MySpace And Facebook Missing The Point Of Mobile?MySpace And Facebook Missing The Point Of Mobile?

There was an interesting take on whether large social networking companies are taking advantage of mobile devices the way they should be. According to experts, they're not. With the emergence of new mobile technology like more accurate GPS, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi, we may find that niche startup companies do a better job at bringing social networking mobile than the big guys.MySpace Mobile and Facebook Mobile seem to have missed the unique capabilities of mobile devices when creating their mobile platforms. They've more or less copied the user experience found on a PC down to mini-format for mobile screens, when they could have done so much more. Given, they provide the basic functionality of knowing where your friends are and sharing photos, etc., but building on features like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi could introduce things like better location-aware services, as well as advertising opportunities to monetize the network.

Startups like MocoSpace bring everything PC-based social networks offer, but in a mobile format. You can do everything from customize profiles, link to friends' profiles, upload and share photos, exchange e-mail and instant messages, and play online games -- however, you can do all of this without booting up a PC. MocoSpace also has made the interface easy to use and understand throughout all the varying makes and models of mobile devices. The approach seems to be working as it generated more mobile traffic than MySpace Mobile did for the month of May -- generating 1.5 billion compared with 1.4 billion, respectively.

While MySpace and Facebook seem satisfied on servicing their PC-based users, I think they need to focus more on developing their mobile services for future growth. A study by eMarketer recently predicted that some 800 million people worldwide will be using mobile phones to connect to social networks by 2012, which represents nearly 20% of all mobile users. As technology expands, and more Internet usage is done via mobile devices, social networking will most likely become primarily mobile. If a startup can be in the right place at the right time, it just might find itself ahead of the big guys when it really counts.