If you have your mobile phone with you all the time, surely that's where you'd expect to see your social networks enabled? Well, even with dedicated mobile sites, and the occasional java utility to get to sites such as Facebook and MySpace, users aren't biting (reports the LSE in this PDF report). With only 47% using their mobile to check email or browse the web there's a lot of work to go before you can address the tiny 7% that use the mobile for social network usage.
Read on in the full article.
I guess there could be a lot of reasons for this, Ewan. A lot of people who are interested in high-end phones with high-end features and software might be people who are a bit older and have a bit more spare cash to throw at a hobby, which might mean that they are less likely to be switched on to 'young people' activities such as Social Networking. Though with feature phones becoming cheaper and cheaper with high-end features built in, this financial argument will kind of grind to a halt.
There's also the big group of people who although are fascinated with hardware's ability to do this stuff, actually are not interested in using it. Like the man who loves to have (and fiddle with) a DSLR but actually never takes any pictures or never goes anywhere interesting enough to make use of it [ahem].
Isn't there also the issue of people not really yet having an understanding of (or confidence in) 'always on' with data packages - and some just not set up for that, so are worried about 'online' charges? Maybe the rise of wifi hotspots and blanket coverage (on lamp posts) will change this? Though actually the operators seem to be getting on board with this in any case, bring down said charges, as we move forward - so that 3G and 3.5G (and beyond) will meet people's needs and become cheap enough to not have to consider it when using an 'online' feature.
Isn't there more so another group of people who actually don't know that they can do this stuff, even if they wanted to? Do people selling phones and contracts in the Hight Street tell consumers about this stuff (assuming they even know themselves)? I've been very impressed with the feature in the E71 which is built into Camera where an option is given immediately after each shot to post to Ovi Share - and even knows my folders up there with a choice of where to dump it. That's in-your-face features which can't easily be ignored. Maybe if phones somehow stuck these other features in-your-face people would be more aware?
Being an evangelist for Symbian must be frustrating when the infrastructure of consumer delivery and manufacturer design seem to be against the common goal, I guess!
Anyway, there's my lunchtime thoughts!
Tim
Social Networks on your Mobile - 93% of Users Don't Use Them
7% of 2 billion phone users would be 140 million users, which is hardly tiny. 😊
And as for "only 47%" checking their e-mail or browsing the web, that's an amazingly huge number of people if it's accurate. If it really does represent a proportion of mobile phone users as a whole, that would mean a billion people using e-mail or the web through a phone, which is possibly more users than through any other method.
However, perhaps this survey hasn't really made an effort to balance its findings on a global scale. The PDF talks about interviews with "709 internet users" without saying how they were chosen or even where they live (I'm assuming they're all in the UK but the text doesn't say so).
EDIT: Doh, the title says "A UK Survey"! Okay, that's my mistake 😊 , but it still doesn't say how the people were chosen for the interview.
The iPhone has native Facebook and Myspace applications, it will increase the numbers.
I also went looking for some context via Tomi Ahonen Consulting (specifically, Tomi's blog). Tzer2, that was well noted but the amount of mobile users (counted in subscriptions, some people have multiple of course) is quite a bit bigger now. 7% of 3.3 billion is 231 million (end of 2007, source ITU 2008).
Social networking 2006
- mobile social networking is young, started in 2003
- in 2006 Informa reported mobile social networking to be a 3.45 billion dollar industry (out of total 6.47 billion value of global social networking estimated by Tomi Ahonen... ahead of MMOs and then all the rest like MySpace etc.)
- if that sounds unbelievable, remember that stuff is easier to monetize on mobile and Informa includes payments via SMS to Habbo Hotel and Cyworld in the mobile number, for example
Mobile content industry 2007
- 3 biggest types of mobile content are music (9 B), social networking (6 B) and games (5 B) (sources Netsize Guide 2008, Informa 2008)
- "There are half a dozen content types already for mobile that have grown to be bigger than adult entertainment and gambling."
- mobile social networking "had over 100 million paying users on mobile" - I think LSE's report actually shows (further) remarkable growth...
Most of those numbers (and sources) I picked from the following link, not like I have bought access to any industry reports - they're generally the same ones that newspapers and news sites buy to report big headlines: http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2008/05/deeper-insights.html
Couple more things from the same source:
- internet industry is worth 45 Billion (biggest things are advertising, adult entertainment and gambling)
- mobile content industry is worth 72 Billion (yeah, easier to monetize...)
- voice and SMS normal user-to-user SMS weren't included earlier, SMS alone is over 100 Billion dollars globally
I can't be arsed to find the relevant blog post by Tomi (these are all based on market statistics) but last time I looked there were something like 1.1 billion Internet users, out of which maybe 30% used it on computer only, more used it through mobile phones only, and about a third used internet with both. The mobile-only users are heavily outside US and EU of course but even here some people just don't need more than that.
The Facebook App on Iphone has been installed 1,000,000 times last week !
this App is fantastic, much better than the website.