Yankee Group: The Battle for Mobile Users’ Social Lives

The Meteoric Rise of Mobile Social Networking

Forget apps. Forget mobile broadband. The single most exciting development in the mobile industry today is the explosion in use of social media on mobile devices. We don’t have to look far to see the impact. In February 2010, as part of its new Mobile Media Metrics service, the GSM Association (GSMA) revealed the top 10 most visited U.K. mobile Internet (MI) sites during December 2009. Facebook.com was top of the tree with almost 5 million unique users and over 2.6 billion page impressions. Insight from MI technology provider Novarra supports the trend. Data from its large network of mobile browser and MI platform deployments reveals that Twitter experienced 3,500 percent growth in page views during the first half of 2009.

This rapid increase in demand for ubiquitous access to social media is posing some interesting questions for players in the Internet and mobile industries:

• Will consumers be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of potential mobile social media interactions, and ultimately become frustrated by multiple sign-ons and restrictive user interfaces on small mobile devices?
• Is there a role for social media aggregation to help consumers manage their interactions more efficiently?
• How will consumers manage contacts on mobile devices? Will they rely on social media sites, or will device-based address books play a central role?

Keywords

MNO, mobile user, social, Facebook, Twitter, Web-based

Pages
Publish Date & Author(s)

by Declan Lonergan, Vice President
5 pages
February 2010