Facebook dominates mobile social networking boom
Published: 4 February, 2009
Social networking combined with location awareness - the magic formula for success in the mobile services world, if early indicators for 2009 are anything to go by. The big names of social nets are certainly gearing up to compete, with Facebook and Bebo particularly aggressive.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg said it now has 25m mobile user per month, up from 15m last November and 5m at the start of 2008. According to unofficial Facebook blog, AllFacebook, the site now has over 4m daily active users. The importance of smartphones that are well adapted for this type of interactive app is clear - over two-thirds of mobile Facebook users come via the versions that were specifically designed for the iPhone (1.64m a day) or BlackBerry (1.56m), while the generic Facebook implementation attracts just one million. There may also be another million using the site via 'unsanctioned' mobile versions.
More stats come from mobile browser maker Opera, which says Facebook is the most visited site by its Opera Mini users. Other social networking offerings include Friendster, at third place in the Opera poll, and MySpace - second in the US behind Facebook, but eighth globally.
Bebo is trying to increase its impact by putting itself in the 'hub' position, enabling users to integrate all their social sites. It has launched Bebo Open Mobile, a global partnership program providing operators with a suite of tools to offer their customers easy access to social nets. Bebo, which AOL acquired last year for $850m, will collaborate with operators, handset makers and software developers to promote, distribute and monetize mobile social media, and says it can access 50m users. The main components of its initiative are the Open Mobile Messaging toolkit and Open Mobile Development API.
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