Mobile social network Limbo looks to location-based services for 2009

I interviewed Rob Lawson, one of the founders of MoSo Limbo, about his company and the future of mobile social networks. We opened with a brief overview of the company.

What does Limbo do?

Limbo is a location-based mobile social network, concentrating on getting consumers together with their friends and finding interesting things are in their area. Bars, restaurants, gigs, museums - whatever other Limbo users think is cool. Limbo is more interested in helping people actually meet up in the real world, rather than communicate over their devices.

Limbo has been running for 3 years now. It has 4.5 million registered members, with 2 million of those being properly active on a monthly basis, and sends roughly 7 million SMS a month. So far it has mostly been operating in the US, but it opened up internationally last year.

Why Limbo?

I asked why a social networker should choose Limbo over the other MoSo’s out there - or even just over the other location-based MoSo’s. Rob’s answer was that Limbo has some real traction already. With 4 million members, if you’re a mobile networker there’s a good chance that people you know will be in the community already. Limbo has a rich set of features, but those are common to most decent location-based MoSo’s. The function it has that I don’t think I’ve seen before is the Limbo “activity” catalog. It lets users show what activity they are up to at the moment, by choosing from a set of pre-defined categories. Examples included Socialising, Working and Shopping. So along with the usual status reports, i.e “In work right now”, Limbo lets you check up on all of your friends that are doing a particular activity right now. It also allows you to view their location on a map, and the usual text/messaging services.

I asked what kind of tracing it uses, if it was mostly GPS or cell triangulation. Limbo uses whatever function your phone can handle to track it’s location, whether it’s GPS, cell or plain old SMS. If a user can’t access any tracking services, they can simply input their location via text.

What are the opportuniyi of 2009?

Finally, I asked what he thought the challenges and opportunities were for location-based MoSo’s in the coming year. Rob feels the opportunity is there for mobile social networks this year, and that location will be a huge part of it. From a US view, one year ago the top selling phones were quite low tech, mostly just good for voice and text. But in 2008 the mostpopular phones were large screen smartphones. The iPhone in particular has changed everything, and not just for iPhone users. Greater WAP usage, a more full-browser browsing experience on mobile devices, and the spread in popularity of location-based services will drive mobile social networks.

What we think?

I agree with Rob on the smartphone issue. The spread of truly mobile Internet browsing has lead directly to services like Latitude becoming popular. Whether or not location becomes the must-have service for social networks, it will almost certainly prove to be a great sweetener for anyone looking to get onto mobile networking. With a user-base over 4 million, Limbo do look set to take advantage of a mobile social networking boom. If one happens, that is.