For me, the most valuable perspective on mobile social networking at the GSP East Conference came from hearing Benjamin Joffe of Plus Eight Star speak about the maturity of the social networking industry in Asia. Benjamin presented data on the four largest social networks in Asia, QQ, Cyworld, Mixi and Mobile Gametown which represent over 435 million users throughout Asia. We’ve all heard that Asian users have more advanced cell phone technology and Joffe put 3G high speed data penetration as high as 80% in some countries.
Of the 435 million monthly visitors to these four largest social networking sites in Asia, over 17% of them also log on via the mobile web. The highest percentage of mobile users comes from QQ.com, whose audience of 220 million visitors per month 22% of them also use the mobile web. This comes in stark contract to American sites like Facebook, with only 3 million of their 200 million visitors log on via the mobile web, or a paltry 1.5%. Obviously mobile web access and data speeds in the US are much lower, but how are the mature social networking markets different?
2 Major Differences
Joffe also pointed out two other major differences between the Asian and US social networking markets: a digital currency/ payment system and the prominence of online games on Asian social sites. The Asian counterparts also tend to have some sort of Avatar system, but I’m not sure how popular virtual worlds would be on Facebook or Myspace.
This actually turned out to be a topic that was addressed today in the Facebook panel. Facebook representatives confirmed that they will “definitely” work on a system for developers to accept payment from users. This could, in turn, lead to more premium applications, paying for some games and potentially e-commerce uses,
Social gaming is also a hot topic at this year’s GSP East with an entire panel dedicated to the topic. One of the most important features of games on social networks is that they must also be social and allow users to interact with their friends.
I spoke with Robert Balahura, CEO of J2Play, a company that ties games into the social graph by offering integrated chat applications and the ability to see what other friends are playing and chat with them even if they aren’t in the same game. His company also has a product to take a gaming applet, add social features and convert it for mobile devices via the widely-used MIDP standard.
What’s Next?
Mobile usage in the US is skyrocketing from 30 million active users in 2007 to over 40 million in less than six months. American users are flocking to sites they use on their desktop such as Facebook and Myspace which is the fastest growing site in the US in terms of mobile usage. As these social networks begin to offer fully featured mobile web interfaces, users will find them more valuable for keeping in touch with friends. American consumers will also begin to expand into mobile-based sites such as Mocospace as they become more voracious users of the mobile web.
Check out Benjamin Joffe’s presentation here.
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[...] There Goes Dave (Dave Jeyes) +8*: some numbers have been edited from the original post For me, the most valuable perspective on mobile social networking at the GSP East Conference came from hearing Benjamin Joffe of Plus Eight Star speak about the maturity of the social networking industry in Asia. Benjamin presented data on the four largest social networks in Asia, QQ, Cyworld, Mixi and Mobile Gametown which represent over 345 million active accounts throughout Asia. We’ve all heard that Asian users have more advanced cell phone technology and Joffe put 3G high speed data penetration as high as 80% in some countries (+8*: Japan and South Korea). [...]