Mobile Social Networking Usage Low but Set to Change

A recent ABI Research study says consumers using mobile social networks are mainly checking messages, status updates and comments of friends rather than posting photos or comments.

“Today more than 60 percent of those who access a social network on their phone do so mainly to check for messages or comments from friends, compared to less than 30 percent who upload photos,” said Research Director Michael Wolf.

The trend however is expected to change over time with more consumers sharing photos and using social network messaging and e-mail, which will translate to longer and more frequent usage of social networks on mobile.

With better and technologically equipped phones coming into the market, the pattern should see a change with uploading and communication becoming easier. A recent study too substantiates this by indicating that “mobile phone usage is ‘growing up’ and changes communication with friends and family as well as the traditional Internet usage dramatically”.

According to the research, while this space has a very large number of startups and unformed business models shaped loosely around Internet-based equivalents, the mobile social networking industry has a long way to go before it reaches maturity and mass adoption.

Mobile social networks are however receiving a great deal of interest from mobile operators, hardware vendors, ISPs, and major brands, as a means of connecting users, enabling advertising revenues, and facilitating access to other forms of mobile content.

This report aims to demystify some of the key issues around mobile social networking. It uses a combination of up-to-the-minute analysis and interviews of the major stakeholders in the mobile social networking value chain.

“The fact is that more consumers are really starting to adopt social networking on their phones,” said Wolf. Today more than half of those who use a social network on their PC do so on a daily basis, while only approximately 17 percent of those accessing a mobile social network do so as frequently.

The data in this report has been derived from two separate surveys conducted by ABI Research (News - Alert). The first was conducted in March 2008 with just 1,000 mobile subscribers in the United States. The second, conducted in July 2008, was a sample of over 500 mobile subscribers that were users of online social networks

This disparity in usage between online and mobile social networks is predicted to shrink over time as consumers become more comfortable with using their mobile phone as one of the primary means of keeping in touch.