Social networking is the fastest growing activity among the Internet mobile users with a growth rate of 187% in 2009 according to eMarketer.com. This site also predicts that the amount of mobile social network users will grow from 223 million (4.6% of mobile users) in 2010 to 760 million (13.3% of mobile users) in 2014. With the recent surge of activities among several successful companies to build and launch mobile versions of their applications (apps) and the war of smartphones heating up on both the price and features front, the end consumer will be the real winners. Mobile devices embedded with still camera, video/voice recorder, GPS, and social networking apps are fueling the growth of user generated content. Mobile social networking truly has the potential to make Kevin Kelly's vision of single global machine (We Are the Web) a reality.
Mobile phones provide richer social interaction by enabling users to take part in an event, capture it, provide comments and share it with friends all in an instant. Without the mobile versions of their apps, social networking sites like Twitter or Yelp would not have been as successful as they are. Video social networking sites like Qik and Knockinglive let you share moments with anyone, anywhere in the world in realtime using LIVE video streaming through cell phones.
Although each of these companies (like Twitter, Yelp, Facebook) have created a niche for themselves in a particular segment of the market, it is the convergence of various platforms (social networking services — SNS, mobile platforms), which will create the maximum value for the consumers.
Impact on News Media
Information travel is much more personal and sometimes even faster than the regular news media. All of this is made possible by social networking on mobile devices. News travels fast, but it travels faster with mobile social networking, as is evident by the 25 million Facebook users who accessed the site on their mobile devices in January 2010 (an increase of 112% over January 2009) and the 4.7 million Twitter accounts accessed in January 2010 (an increase of 347% over January 2009), according to eMarketer.com. I see the trend going towards news media investing directly with SNS giants like Facebook and Twitter to get news the fastest way they can. CNN already relies on “iReporters” to post their live experiences of an event. However, they could take it a step further and collaborate with the search engines to grab the most popular topics circulating the social networking sphere. This would make them omnipresent. The location services, now increasingly available on mobile phones, can be used to verify the authenticity of a post.
Location Based Services
The input of location on mobile devices has the potential to change all the outputs. People want their mobile devices to tell them what to do, where to go, who to meet, what to eat, where to shop. Yelp is a good example of such a service, but SNS (Facebook and Twitter) and PNS (Linkedin) can leverage such capabilities to provide innovative services. SNS websites let you strengthen the realworld relationships, but it is the overlay of the online social graph on to the real world using location based services that will create the best opportunities for the future. The following applications are possible:
– During a professional networking event, the guest list could be a Linkedin identifier, which will enable you to quickly overlay the professional social graph on the attendee lists. You can access their public profile and integrated Twitter to see the latest Tweets, which can be a conversation starter and a networking opportunity in the real world.
– If you are out and looking for a place to eat, based on your previous food choices or postings or reviews you wrote, check out Yelp for nearby popular joints and it should be able to create a list of nearby best choices for you without you giving any additional input. If you read books and have virtual connections related to similar interests in books, it should tell you if you are both in the same bookstore or neighborhood so that you could share or swap your collection. It should be able to make specific and localized recommendations based on your status updates if you chose to and when relevant.
This ease of information availability by people involved in or near an event, is making the big search giants like Google and Microsoft invest in searchable SNS posts. Armed with user locations, Microsoft and Google could sell more targeted ads and provide more relevant search results.
Eisenmann’s WTA — Winner Take All (Most) Analysis
Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, and Linkedin all have network effects. But there is a room for differentiation among them and since the multihoming cost is low (free), it is highly unlikely that Facebook can envelope all other sites. The social networking domain could have multiple categories and each category could have a “winner take all (or most)” player. Twitter is broadcast based, celebrity-follower model unlike Facebook, which is based on reciprocal relationships. Facebook’s fan page has many features similar to Twitter, but it cannot envelope Twitter. The reason for this is the primary perception difference between following someone’s Tweets and becoming his/her fan. Yelp and Twitter as such will exist as independent sites. But there are lots of innovative solutions possible by the collaboration between Twitter and Yelp with Facebook and Linkedin. It’s also important to note that location based services or sites cannot exist as stand alone businesses in the long run. For instance, Loopt was quite innovative when it first started, letting people know where others in their network are. It’s difficult to come up with enhancements that would keep the app relevant in the long run, particularly when giants like Google,Twitter, and Facebook can envelope the functionality easily and faster. Same applies to another location based service called FourSquare.
Some Implications/Impediments
Privacy — Users are willing to divulge more and more personal information on social networking websites everyday. Total personalization of services will require total transparency on the user’s part. The SNS platforms or the mobile platforms have minimal or no control over the content posted. This sometimes can affect the privacy of another individual or a group of individuals who did not choose to be a part of it.
Quality — As we know, in the last 5-10 years, the latency of news bites changed dramatically and drastically. So did the quality of news bites. These days, it’s hard to sift for real news through the humongous list of most popular topics coming through the search engines. Adding SNS search results to this could highlight gossip over real news. So, the SNS platforms have to invest wisely in this area and implement intelligent algorithms to sift signal from noise.
Universal Social Network ID — As argued above, existence of multiple SNS companies is almost inevitable and so is the need for universal social networking handle. Keeping track of so many different social networking handles will become difficult over time. With Facebook‑Connect, Facebook is attempting to do the same. But in the long run, tying multiple social graphs from different SNS/PNS platforms to a single e-mail ID will be very beneficial to the user, as well as open up new opportunities.
“Open but not Open” strategy — Although convergence is good for the consumers, it does not create economic sense for platform players to open up their platform completely. How open to make the platform is a strategic decision. While Twitter has chosen the path of making the platform open, where the core feature could be accessed through any medium/application, companies like Facebook and Linkedin have followed the walled-garden approach(“Open but not Open” strategy), where you need to visit their website or mobile application to access the core features. Even in the smartphone market, Apple is following the “Open but not Open” strategy, as the apps written on the iPhone will not work on any other platform. Unlike Apple, Google has decided to make Andriod an open platform where the applications can be deployed on any device as long as it runs the Android OS. Open but not open strategy, will help monetize the platform, although it doesn’t let consumers link various social graphs (Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin) together. Many application developers might not have the resources to build apps for multiple mobile platforms, so the apps cannot become truly device agnostic. By doing this, they could be curbing the growth of innovative solutions possible by the convergence of various technologies and mobile/SNS/PNS platforms.
Conclusion
The social networking craze amongst mobile users is boosting an adoption of mobile Internet. Mobile, in upcoming years, will become the primary conduit of interaction with social networking sites, benefitting the mobile device manufacturers (specifically smartphones) and mobile carriers. The mobile carriers/manufacturers with strong infrastructure, mobile commerce ramp-up, and respect for consumer privacy will see the strongest growth in the long run. But smartphones will become commodities because, in essence, it is the apps which make the smartphone devices as popular as they are. There will be a growth of technologies which can make mobile apps portable among different smartphone devices. “Visiongain believes that revenue from mobile social networking and user generated content will grow to around $60 billion in 2012. ” Hence, covergence not only brings innovative solutions to the market but also adds economic wealth to the companies if utilized correctly.
So, you have a thing in your mind for the mobiles :)
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ReplyDeleteWhat a nice post!
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