Buongiorno

Mobile Communication, like the printing press, personal transportation and the advent of mass media – is delivering new levels of personal independence, choice and opportunity. Through the most popular gadget in history, billions of people are beginning to interface with their world in completely new ways. More than 3 billion people now carry personal mobile devices, which can offer far more than just voice and text.

Social networking has clearly been an exciting, if unexpected, success on the web. This success has attracted hundreds of millions of users who connect to each other on their own terms, actively creating content and defining the links between this content. Social networking has proven to be the natural expression for the Web 2.0 movement, allowing users to wrestle the publishing power from established media to become both consumer and supplier.

Buongiorno believes the success of web social networking is but a pre-cursor to the explosion of mobile social networking. The mobile phone is the most prevalent social networking tool on the planet, combining media capture with always-on connectivity, portability, simplicity, personalisation and individuality. Quite simply, the mobile phone is the medium of friendship. From a business standpoint, aiming at a market of mobile community users that will grow by a factor of 10 by 2012, to 428 million[1], opens up a huge market where mobile devices will rapidly prevail over PC-based devices .

Mobile internet connectivity is now a reality , which, when combined with the ubiquity of devices, networks and internet “understanding”, will transform mobile behaviour. Research predicts the rapid growth of mobile broadband access, as users expect high-performance devices and faster mobile networks to deliver better user experience and data capacity – all amidst a cheaper pricing environment and the pervasive use of Web 2.0 services. A similar revolution is taking place on handsets, as users increasingly demand a rich experience based on seamless access to messaging, search, entertainment and content. These users are redefining their needs – needs built around “diversion” and ever-richer “connection.”

Clearly, existing web players understand this new and potentially game-changing opportunity, and will be offering mobile features to their services. Will they be successful? That depends on the nature of mobile social networking – will the future deliver social networking through mobile (the status quo) or true mobile social networking (the new)?

Mobile social networking will offer something new, and this offering will not come from a web incumbent. Instead, it will be a mobile native solution from a mobile specialist, a company which understands the power of the medium, the technical environment, user behaviour and the needs of consumers. The environment is now right for an explosion in mobile social networking; the devices, network capabilities, and user understanding and desire is all in place. Until now, what has been missing is a mobile-centric solution from a mobile expert.

To learn more about Mobile Social Media visit – Mobile Social Media Show (www.mobilesocial-networking.com)

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[1] White Paper: Mobile Social Networking, Informa (2008)