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Most of us will have given in to some form of social networking or other, updating our Facebook status several times a day or exchanging email links for YouTube videos. Naturally, the social networking explosion has been relocating to the ultimate portable venue: the mobile phone. Handsets and mobile applications are being specifically designed to deliver that functionality to the palm of your hand, and astronomical forecasts are being made for the popularity of social networking on mobile phones. Revenue from user-generated activity is expected to rise from $572 in 2007 to nearly $6 billion by 2012! I’ve taken a look at what’s already available and what’s set to come in the area of sharing photos, videos and news.
Photos and Video
Increasingly, with some mobiles boasting 5 megapixel cameras and Carl Zeiss lenses, people are choosing to document their holidays, parties (and indeed daily lives) with their cameraphone rather than a dedicated digital camera. Moblogging has become so popular that the first images of the controversial 2012 London Olympics logo were released through a moblogger at the unveiling. Sites such as www.moblog.co.uk provide hosting and quick, easy transfer of snaps from phone to web; we use this service for Shiny Media’s moblog. There are also the photo-sharing elements of sites like MySpace and Facebook to consider, and I cover these in more detail below. Handsets like the upcoming Sony Ericsson K770i offer one-click transfer of photos to your own “blogsite” (online gallery) which you can then share the address of.
Flickr
Photo-sharing site Flickr went screaming ahead of its image hosting contemporaries with its clean interface and ease of use. It has long supported mobile uploads and there’s a mobile version of the site for quick rendering on phone browsers. The Nokia N-Series has been including one-click Flickr uploads since the N73 back in April 2006.
YouTube
Ah, YouTube. Keeps you sane on a dull day and is the cause of more sudden, random, inappropriate laughter in an office space than any other website. But streaming video on a mobile phone takes a good connection and a decent, up-to-date handset, even if you’re viewing YouTube’s dedicated mobile site – an unlimited data plan is a good idea too, as this can end up expensive. Vodafone – who inked a deal with YouTube earlier this year to stream video through the network - particularly recommends the Nokia N95 as “best for YouTube”. A large screen is definitely helpful and anything that speeds up the connection, such as HSDPA (nicknamed “3G on steroids”), would also be handy. The HTC Touch, therefore, might have a great screen but it’s reliant on EDGE so probably far too slow for video content. Be warned that YouTube mobile will not show every single video but more of a “best of” collection.
What about uploading to YouTube? Well, whether you knew it or not that’s been available since last year for anyone with MMS capabilities on their phone, smartphone or PDA. It just involves setting up some mobile details on the site.
Helpful Handsets: Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot K770i, Toshiba Portege G500, Motorola Z8 (the first high definition phone), Samsung F700
Social Networking and Blogging Sites
MySpace
Since MySpace struck a deal with US provider then known as Cingular (now AT&T) last year, many a handset has added features that allow easy viewing of MySpace pages (no mean feat if the typical annoying wealth of customisation is anything to go by) as well as posting of comments and photos. Helio was one of the first to jump on board, with MySpace Mobile built into their phones in February of 2006. The list of handsets that support MySpace Mobile and photo uploading include the Motorla K1 (KRZR), Sony Ericsson W300i, Nokia 6682 and LG CU500. Unfortunately for UK hopefuls, until February 2007 you needed an AT&T account. Early this year, Vodafone finally struck a deal with MySpace to roll out MySpace Mobile access to UK customers. Certain handsets will come pre-loaded with the software, but it can also be downloaded on handsets that can support it. MySpace Mobile enables the reading and posting of blogs, photo uploading, profile editing, commenting, messaging, searching and more; you should be able to access all the most popular features of the site from your mobile.
Facebook
Facebook is emerging as the firm UK favourite among social networking sites, and it has a helpful Facebook mobile support page. Uploading photos is as easy as emailing Facebook, so any handset that can email a photo can join in. On the first attempt you’ll be sent a confirmation code to enter onto the site, but once that’s done you’re clear to continue freely. You can also quickly email or text Facebook Notes, as long as you’re able to send Multimedia Messages. Since all recent and even some not-so-recent handsets fall into that category, it’s a genuinely open service for those who want to share photos and so on. Facebook Mobile Texts is a more elaborate service which allows you to do things like look up a friend’s basic profile info, wall post, message, add friends and, of course, indulge in the famous Facebook poke. It’ll also send a text alert when there’s any such activity on your profile.
Twitter
Twitter and rival Jaiku are micro-blogging sites that are comparable in use to changing your Facebook status throughout the day; one line updates on what you’re up to are the key. Twitter by SMS is commonplace, so it would be handy to have an unlimited text contract, such as Orange’s Dolphin 35, or you can surf Twitter’s mobile site.
LiveJournal
Aside from the mobile site, LiveJournal always been a friendly site for mobile applications. It’s an open-source blogging site run by masters of the blogging universe Six Apart, and as such is constantly under development, adding networking features. TxtLJ enables blogging by text from any web-enabled mobile device, and for premium users there’s Mobile Posting that works by email, so the likes of BlackBerry users will find that an easy feature. LiveJournal also offers Voice Posting for paid users, where you can simply use any mobile for the very thing it was created for – to make a phone call – and it’ll be posted as an audio file on your blog when you hang up. 3 UK sealed a deal in February to provide fast access to LJ via 3G handsets.
Helpful Handsets: Palm Treo series, Orange SPV M700, Samsung U700, BlackBerry Curve 8300, 02 Ice
Social Networks For Mobiles
What about social networks made specifically for mobile phones? Well, there are of course plenty of those coming out of the woodwork, with Nokia announcing this Monday that it was creating a network called MOSH. Users can tag and share content as well as creating collections and it’s free to anyone that has a WAP or standard browser on their phone. You might expect it to be limited to Nokia phones, but it’s not; the only perk that Nokia users get is downloadable proprietary software to give them quicker access to the site. There are features that allow MOSH to be used from a PC to avoid potentially costly data charges too.
3 UK have also recently launched a social network for comparison shopping and rating. The 3 neXt site’s mobile version has been revamped to include reviews of mobile-optimised applications from Jaiku, Wikipedia and Shozu, ranked by users so that you can decide what would work best for your phone.
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Source: In Search of the Silver Bullet
An interesting day today at Wireless World Forum’s Consumer Generated Content and Social Networking Forum, where delegates gathered to hear how social networking and user-generated content sites can be successfully migrated on to mobile, and heard a procession of speakers and panellists mostly come to the same conclusion: that actually, no-one really knows yet.
That’s not a criticism of the quality of the speakers, more a reflection of where we are in terms of mobile social networking. One of the speakers, Roy Vella, Head of Mobile Payments at PayPal, summed up the feeling in the room when he pointed out that none of the best-known social networking sites on the web, such as MySpace and FaceBook, were initially about monetisation, and that “the monetisation stuff” is only happening because there are so many eyeballs.
“You want to know how do big companies make money out of all those eyeballs” said Vella. “The answer is, I don’t think we know yet.”
Vella also warned brands that they would need to exercise caution if they were going to try to establish a presence on social networking sites, mobile or otherwise.
“If you threw a party and a corporation showed up, how would you feel about it?” he asked. “It’s a new space, and we all have to tread carefully. The way to succeed is the way it has always been – to delight customers.”
Earlier, Tim Hussein, Head of Mobile Monetisation at AOL Europe, told delegates that he thought the big players in mobile social networking would be those already making waves on the web.
“I think it’s highly unlikely there will be a mobile-only social network” said Hussein. “It’s going to be Bebo, MySpace etc. moving onto mobile.”
Some, no doubt, would disagree, One of the delegates, Martin Keene, COO at Tribal Glu, told me his company had been creating white-label mobile social networks, mainly for network operators, for six years. David Springall, CTO at YoSpace, which created the SeeMeTV user-generated content service for 3, and the LookAtMe service for O2, pointed out that in the past 12 months, the two services have seen 13 million downloads, with £250,000 returned to contributors in the form of micropayments, usually of 1p a time, when a clip they uploaded is downloaded by another user. And when we interviewed one of Tribal Glu’s competitors, AirG, a few months ago, they boasted 10 million users across the mobile social networks they have built for brands around the world.
The variety of opinions on offer during the presentations and panel discussions made it clear that there’s no silver bullet for the problem of how to make money from mobile social networking. Despite this, it was equally obvious from today’s event, there are a lot of people looking for it.
David Murphy
Editor
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What is “Mobile 2.0″ (Beta)
Ever since Tim O’Reilly wrote his famous article on Web 2.0, everyone wants to jump on the 2.0 bandwagon. We now have “media 2.0,��? “advertising 2.0,��? “TV 2.0,��? etc… to contend with. So why do the same and try to define mobile 2.0? The answer is that people out there are already using this term. I think there is a danger that the definition of mobile 2.0 will become hijacked either to become synonymous with “Web 2.0 applications and services brought to your phone��? (which is part of the story but not the whole story) or with multimedia applications (again, only part of the story).
But if we’re going to have a mobile 2.0, I think we would do well to base the definition on the Web 2.0 mind set and thinking. With that in mind, here are some revised extensions of the O’Reilly Web 2.0 set of examples applied to mobile 2.0 (revised somewhat from my original draft definition).
SMS -> IM, mobile blogging
MMS -> Media sharing
Operator Portals -> Mobile Web and search
Operator chooses -> User chooses
Premium SMS billing -> Mobile stored value Accounts
Java Games -> Connected Applications (e.g. photo sharing, blogging)
Presence & Push-To-Talk -> VOIP applications
WAP sites -> Web sites that adapt for mobile browsers
WAP push -> RSS readers
Wallpaper -> Idle screen applications
Location services -> Google maps application
Content consumption -> Content creation (e.g. mobile blogging)
In short, mobile 2.0 leaps the mobile platform forward to where the Internet is today, and shows us how the mobile phone can become a first class citizen, or even a leading citizen, of the Web. What mobile 2.0 does not mean, at least in my mind, is more sophisticated, but still essentially closed, mobile applications and services (although these will also continue to play an important role in the mobile value chain). Openness and user choice are essential components of mobile 2.0.
Towards a Definition of Mobile 2.0
The term of “mobile 2.0″ can best be defined as the next generation of data services to mobile connected devices. To understand what this next generation is, you must look to Web 1.0. I was developing content on the Internet before there was a Web. My fiction magazine, Quanta, published its first issue in 1989. The potential to reach a world-wide audience (even if it was limited mostly to those at educational institutions at that time) was extremely compelling. Those of us who had experienced the power of the Internet immediately saw its potential, but it certainly didn’t seem like it could ever be a consumer service. The Web changed all that. By putting the already-existing concept of hypertext together with the seamless interconnectivity of the Internet, the Web brought us a compelling human interface paradigm that users could grasp. But the Web, even at that time, also made it relatively easy to create content. The ability of the Web to empower anyone to create a compelling service was its magic.
In the business landscape, consumer expectations have been molded by the Web. Consumers no longer want to be dictated to - they want choice. They want to choose which services they access. If one social networking site is no longer cool, they will switch to another. If a Web-based grocery delivery service doesn’t measure up, consumers will quickly choose another. Imagine a world in which the only data services you could interact with were ones that your cable operator chose for you. At the beginning of the 90’s, many companies were thinking along these lines. Instead of the vast choice the Web has to offer today, you could have been confined to ordering a pizza (from one of a small number of chains) through your TV. It may be difficult to remember now, but this cable TV based vision of the “information superhighway��? was very real in some people’s minds. On the PC, Microsoft aggressively pursued this vision with their MSN product (then seen as a competitor to AOL). They sought to buy up the exclusive online publishing rights to newspapers in order to ensure that you could only view certain content through MSN. Quite rightly, they viewed the Web as a threat to this model. When I briefly worked for AOL in 1997, it was already clear to most people that the Web was it. However, the prevailing attitude at AOL was that the real content that mattered was on the AOL portal and that access to the Web was a feature of this portal (grudgingly provided through a badly integrated browser). Flash forward to 2006 and we find that both Microsoft and AOL have embraced the Web. Closed consumer portals on the PC are a thing of the past.
Today, with the reality of the Web pervading our lives, it’s almost unimaginable that you couldn’t sit down in front of your computer and reach out to any information source or service of your choosing at the click of a mouse - that you could live in a world of a confined set of services, chosen for us by a service provider. Could FlickR or Youtube ever have even launched on such a platform? Could Wikipedia? Craigslist? The use of RSS? Would you be able to reach across the globe to find alternative points of view from news sources around the world? Could we have seen the rise of the blog? Social bookmarking? The answer is no. None of these services or technologies could have developed in that kind of heavily controlled service landscape.
And yet that’s what we expect people to be happy with on the mobile platform. We need to remember the lessons of Web 1.0 and apply these lessons to the development of the Web and connected applications on the mobile platform. But mobile data services are changing.
This change has been made possible by a number of convergent elements. Certainly, the sophistication of devices is one of them. Even consumer mobile phones are sporting color screens, increased processing power and performance. This has been largely driven by the rise of the camera phone. At the same time, the mobile networks are getting faster and cheaper. Mobile browsers are becoming more sophisticated about rendering pages designed for large screens. Content and service providers are becoming more savvy about designing user experiences specifically for mobile users.
The result is that the Web as we know it is changing. It is becoming pocketable. The Web is coming outside.
What Place for Mobile Operators in Mobile 2.0?
Mobile network operators (or “Carriers��? as they are sometimes referred to) occupy an immensely important position in the mobile industry value chain. They run the networks including authentication, connecting calls, messaging, interconnect, roaming and all the other complexities inherent in delivering seamless 24/7 uptime service. They manage retail networks and customer service. They source phones and devices from device manufacturers and resell these. They are heavily regulated.
In this world of open, unfettered access to services and software across the Internet is the role of the operator diminished to that of a “bit pipe?��? Laying aside for a second the relative merits of being a bit pipe, I think the answer is “no.��? By enabling innovation in an open way, operators can continue to be at the center of the data services value chain. This shift is already happening. Major operators have opened up their portals and are starting to turn them from walled gardens into jumping off points for the mobile Web. This points to the second essential role that operators can play in the mobile 2.0 value chain: discovery of content and services.
Another important way that operators can maximize their role in the mobile 2.0 world and avoid becoming solely a bit pipe is through exposure of enablers. Exposing your enablers sounds like lewd behavior, but to explain what I mean, take the example of Amazon. Amazon, through its Amazon Web Services division, exposes APIs to third party developers. Small companies and even individual developers can build their own applications on top of Amazon’s platform. This brings more money to Amazon because most of these third party applications are about browsing and mining Amazon’s catalog (and therefore eventually result in more sales for Amazon). Amazon could have taken a tightly controlled approach to their service, but by exposing APIs, they have enabled a whole ecosystem of affiliates and suppliers to grow up around them. Importantly, you don’t need to go have a meeting with an Amazon executive and sign a contract or even pay any fee to start using Amazon Web Services APIs. You simply visit a web site and accept a click-through license.
Operators have long exposed APIs to third parties and they know a great deal about enabling ecosystems to grow up around them and about delivering third party services through their ecosystem. In Europe, operators have been working with third party messaging providers to provide information, news, chat and other services via SMS. Often, these services are provided through premium-rate SMS which means users are charged a premium for use of these services.
Browsers and Connected Applications
Mobile browsers are getting better and better. Since I’ve been chairing the W3C Mobile Web Best Practices working group, I’ve seen a revolution start to take place in the mobile browsing field (which I hope has been somewhat influenced by the work of that group). The mobile Web plays a key role in mobile 2.0 by enabling innovation in the so-called long tail. Because of the mobile Web, it is possible for one person working on his own to develop with freely available and open source tools a social networking service for mobile device users, and to effectively reach a global audience with this service. Of course, we take this for granted on the PC Web, but this capability is only now becoming a reality on the mobile platform.
But it’s not all about the browser. The browser plays a crucial role because it allows access to a range of content sources, but it can also act as a delivery mechanism for connected applications. Most consumer phones today are able to download and install applications (be they Java applications or OS-specific apps for a variety of so-called “smart phone��? platforms). Interestingly, it is this feature that Opera exploited when they released Opera Mini. Opera mini is a downloadable connected application that becomes the browser and therefore the conduit for more downloadable connected apps.
Finally, browser-based AJAX applications mobile widgets will play an increasingly important role in providing compelling services to users. Browser manufacturers and others are already scrambling to develop the killer widget platform.
The reason these technologies are so powerful is that they enable innovation by providing a simple framework for developing and deploying applications. Just as the Web did with PCs, the mobile Web and connected applications bring users compelling experiences and services that they can understand and start using quickly, with relatively little learning curve.
Open Applications Leverage Open Standards
Lastly, it is important to note that mobile 2.0 applications need to leverage open standards. Applications that sit on top of closed and proprietary protocols and formats are antithetical to the kind of innovation that will be key to the growth of the mobile Web. Establishing open standards around HTML, CSS and XML has greatly contributed to the growth and success of the medium and to its continued innovation. We are already seeing standards pay off big-time on the mobile platform as well in both the Java/JCP space (where we are finally realizing write-once-run-anywhere) and in the mobile Web.
Mobile 2.0 Is Here
When I traveled to Spain on business last month, I took pictures with my camera phone which were automatically uploaded to a photo sharing service as I took them using a photo upload application that I had downloaded over the mobile Web. My beautiful wife and kids were able to track my trip in pictures by checking back with the photo sharing site as I traveled and no PC was involved on my end. A downloaded mapping application on my phone allowed me to easily find my way from the city of Gigón to Bilbao, and I was able to access Wikipedia entries on cities I visited to find background information when I needed it. A downloaded mobile IM client embedded on my email device allowed me to keep in touch with colleagues and friends. Mobile 2.0 is not “the Future.��? it is services that already exist all around us. These services are maturing at an amazing rate and what they are doing is effectively knitting together Web 2.0 with the mobile platform to create something new: a new class of services that leverage mobility but are as easy to use and ubiquitous as the Web is today. These services point the way forward for the mobile data industry.
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* March 7th, 2007
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Wireless Federation Research on ”Mobile Social Communities” revealed that there are currently nearly 45 million members using it worldwide, a number that is expected to reach 175 million in 2012.
“With a huge rise witnessed in Online Social communities like MySpace, Facebook among others, there is now a paradigm shift in how people connect with each other using the electronic medium.” says Mohit Sehgal of the Wireless Federation. Increasingly there will be a move to the mobile given the increasing availability of bandwidth from the mobile operators and readiness of handsets available.
“Such mobile social communities will extend the reach of electronic social interaction to millions who don’t have regular or easy access to computers. The most significant increase may be seen in countries like India which have a far higher mobile penetration as compared to PCs”
The rapid pace of mobile social community growth means opportunities for new entrants hoping to join the established players such as SMS.ac, AirG, and Jumbuck that provide the technology and marketing behind leading mobile communities.
Opportunities to monetize mobile social communities fall into several main categories:
- Mobile operators profit from data usage that underpins all mobile community activities they carry, and in some cases from monthly subscription fees as well.
- Companies can sponsor special interest communities that relate directly to their brands or services.
- The self-profiling nature of these communities means that advertising can be targeted to specific niches with great accuracy. Many mobile communities also offer downloadable merchandise for sale — ringtones or images, for example.
“What would help drive these mobile social communities is for more mobile operators to sponsor them”.
Vodafone announcing the launch of myspace on their network is a positive sign and will shape the future for such similar relationships.
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Social networking services will dominate a burgeoning market for mobile user-generated content, according to a new report from Juniper Research.
Globally, end-user generated revenues from social networking, dating and personal content delivery services will increase from $572m in 2007 to more than $5.7bn in 2012, with social networking accounting for 50% of the total by the end of the forecast period.
According to report author Dr Windsor Holden, “Even though social networking sites are in their infancy, the exponential growth experienced by a number of mobile service providers – in some cases achieved primarily through viral marketing – would seem to affirm that there is huge potential in this area. The key challenge now is for those providers to monetise that interest.”
Holden added that, in the medium term, the highest levels of growth could well be experienced in developing markets with limited fixed broadband access. “In these markets, the mobile phone is becoming the predominant means by which people access the internet. Hence, the overwhelming majority of online social networking will be conducted via the handset rather than the PC.”
Juniper Research assesses the current and future status of mobile user-generated content based on interviews, case studies and analysis from representatives of some of the leading organisations in the growing mobile user-generated content industry.
Other findings from the report include:
• The number of active users of mobile social networking sites is expected to rise from 14m in 2007 to nearly 600m in 2012.
• Mobile dating and chatroom services currently account for 57% of user-generated revenues, although this proportion will fall to 21% by 2012 as other UGC services increase in popularity
• The volume of downloads from mobile personal content delivery sites such as SeeMeTV are expected to rise from less than 200m in 2007 to more than 9bn in 2012.
• Off-portal social networking sites will increasingly opt for free-to-consumer, ad-funded business models to gain visibility and market presence.
• High data charges remain a key hurdle to mass service adoption.
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Mobile & Wireless
By Marguerite Reardon
Published: Thursday 6 April 2006Social networking websites such as MySpace.com, which will soon go mobile, could become key applications driving data usage on new 3G wireless networks.
For years, mobile operators, which have spent billions of dollars to upgrade their networks to 3G wireless technologies, have tried to get customers to do more than talk on their mobile phones. Despite their efforts, the vast majority of revenue still comes from voice calling.
But that could change in the next few years. A lot of fuss has already been made about people watching TV on their mobile phones and downloading music over the mobile net, but there’s another application that could also generate significant 3G data usage -social networking.
“Carriers have invested a lot of money in their networks,” said Charles Golvin, an analyst with Forrester Research. “And at this point it’s a lot like throwing spaghetti on the wall to see which applications will stick. I doubt there will be any single killer application, but social networking on mobile phones could certainly be one that generates usage.”
Within the last year social networking and community websites on the fixed-line internet have really taken off, especially among teens and twentysomethings, who spend hours online creating profiles and sharing photos, videos and blogs.
MySpace, the most popular of the social networking sites, has more than 67 million members, and it adds roughly 250,000 members every day. MySpace is ranked as the second-most visited website on the Internet in terms of unique users, after Yahoo, according to ComScore Media Metrix. Last year Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. bought the company for $580m.
Though MySpace may be among the most famous of these sites, it’s certainly not the only one on the net. There are dozens of them, including Facebook.com, which is geared toward college students. There are also photo-sharing sites, such as Flickr, that have created popular online communities.
In the past, people using these services could access them only from their desktops or laptops. But now social networking is going mobile, allowing people to use their mobile phones to upload pictures or send updates to blogs.
In March, MySpace announced a deal with the soon-to-be-launched wireless reseller Helio. And earlier this week, Facebook announced deals with Cingular Wireless, Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless to enable users to post messages to their Facebook profiles via SMS text messaging. Flickr also lets people post photos from their cell phones and view them from handsets as well. Sprint Nextel has created its own photo-sharing site, called PCS Picture mail. It’s expected to launch this spring.
There also are new companies in the game, such as San Diego-based Intercasting, which is offering a service called Rabble. Like MySpace and Facebook, Rabble lets users create profiles so they can share photos, videos and blogs with other members of the Rabble group. Cingular and Verizon Wireless have already signed up to offer the service, charging customers $2.99 per month for access to the community.
In many ways, mobile phones are the ideal tools for social networking and building online communities. Not only are people rarely without their phones, but today’s handsets come equipped with sophisticated tools as well, such as cameras and digital music and video players and recorders, that can be used for documenting life. Mobile-handset makers Nokia and Sony Ericsson are even embedding technology into some of their phones that’s designed to make it easier for users to upload pictures and text to blogs. These phones are solid tools for people wanting to share photos, video clips or songs with their online communities.
“Cell phones have become essential accessories,” said Anil Malhotra, chief alliance officer for Bango, a company that helps wireless-content providers charge users for accessing their content. “And they’re also perfect capture devices. You can take pictures, record sound, send text messages. It’s a great tool for creating your own content.”
What’s more, those in the teen and twentysomething crowd - the biggest users of online social networks - also happen to be some of the heaviest users of mobile data services such as text messaging and downloadable ring tones.
As major mobile operators in the US roll out their new 3G wireless services, more people are using them to create their own mobile websites. A German company called
Peperoni Mobile and Internet Software, which since 2001 has provided software tools that let people all over the world build their own mobile websites, said it has seen an increase within the last six months of people using its software to create their own mobile web pages. Though the company has only about 500,000 users today, it says it’s signing up new ones at the rate of about 20 per cent to 25 per cent per month, many of them in the US.
“Phone penetration in the US has pretty much caught up with Europe in the last couple of years,” said Marcus Ladwig, chief operating officer for Peperoni. “And now we’re seeing a lot of these people wanting to use the capabilities on their phones to share images and other things, so they’re using our tools to build their own mobile websites.”
Peperoni struck a deal earlier this year with Bango to allow its users to set up shop on the mobile internet. Bango’s technology lets people who’ve created mobile websites charge for content they distribute on their site.
Experts say these are still the early days for the mobile internet in general. And there still are significant issues that need to be worked out. For one, mobile phone makers have been building products with different mobile web requirements, which makes it difficult for software developers to adapt existing web pages for the mobile internet.
“When people publish a mobile website, they don’t want to think about which phones people will use to view it,” said Ladwig. “That’s why network operators and cell phone makers need to work together to make it easier for users to have a unified experience.”
Another problem is that the sophisticated phone phones capable of taking pictures and playing video and music are expensive, with some costing as much as $300. Additionally, people uploading or downloading information from these social networking mobile websites will also have to pay for the bandwidth they use while doing so over the mobile network. Prices on data packages vary between $10 and $25 per month.
And even though mobile operators want people to use their new 3G services, they’ve been reluctant to give up control of where customers go on the mobile internet. Some carriers, such as Verizon Wireless, restrict users to their own menu of services.
And some experts, such as Forrester Research’s Golvin, are skeptical that mobile phones will ever be able to offer enough functionality to replace PCs when it comes to creating and sharing content.
“Cell phones are great enhancements and tools for existing bloggers or for people who are already sharing photos online,” he said. “Cell phones might be good for updating sites on the fly but the PC is still the best place to sit down and organise your content.”
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