"Dodgeball and England's Playtxt are two examples of mobile social-software services, otherwise known by the catchy acronym, MoSoSos. MoSoSos are the mobile equivalents of online social networks like Friendster and LinkedIn. They help users find old friends, or potential new ones, on the go. Typically, users set up a profile listing interests, hobbies and romantic availability. They also state what kind of people they'd like to meet. Because the service is tied to a mobile device, it knows when people with similar interests are near each other. Passive social-networking services that merely aggregate our friends, and their friends, ad infinitum, eventually lose their luster," said Meskill. "Geographically mobile solutions that help us connect with our affinity groups or friends are infinitely more sticky.""
Great article on the rise op mobile social software and dating.
Why will this become huge? (and I mean huge!)
1) Mobile phones are all about connecting, less so about information relative to the PC. Communication rules over data. Voice, SMS, MMS, e-mail and especially IM will rule over mobile data services like audio, video, TV and games, even though these data services will increasingly have a social or viral element integrated.
2) I strongly agree with the point above that social software is much much more interesting considering the physical proximity of friends and interesting contacts. This is a killer app in spe, especially among youth culture and nightlife culture. It is about connecting physically and nothing can beat the physical and emotional experience.
3) It integrates into the increasing mobile or nomadic lifestyle of professionals and youth. Individualization and lack of time in general will boost the appeal of this concept.
4) See also the Planned Spontaneity trend within Trendwatching.com and Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs.
5) This concepts easily integrates with mobile dating, LBS, GeoWeb/Augmented Reality and online social software. This might already be on the road map of developers. I hope so :-)
6) The business models for this concept are no problem at all. People are willing to pay for online dating sites and online social software, even more so for this value add and FUN of physical proximity. And advertisers might supplement the revenue stream (think non-intrusive LBS-based-marketing).
My prediction is that with all these fragmented online and mobile social software/dating initiatives around, the market leaders in the end will be the biggest local online social software/dating websites at this moment IF they act aggressively to get the mobile market soon. Otherwise, as the most (emotional) value is the mobile solutions, the market leaders in the mobile space will outgrow their online peers and might acquire them (think about the merger of AOL buying TimeWarner, it is a nice analogy).
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