A new phenomenon is hitting the world. It’s a phenomenon so engulfing you can’t avoid. Unless you have been hiding under a coconut shell with no friends to talk to, you would have gotten at least 1 invite to join Facebook. I was thinking of avoiding it in the likes of assuming that this is just another social networking site like Ringo that I can live without for at least this period of harried time. Not that i dont want to socialise, I just dont have the time to play with these things anymore. However, I just can’t not join after getting an avalanche of requests. At leat 10 invites from former colleagues and 5 from current ones. I just thought, heck, let’s give it a try. And after trying it, I now understand what this phenomenon is all about.

Besides the normal fanfare like photo album and blogs like Multiply and Friendster, Facebook hosts many other applications that can be used to tag, poke, kick, give and play your friend. Plus, I am now members of a few groups within the Facebook communities. So, what is the big deal? Almost everything there is a big deal, a social networking site so addictive and interactive that one could not help but check it everyday.

So what does this mean in the world of mobile…that Facebook is another application that can easily be migrated to handphones as something you can play with when you are mobile and to fill in the blank spaces. However, talk remains easy social networks remain to be something one would do on a big computer screen with unlimited bandwidth space. Despite this challenge, a few companies have went their own way in creating their own mobile social networks.

Some being Mocospace from US, ZYB from Europe and Migg33 from US that are trying to create proprietary social networks on mobile only. Personally, would you sign up for Facebook on Internet, update all your photos albums, install game and drawing applications, upload videos on facebook and use Mocospace on mobile and repeat the process all over again?

I feel that these mobile social networks will fail or at least will be merged/eaten up by bigger online players like Facebook and MySpace that are already in the mobile space, slowly but surely. Well, unless integration can be done and we are talking about major work due to the different features of each social networks be it online or on mobile. Plus, it will be harder to get customers to adopt Internet technologies on mobile without garnering the numbers from the web first. Earlier this year, Vodafone Group struck a series of global relationships with key internet brands like Yahoo, MSN, YouTube and MySpace to take them mobile and thus promoting use of their networks only if one was to have a Facebook/MySpace account. In the US, Cingular, Sprint Nextel and Verizon formed a partnership with Facebook to let their users post on their facebook pages via sms. This would not close the use of such s huge social networks to only one operator per country while promoting the use of data for all operators. When is this coming to Asia?

However, the concept of bringing social networks to the mobile space is still required as mobile allows your presence to be detected and allows instant message exchange based on who is nearest to you who is also logged into the same social network. The information that is available would be relevant to the setting - quick LinkedIn type information for a business meeting or Facebook dating status for a bar. The good news is that so far, the numbers are going up with nearly 50 million members of mobile social networks worldwide of which 30 Million are in Asia Pacific according to ABI Research. That is predicted to grow to 174 million and 99 million, respectively by the end of 2010. The penetration rate in Asia is higher as there are far more mobiles than PCs in developing countries like India with consirably good bandwidth. Thus, the potential of mobile social networks remain, if only low flat data rate is introduced with less walled-garden concept among the operators all over the world. So, with emerging use of social networks on mobile, don’t be suprised I might just be using my mobile for poking you on Facebook soon. So if you have a Facebook, add me at princessemilyng or Emily Ng.

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A down-to-earth commentary on mobile technology, internet and telecommunications from an employee working in a network operator in Asia. Feedback and proposals most welcomed.

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