The Holy Grail For Mobile Social Networks
We've been tracking emerging mobile-only social networks such as ZYB and Mocospace and Mig33. All have unique selling points (Mocospace is dead simple to use, ZYB has a rich set of potential users from their address book backup service …
Context & Ripple Effects
TechCrunch's sweep of ZYB, Mocospace and Mig33 extends a question the outlet first framed on the desktop: its December 2006 look at ProfileLinker's Meebo-style aggregation treated the social graph as something spread across services that needed managing. A year on, the same hunt has moved to the handset, where the graph doesn't need aggregating so much as founding.
Each of the three tracked networks arrives with a distinct wedge: ZYB converts its address book backup users into social-network users, Mocospace competes on dead-simple usability, and analysts flag Mig33 as part of the same emerging mobile-only cohort.
First-order effects
- ZYB's backup service functions as a recruitment engine — every synced address book is a pre-built invitation list, giving it user acquisition costs the other two lack.
- Mocospace's simplicity-first design targets users whose handsets or data plans exclude richer apps, putting it in competition on accessibility rather than features.
Second-order effects
- If contact lists become the seed of the social graph, the carriers and handset makers who control what sits on the phone gain leverage over which network owns a user's mobile identity.
- Web-based social networks face pressure to establish themselves on the handset, because a mobile-only player that captures the phone's contacts first could hold a graph that desktop profiles cannot displace.
Third-order effects
- The shared structural bet across all three companies is that identity migrates from profile pages to phone contacts, making whoever syncs and owns the address book the platform layer of mobile social networking.
- Whether carrier-controlled portals or the open mobile web determines which of these networks scales remains the unresolved variable in the market they are entering.
The trend: Social networking's center of gravity is migrating from desktop profiles toward the mobile handset, with the address book emerging as the contested asset.