In Search of the Silver Bullet
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