Mobile Social

Social media is growing up and growing fast, Facebook, the largest of pack is dusting off its suit in anticipation of its highly public IPO -a record breaking initial offering if the press is to be believed. According to researcher Emarketing Inc. Facebook doubled its revenues last year to over $4.5 billion dollars. 2011 was the year the Twitter broke the $100 million dollar revenue barrier and more importantly made a profit. MySpace has turned its fortunes since parting with News Corp – with a strong start to 2012. In the first 30 days they have signed up 1 million new users – averaging 40,000 new users per day. Google + burst on to the scene and the best is yet to come from them. Social media had a tremendous 2011 and it’s expecting to have a more colossal 2012 and this will be fuelled by mobile!

Social networks are focusing on mobile this is being led by Facebook. According to Facebook globally 44% of its traffic is via mobile so a vast opportunity to target a global audience of the 800 million users whilst on the move. Currently Facebook does not offer mobile targeting on their ad platform but this is all about to change. Twitter however is designed for mobile and not just the sleek and sexy smartphones but any mobile device via their SMS to tweet offering. Twitter is fully integrated into the new iPhone iOS5 operating system which makes tweeting even more seamless.

The world’s largest sporting event, Super Bowl highlighted the presence of social sharing via mobile, research from Clearspring shows social sharing via mobile is up 500% year on year at the SuperBowl.

There’s a wave of Mobile only social networks appearing rapidly. Path, which describes itself as a social journal, recently re launched itself as an android/iOS only platform and had a staggering 800% increase in users in their first month after re launch. Their user base grow from 30,000 to over 250,000 in the same time period and now has over 2 million users globally - highlighting the opportunity for social networks on mobile devices.

As mobile technology is growing (at a very fast rate) so are the possibilities of social media. Will 2012 be the year social has more presence on mobile vs. computers? Who knows, all we know it’s going to be interesting so watch this space.

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Chris - 20/02/2012 @ 11:35
Agree. Social is ideal for mobile. Twitter is also baked right in to Windows Phone as well. Mobile only social networks are interesting, although Path has been in a lot of trouble recently for downloading your contacts (on your iphone) without your knowledge...naughty.