Social networks ignore mobile at their peril

Thu, 5 Nov 2009 | By Alex Farber

Facebook claims 65m users currently access the site via mobile and that these members are 50% more active on the network than PC-only users. MySpace predicts half of all traffic to its site will be via mobiles by 2013 (nma 7 February 2008).

Kevin Murphy, CEO of 3, said during October’s The Future of Mobile conference that there’s an “overwhelming awareness” among consumers of the ability to use social networks on mobile.

3 generates billions of monthly impressions on Facebook, with usage doubling every six months. Rival Twitter is growing by 23 times a month.

Yet despite the best efforts of operators to market social networks, there’s more they could do for themselves to build on their huge popularity and show the way for other publishers.

While the pure-play mobile social networks, such as Flirtomatic – this year’s winners in the nma Effectiveness Awards – have looked to commercialise via revenue streams such as ads and gifts, less serious efforts have been made by the PC encumbents.  

Facebook currently doesn’t carry any ads on its mobile site. While it’s vital to maintain a good user experience, other commercial areas should be explored.

Facebook must allow third parties to develop branded channels and apps for the highly engaged audience. This would also enable brands and publishers to tap into the huge numbers visiting the social network via mobile and provide a helpful leg up into mobile, which would benefit the entire industry.

Functionality such as Facebook Connect for Mobile is a step in the right direction. At the moment mobile social networks suffer from rather thin functionality, but successes like Flirtomatic show more complex services do work.

Bebo has shown the way by taking the brave decision of opening up its tools to allow developers to create their own versions of the site. 

While for the fixed-line social networks mobile isn’t a revenue-generating priority, they ignore exploration at their peril as users increasingly gravitate to cross-platform access.