Mobile social networking use will become less passive

Today's mobile social network users are mainly checking messages, updates and comments rather than posting photos or comments themselves, according to a recent study by ABI Research. However, the company says this pattern is changing as more consumers have access to smarter phones and social network applications that are easier to use. Currently over 60% of mobile social network users are mainly checking for messages or comments, with approximately 17% of users checking in at least once a day. [Press release]

Mobile social networkers love their mobiles(!)

Social networking site itsmy.com has conducted a survey that shows how much its 2.5 million members rely on their mobiles (although it's only published results from its 15,000 most-active users worldwide). 95% from the USA and 96% from the UK use the mobile as main means of communication with loved ones... and the average user browses through 160 mobile internet pages per day. [Press release]

Facebook hits 15 million mobile users

Facebook says that it now has 15 million mobile users worldwide - that's three times more than they started with at the beginning of 2008. [Facebook blog]

82 million location-aware mobile social networkers by 2013

Research company ABI Research says there'll be 82 million people using location-based mobile social networking services by 2013. [Press release]

North Americans still prefer voice calls for social contacts

Software company AppTrigger has conducted a survey that shows North American mobile users prefer voice calls for social contacts - although they also want advanced applications. The survey of (just) 250 users said 74% wanted additional services but preferred voice as the main communication channel. In addition, 50% use voicemail at least once a day and 23% now use mobile email. [Press release].

Mobile user-generated content to be funded by ads

A new report from Juniper Research says advertising-funded social networks will provide most of the money for mobile user-generated content sites by 2013. It says the total value of the user-generated content market - social networking, dating and personal content delivery services - will rise from nearly $1.1 billion in 2008 to over $7.3 billion in 2013, with social networking overtaking dating by 2009 to become the largest revenue-generating segment. Advertising will account for more than half of mobile social networking revenue by the end of the forecast period. [Press release]

MySpace working with BlackBerry

Social networking site MySpace is working with Research In Motion (RIM) to create a MySpace Mobile program for BlackBerry smartphones. There's already a mobile MySpace service at http://m.myspace.com, which receives more than two million daily mobile visits. The new MySpace for BlackBerry application will enable BlackBerry users to receive MySpace updates instantly. [Press release]

140 million mobile social networking users by 2013

ABI Research says more than 140 million subscribers will be using social networks on mobile devices by 2013, generating subscription revenues worth over $410 million. Apparently subscriber numbers are expected to start accelerating in three or four years' time due to the potential populariy of social networking in emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia, India and China. [Press release]

Bebo appoints head of mobile

Bebo, the San Francisco-based social media network with over 45 million users, has appointed Sean Kane to the new role of Global Head of Mobile. Mr Kane joins Bebo from Intercasting Corporation, having previously worked at Vivendi Universal and MP3.com. [Press release]

Twitter drops SMS alerts

Social networking site Twitter has stopped delivering updates by text message. The company has been paying for delivering updates itself and says the success of the service means it can no longer afford to keep paying. Quite simply, users who sent a single message to Twitter could have it forwarded to a number of users. Twitter has text deals with networks in Canada, India and the United States but doesn't yet have cost-effective relationships with networks in other countries. [Twitter blog]

Nokia buys another social networking company

Nokia is taking over Plazes, a web-based soial networking service that lets users share information about where they are, where they've been and where they're going. It plans to incorporate Plazes within its Services & Software unit, adding the features of Plazes to its own services. [Press release]

USA ahead of UK for mobile browsing

Smartphone users in the USA are spending an average of four hours and thirty eight minutes per month browsing the mobile web, compared with two and a half hours per month in Britain, according to a survey of 3,500 people by M:Metrics. The favourite site for mobile users in the United States is Craigslist, where users spend an average one hour and thirty-nine minutes per month - and in the UK it's Facebook, where users stay for an average of one hour and forty-five minutes. The company says one of the main reasons for the difference in browsing time is that flat-rate data plans are more popular in the United States, where almost 11% of users have an unlimited data plan compared with 2.3% in the UK. They also say more US smartphones have QWERTY keyboards... and there are more smartphones in the UK. [Press release]

Almost 40% of mobile web traffic is to social networks

Mobile browser company Opera has released a report about the state of the mobile web, basing its findings on statistics from more than 44 million Opera-equipped devices. It says almost 40% of mobile web traffic worldwide is to social networks, with some countries hitting 60%. Over three-quarters of all users are visiting standard web sites, with WAP and .mobi sites accounting for 23% of mobile web traffic. The UK's top ten web sites viewed from a mobile device were:

• www.facebook.com
• www.google.co.uk
• www.live.com
• www.bebo.com
• www.mocospace.com
• news.bbc.co.uk
• uk.yahoo.com
• www.itsmy.com
• www.faceparty.com
• www.ebay.co.uk

Vodafone buys social networking company

Vodafone has bought ZYB, a Danish company that runs a mobile social networking and online backup tool to let mobile phone users save and share their handsets' contact and calendar information online. They're paying 31.5 million Euro (around £25 million) for the company. [Press release]

Social Networking is going mobile (in case you hadn't noticed)

Research conducted by Nielsen Mobile shows that a growing number of mobile phone subscribers are taking online social networking to the streets. The UK leads Europe, with approximately 810,000 mobile subscribers - around 1.7% of the total number of customers - visiting social networking websites on their mobile phones in the first quarter of 2008. That's double the percentage of users in the rest of Europe and is also fractionally higher than in the USA. Facebook was the UK leader with 557,000 unique mobile users per month, followed by MySpace with 211,000 unique users. [Press release]

Nokia and T-Mobile working together on online services

T-Mobile and Nokia have said they're going to work together to improve the availability of new internet services and social networking on mobile devices. The deal is expected to improve access to T-Mobile's web'n'walk internet services and to Nokia's Ovi internet services. There were reports in March that the companies had fallen out following the introduction of Ovi, with T-Mobile said to be dropping a number of Nokia phones. [Press release]

Mobile messaging to hit $212 billion by 2013

Mobile messaging will be worth $212 billion (£106 billion) worldwide by 2013, according to ABI Research. This is expected from a combination of increased SMS usage in the Americas, mobile email growth, the increase in mobile subscribers in the Asia-Pacific region and social networking in nearly all regions. [Press release]

Mobile media set free by doubleTwist

doubleTwist Corporation has announced the creation of doubleTwist desktop, a free downloadable program that helps users share, enjoy and synchronise their personal media between different devices or friends. They've also created a similar Facebook application called "Twist me!" - with compatibility between the Sony PlayStation Portable, Nokia Nseries devices, Sony Ericsson Walkman and Cybershot phones, LG Viewty and Windows Mobile smartphones. The company, co-founded by Jon Lech Johansen (who became known as DVD Jon when he 'cracked' DVD copy protection), says its mission is to enable consumers to enjoy their digital media on the widest possible range of devices. [PDF press release]

A quarter of mobile users on social networks in 5 years?

Almost one quarter of all mobile phone users could be using mobile-based social network services within the next five years, according to forecasts from Informa Telecoms & Media. It says 50 million people were using these services at the end of 2007, which is approximately 2.3% per cent of all mobile users worldwide. By 2012, they say the figure will be anywhere between 12.5% and 23%. [Source: Telecoms.com]

Mobile location-based social networking service launches

A new location-based social networking service has been launched at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It's called GyPSii and adds location-based searching to the usual combination of people, places, information and events. GyPSii can be downloaded to Windows Mobile phones, BlackBerry devices and the Nokia N95, N73, N82 & 6110 Navigator. [Press release]