flirting acts as an ice-breaker and is great when one is in the “Seek& Meet” category that we inhabit.
If you look at the history of social networks and how Friendster etc started, they actually kick-started the whole social networking phenomenon, and it did emerge from the idea of “dating” by finding potential dates within your extended friend circle. What is Linkedin but a “dating” service for professionals where the social object is your “contact?
In my presentation yesterday, I was trying to identify what is the operator’s social object that they share with their customer and their role in this space going forward. As research and reports point out that users don’t want to join operator created social networks. The operator deck in this context needs to evolve to meet other user needs, especially if the users social networking needs are being met off-deck.
Mobile search is a key way whereby our users find new people within our service. Our content is our people i.e. flirts and not comments/posts ie. asynchronous messaging. In the future, we might explore that route, but right now based on our user’s feedback, they want to be able to find a flirt easily and start a chat immediately …1 million users want to, and they have been helping us evolve the service to its next level.
Comment made on September 23rd, 2008 at 3:33 pmYes - flirting is an important relationship based communication that attracts certain groups of people to social networking and what we would typically classify as cluster or vertical driven usage - people with similar interests or motivations that want to virtually & even physically establish a relationship. It is just one of many type of cluster based interactions that happen in social networking, others that we are seeing is lot of interest in is viewing other people, what they are posting & even commenting on their posts be they images (as in Places created in GyPSii). Interestingly enough we are seeing a deeper level of interaction beyond say poke or flirt or add a friend to - I want to tell my story in pictures, with the context of where I am, where I am going and share it with larger groups of people and have them comment on my life and connect their lives via the pictures & location context. It is moving into story telling, be it simple, but more likely to be something that is ongoing based on something temporal, time based range or at a location. Member (user) generated content & interactions is very powerful, especially where we see it the physical & virtual content worlds merging, blurring and that context becoming less important, the mixing of premium POI with user created, commented & rated POI, e.g. I search for a French Bistro, the premium POI comes up but I see one of my friends also created a Place (UGC POI) with rave reviews on that Bistro, I see they recommended book a reservation & take the tube, as parking is crazy
Comment made on October 1st, 2008 at 6:28 pmLeave a Comment