... coming to a mobile near you.
Social Networking for mobile.
What are people doing?
Honestly - nothing much. At least in the west.
- update blogs - bah - who wants to type so much?!
- view friends' blog - ok - passive activity
- manage photo captions - barely interactive
- send and receive message - sigh ... 'sms'
- edit profile - how many times is THAT gonna happen
- status/mood - i'm happy, i'm sad, i'm busy, .... damn it, I'm bored!
- check your inbox - useful - but largely a RIM-recipe - ref: MobiPorter's @Mail solution - if you don't want to support RIM
- send email - wow!
- upload pictures to your favorite social network site - ok
- build sites - ho hum
- send greetings - ok
Jamie raises an interesting observation - corollaries follow:
- instead of finding ways to break the "walled garden", they are essentially creating "gardens of disdain"
- people have no real idea what will compel people to live off the medium
- none of the current players really have any idea about the future of social networking
- their respective "(g)rand (u)nified (t)heories" are really nothing more than 21st century "snakeoil", largely designed to keep their investors doe-eyed. (the plumber deserves the credit for the g.u.t.-acronym)
Probably being politically incorrect, but if these guys really had their act together, they would be "driving" the next facebook, rather than waiting for get acquired by it.
Am not criticizing their business strategy, am questioning their commitment to a cause - from a product perspective.
Things that they SHOULD be doing -
building (eco)systems to support the "ad hoc" and the "ad nauseum" (control freaks)
-- ad hoc stuff
-- hey (all), lets go to this new place that opened and do a bash / do a group movie / poker at Joe's tonight
-- take me to where my friend is hanging out
-- take me to where my friend isn't
-- send all my friends - the directions to the party along with a custom invite to let them through the door
-- group karaoke / counselling / disc
-- interactive gaming
... you get the idea
Advertising is leading the monetization angle in most cases.
for the "ad nauseum"
-- allow them to track stuff - fleet management
-- email and app-based alerts
-- branding - and sharing -
-- polling to find out where to go / hang out / eat / sleep / drink / whatever
in general, start looking at
-- location based updates (use: X-Forwarded-For header) -- these guys really seem to have a great pulse on this
-- recommend a nearby restaurant / a nearby bar/pub
-- recommend a nearby event - based on my facebook/social demographic
-- feedback systems
-- permission-based advertising
-- video streaming
Key take-aways. Build an ecosystem. Live a cause. Pepper it with value. You can't go wrong.
Key tech drivers, at this point:
- no single silver bullet - sms, wap, video, gps -
- look at "enterprise" level solutions, rather than stand-alone
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