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Ever wish you could access your favorite social network while you were on the go? Well - you can. The latest news that Nokia and Facebook are exploring ways to integrate many of the popular social network’s features directly into hundreds of thousands of Nokia phones got me thinking - why is mobile access to social networks important and how can users currently access social networks on the go?


Why is mobile access to social networks important?
There are a surprisingly large number of users who are now accessing social networks through their mobile devices. According to M:Metrics just over 12 million consumers from the US and Western Europe accessed social networks from a mobile device (June 2007 - I’m looking for more recent data. Please let me know if you find any.) The US was the largest market with 7.5 million users (3.5% of all US mobile users). MySpace and Facebook were the top social networking sites accessed via mobile devices with 3.7 million and 2 million US visitors respectively (440,000 and 307,000 in the UK). YouTube had 901,000 mobile visitors (US only) and Bebo 288,000 (UK only). While these numbers are relatively small percentages of overall social network use, I willing to guess that this area is likely to grow significantly in the future. Not to mention that this data was published before the launch of the iPhone which has sold over 4 Million units in the US as of January 2008.

Additionally, ABI Research (as quoted by Laurel Papworth) found that

“…’mobile social communities’ currently count nearly 50 mln members worldwide, a number that is expected to reach 174 mln in 2011.”

Users seem to be attracted to the sheer convenience of accessing a social network during their brief down times - on a commuter train, sitting in a coffee shop waiting for a friend to show up, sitting at a doctor’s office etc. - and are willing to give up the large screens of their office or home computers in order to do so. As price points for smartphones continue to fall, more and more users are going to use their mobile devices to access social networks.

How do I access my favorite social network on my mobile phone?
As an iPhone user (and Blackberry user before that) I have taken mobile web access - and therefore social network access - for granted the last couple of years. However, that’s not always true with a lot of phones today. Here’s a quick breakdown of the different options out there.

Smartphones: iPhone & Blackberry
If you happen to be one of the few but fast growing number of smartphone users, you stand the best chance of having fast, uninterrupted and easy to use access to social networks while on the go. The iPhone uses its full featured Safari browser to provide access to most social networking sites. It’s as easy as typing in a URL into the browser and navigating over to your MySpace or Facebook page. Facebook even has a special web address for iphone users that is designed to optimize the user experience. While the Blackberry’s built in browser is not fantastic, it does provide basic access to sites like MySpace or Facebook. Blackberry recently released a free, downloadable app for Facebook which provides users with most basic, commonly used features. However, if you want to play with your favorite Facebook application such as Scrabulous or SuperPoke, you’re out of luck unless you choose to use a full featured browser like that on the iPhone. iPhone also allows you to watch your favorite videos through its tight integration with the YouTube. Twitter users can choose for a few different web applications to access their latest tweets on the iPhone.

Standard Cell Phones (i.e. Non-Smartphones):
A number of carriers in the US and Europe now offer special plans to provide social network access. Unfortunately for the user, many of these carriers have inked exclusive deals with one social network as opposed to providing the consumer with open access and multiple choices. In Europe, Bebo is available on Orange while MySpace is availabe on Vodaphone. In the US, MySpace is available on AT&T, while YouTube is on Verizon. Many of these carriers charge users between $3 and $6 per month for access to these sites, plus additional fees for bandwidth (since non-smartphone users usually don’t have a data plan).
The Future
We are going to see a significant increase in the use of mobile devices to access social networks over the next few years. While this will not be the primary mode of access, it will most definitely be a popular way for users to access their social networks along with more standard ways like using a PC based web browser. It’s very likely that the integration of location based services onto mobile devices (in the near future) will provide a lot of opportunity for personalized and contextually relevant information exchange between users and their social networks. I’d be more than happy to share a meal with my buddy Joe if Facebook (on my mobile phone of course!) told me that he happened to be 3 blocks away from me just as I was finishing up this blog posting at the local Starbucks. I could then tap into my social network for suggestions on where to eat in the neighborhood. I might even have “Maggiano’s” (a popular chain of italian restaurants that I eat at on ocassion) as a “friend” on my social network which might in turn lead to a digital discount coupon for eating there since there just happens to be one a few blocks away. Mmmmm…..That eggplant parmigiana would hit the spot right about now. Plus, this nifty coupon that was just mailed to me will save me 20%. Sure can’t beat like that.

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