Facebook and MySpace on mobile – stifling?
A new report by ABI Research shows that almost half of those who use a social networking apps such as Facebook and MySpace on the computer have also accessed these networks through their mobile phone. What are people doing on these networks while out and about?
- checking comments
- checking messages
- posting updates
No surprise that Facebook and MySpace dominate as they provide a one-stop-networked-shop. But one of the killer affordances of mobile is location-based services. Neither Facebook nor MySpace provide this kind of service (yet). There are other networks like Brightkite and Yelp that incorporate location, allowing you to find people or places in context, but these social networks have relatively small market share. Our friends at Ars Technica provide some more details on this - basically, if and when will Facebook and MySpace start to leverage location-based services? And while they take their time, will some of the smaller players start to rise?
An important element of the discussion is the ability of the mobile device to run location services in the background while still communicating with the application. This is something that the popular iPhone doesn’t do, but other devices such as the new Android-based G1, Blackberry, and many Nokia and Sony Ericsson devices can do. This is basically about your device being aware of your location so it can connect you to people and places automatically, as opposed to you having to manually open a particular app so the device can then sense where you are. Think head out of the sunroof vs. being stuck in the trunk and occasionally being let out to look around.
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