The idea of mobile social networking first came to my mind three years ago when I was traveling with my colleague Keith Liu from Dulles after meeting with AOL. I was preparing a speech for an upcoming conference on "social computing". We talked about the business idea of launching a dating service based on some social network ideas and location-based services. We were so excited and thought that it'd be a killer idea to use a cell phone as a device for matching that's linked to a social network database. Imagine you walking into a Dean and De Luca and your cell phones scan the database and prompt you how many people there are your type. You can instantly check their profile and decide whether you want to send them a short message.
Keith even came up with the name "Ping" for the business. I love that name. We never had the time to make that happen and we're all busy with clients' work. The idea came back to me yesterday when I was organizing my folders getting ready for a "start-up mode".
Mobile social networks will ultimately take over the MySpace of the world. David S. Hachen, an associate professor of sociology at the U of Notre Dame who conduced reseatch on cell phone usage and its effects on people's relationships. He found out that cell phone networks tend to be a reflection of friendship networks. "Friendship networks," he said, "tend to be larger in younger groups, but they have weaker ties with those they talk with. But as they get older, the networks are smaller and they have stronger ties." Some suggest that cell phones will ultimately replace face-to-face contact. It's too early to tell.
I still think there's still plenty of opportunities to come up with innovative new services around mobile social networks. What we need is an open protocol for social networks which allows social networks to talk to each other through a central identity that one can own and manage. That's no small task. Here I updated a presentation that I used a while back and I wish it will spark some new ideas for you. Who knows, that may inspire you for your next $100 million idea. Enjoy the weekend.
A new player is Kadoink which is a mobile social network that lets people share media, calls, and messages with their friends. The site is currently in private beta. Kadoink has already raised $2 million in seed funding. How it works? It operates through a series of short code commands that you can text to Kadoink, in order to send or receive information. One good thing about kadoink is the capabilities of doing everything you need to do within the network with these short codes, via SMS, not having to rely on the set up or configuration on the web. that's a smart move. That means you can make groups, send out text or voice blasts, share images and videos, send private messages to other users, and receive the updates from users you’re following. Texts and calls can also be scheduled. Nicknames are used as an alias for users, to protect people's privacy. They have also created an interactive widget “mini-page” that users can place on their blogs or social networking profiles, watch out for this little start-ip.
