Mobile Social Networking: A No-Go (For Now)

Mobile social networks. Is there a reason they haven’t particularly “taken off”? In a word, yes.

A simple explanation for the lack of great buzz about the subgenre: screen size. Not disinterest. Not market size. (Annual cellular phone sales easily eclipse those registered by the PC world.) Real estate.

At 1+ billion sales per year, the mobile market is huge. Immense. But the successes catalogued in the cellular sector don’t go hand in hand with those on the PC side of the technological universe. Very few hits at the desktop have become phenomena once again in the mobile space. Instant messaging? Not really. Text messaging? Nope. Okay, email is one biggie both can trumpet mightily. Voice? The table gets flipped in that area, and even then similarities are nonexistent. In the world of telephony, even Skype is but a pebble on a mountain of stones.

So it’s really difficult to foresee social networking growing in leaps and bounds in the world of Nokia, Motorola, LG, Samsung, etc. Places like MySpace and Facebook have flourished because the browser within the desktop PC has allowed them to become what they are. It would be nearly impossible to duplicate or adapt any such service satisfactorily to fit within the confines of two or three square inches.

There are other hindrances to list as well, like the cost of mobile data services for end users. But none is more of a deal breaker than space – or the lack of. Throw as many millions as you like into a social networking business. If you can’t fit all you need to connect dozens, even hundreds of “friends” to one another easily – with room to spare for a good amount of multitasking (listening to music, watching video clips, etc.) – you have nothing. Zip. Nada.

A mobile site established only to complement a “full-sized” network may be a smart addition for a MySpace or Facebook to make. Anything more would be a time waster, both for creator and user. Companies specializing in such mobile services, like InterCasting (a startup known for the creation of Rabble), should understand this reality better than anyone. Yet they still try to swim against the tide.