Social networking has experienced an explosion in popularity online; by the end of 2007 there are expected to be 230 million active memberships to such online sites. MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr are some of the main networks online, but there are many different variants, catering for a huge variety of different tastes and activities. Recently, both the social networking industry and telecoms and media industries have started looking at how such services and user-generated content can be commercialised on mobile. Twitter is just one of a raft of new mobile social networking services that are taking the model of Facebook and MySpace and making it more immediate and portable. Companies like Radar, Zannel, loopt and Jaiku are allowing people to create networks of friends that stay in touch primarily through their mobile phones.

However, the traditional Internet heavyweights are not conceding the mobile space to the upstarts. MySpace recently introduced an ad-supported mobile version of its site and Facebook also has expanded into mobile, allowing users to update their profiles from mobile devices and to be alerted when they receive messages from their friends. Facebook also recently unveiled a mobile platform to encourage its 80,000 developers to extend applications to phones it also has teamed with Research In Motion (RIM) to put its service on BlackBerry smartphones. People can tag and upload photos and send Facebook invitations from their BlackBerry's address book. Facebook's mobile user base is growing faster than the website. As of the end of October, Facebook's 4 million distinct active users across its mobile line-up generated more than 300 million page views.

Not wanting to miss out on the action, Google recently bought mobile social networking start-up Zingku and blogging site Jaiku, supplementing the 2005 acquisition of Dodgeball.com, another mobile service that shares information about a user's location and helps them find friends in their local area. And at the start of November, Google finally put paid to all the rumours about an actual Google phone or device. Instead, what they did announce was Android, an open platform for mobile devices that looks likely to drive the development of more interesting and context-aware social applications for mobile. This comes on the back of the release of OpenSocial in which Google teamed with MySpace, LinkedIn and other social networks on a platform to spread social software applications across the Internet.

Although many view the mobile just as an extension to online social networking apps, in some cases, this couldn't be further from the truth. AirG, which manages social-networking communities on Sprint Nextel, AT&T, Virgin Mobile, Boost Mobile and other carriers, says 59% of its 20 million unique users around the world don't own or have easy access to a home PC. This is an exceedingly interesting statistic given the unique hurdles that mobile users have to overcome to achieve the same result as someone using a PC. Inputting text is time consuming, despite innovations such as predictive text and foldaway keyboards. Navigation around large images or pages is nigh-on impossible with the small real-estate to play with on the tiny screen on most mobiles. But mobiles do have a few key factors that allow them to fulfil certain functions that many consider core to the success of networking applications. The ease with which users can take pictures or video clips and then upload them is far greater than doing the same using a PC. The general immediacy and convenience that mobile devices allow also goes a long way to alleviate the failings of the experience. Being able to add reviews, comments, images or video from a restaurant, gig, movie or sports event is really where mobile comes into its own. And as technology improves, issues such as the clunky text input will become less of an issue. Spinvox, a company that made its name converting voicemails to text messages has turned its attention to the world of mobile blogging. Users can simply say what they want to see as text on their blog and the service (for a small fee) will ensure the message is posted up within a few minutes.

Along with the Internet giants, mobile operators are also very keen to get in on the party for some very obvious commercial reasons. Production costs associated with user-generated content are very low (if anything at all), the services are exceedingly sticky and serve to reduce churn and usage of such networks will drive an increase in data traffic.

In North America, MVNO Virgin Mobile USA announced in June 2007 a partnership with Facebook to offer a new application called "My Mobile" on the new Facebook platform. AT&T Wireless, Sprint Nextel and Verizon also built on their partnerships with Facebook to allow their users to post messages to their Facebook profiles via SMS text messaging. In Canada, the functionality is supported by Bell Mobility, Aliant, Solo, Fido, Rogers, TELUS, SaskTel, and MTS.

In Europe, Orange and Bebo announced in April 2007 the availability of Bebo Mobile for the operator's subscribers. Orange has an exclusive on the service in the UK. In February 2007, Vodafone announced a marked move away from an operator controlled walled garden, supporting open mobile internet experiences and working with a multitude of partners: internet players like MySpace, Google Maps, eBay and YouTube. MySpace said the tie-up with the UK's largest operator was its first extension into Europe's mobile sector, but it certainly wasn't the last. T-Mobile, also in the UK, noted that 85% of the Web page views on its youth-oriented Sidekick devices went to MySpace. Perhaps driven by this demand, the operator has launched a MySpace Mobile application that has real-time alerts and a custom interface. The app is free until the end of the year, after which usage is expected to cost US$1.99 per month.

In Asia, Singaporean mobile operators M1 and StarHub signed a deal in July 2007 allowing the latter's customers to gain access to M1's mobile video platform, MeTV. Under the network sharing deal, MeTV will be made available to StarHub customers from the third quarter of this year. M1 launched the new service in January this year and has so far signed up more than 50,000 users that upload their videos via MMS-enabled handsets for other users to view and download. The service entails a revenue-sharing model with end-users that allows them to make money with videos by earning S$0.05 (US$0.03) in cash every time someone downloads the video.

PCCW in Hong Kong launched its first quadruple-play service offering, a Flickr-like photo and video community called "snap", allowing users on the Internet, mobile, broadband TV and residential fixed-line service to view photos and videos. The service is free of charge with 100MB of storage capacity. Customers can also choose to sign up a paid subscription plan (HK$38 per month) to get 5GB storage capacity and 20 free photo prints every month.

Perhaps the most aggressive carrier in the mobile social networking space has been Helio, the MVNO startup jointly owned by EarthLink and South Korea's SK Telecom, which has focused on high-end, tech-savvy users. The company offers an embedded MySpace application on its handsets that is optimized for Helio and allows for media uploading. More than 70% of Helio users access Helio's MySpace service on their phones. Helio also offers geo-tagging of Flickr pictures using GPS, as well as a Buddy Beacon service that shows where your other Helio friends are using a map. But does going for such a niche market work? It would appear so, if ARPU is any measure of success. Helio's average revenue per user is nearly US$90, compared with the industry average of about US$50. However, with only US$200 million in annualized revenue and 140,000 members, Helio is a minnow compared to its rivals. And although the MySpace partnership was a key differentiator for Helio when they launched, the social networking site can now also be accessed from AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile handsets.

As with most mobile content types, one of the key issues that needs to be addressed is that of pricing. Although a significant amount of mobile operators offer flat-rate data pricing plans, the number of subscribers that use them is currently limited. The result of this is that many users have to pay confusing data charges to access their social networking sites from their mobiles. Advertising is one way of attempting to reduce the cost of the end user, but that has yet to be fully successfully transferred to the mobile market; the limited screen real estate stifles internet-type advertising and users are far most sensitive to marketing on their mobiles so care has to be taken so as not to alienate or annoy users. Mobile operators are in the position to wrap up data charges within the cost of content (as they do when content is purchased from their portals). This means that can offer a one-off subscription fee that will cover all the associated data charges. For example, Orange UK recently announced an extension of its relationship with Bebo, where users get unlimited use of the site via their phones for a flat rate of £3 ($6) per month.

However, given the huge range of social networking sites out there, it is very unlikely that mobile operators will strike up such partnerships with more than just a handful of sites, leaving users of sites outside of the top ten forced to either pay expensive data charges, or to migrate across to all-you-can-eat data price plans.

Taking all of this into account, the future of mobile social networking looks generally rosy. However, there is one key fact that may well stifle the growth of this industry unless addressed in the near future- 3G networks are simply not designed for two-way data traffic. Downloading data is not a problem, and in the majority of cases this occurs at a reasonable speed over existing networks. But upload speeds are much slower and the more people that start to send images and video to sites such as YouTube and Flickr, the slower it will get. So there exists a vicious circle of sorts that will likely have negative ramifications going forward. The mobile industry wants and needs more people to start using data applications such as social networking tools. But the more that do, the worse the experience will potentially become, with the worst case scenario being that people are turned off from mobile applications and simply stop using them.

One solution to data network congestion has been for operators to keep prices high, effectively making using rich media too expensive for most customers. But this hardly represents a long term solution and such unnecessary stifling of the market simply serves to perpetuate the view that mobile services are overpriced. In the longer term, the evolution to 4G networks will ultimately solve this problem, giving users near equal up- and downloading speeds. But until then, mobile operators need to examine just how well they are prepared for an increase in the number of their subscribers wanting to upload data heavy content. It is highly unlikely that partners such as MySpace and Facebook would be pleased to learn that prices are kept artificially high as a way to hide network limitations.