Thursday, May 8, 2008

Mobile Social Networking: The Growing Phenomenon

How often do you access Facebook on your mobile phone? Personally, I find it more convenient to share information with my business contacts on my Blackberry. The latest article in eMarketer estimates that the number of mobile social networking users will grow from 82 million users now to roughly 800 million users worldwide by the year 2012.

The iPhone and Blackberry have launched several mobile-friendly applications of popular enterprise networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn so it was only a matter of time before we would see this influx of mobile users. As the growing demand for collaboration between individuals grow, so will the need for mobile enterprise networking, since most corporate executives are always on the go. This chart by eMarketer details the forecasted total mobile users.


The enterprise can expect a huge shift from the usage of social networking sites within the office to usage on their mobile devices. Tailored social networking apps have the changed the focus of the Treo, Blackberry, and the iPhone from being primarily a consumer gadget to an enterprise mobile device.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Agree, mobile social networking is on the rise, but it's a long way from reaching its full potential. I have gone through a couple of mobile social networks out there and they are nowhere near my expectations. So I decided to list down a few scenarios.
http://sachendra.wordpress.com/2008/05/27/what-i-want-from-my-mobile-social-network/

peter woodford said...

I understand there's already a mobile application developed for brandstation social network platform available with the on-demand service.