NEW YORK, NY — Increasingly, those who enjoy social networking online are taking their acts on the road. According to ABI Research, more than 140 million social network subscribers will share “anytime, anywhere” experiences via mobile phone by 2013, and they will generate subscription revenues in excess of $410 million“Subscriber numbers for mobile social networking will climb at a relatively modest rate for the next three or four years, but will then start to accelerate sharply,” according to ABI Research Director Michael Wolf. “That uptick is based on assumed acceptance levels in the giant emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Those countries are wildcards, very difficult to estimate, so we are quite conservative in our forecasts.”
Some mobile versions of social networks will follow the model common to today’s Internet-based groups such as MySpace and Facebook: free browser-based access. Such models pose a problem for mobile operators by limiting their slice of the revenue to a charge for data traffic.
“The ideal scenario for the mobile operator includes a recurring revenue stream: a subscriber paying $1.99 or $2.99 a month to have this application on their handset,” Wolf said, adding he expects mobile operators to find ways to “enhance” mobile social networking experiences, for a fee.
In addition, advertising to socially networked mobile users will present significant opportunities, Wolf said. A recent end-user survey conducted by ABI Research indicated mobile users of social networks are likely to consume two or three times as much digital mobile content (pictures, music, videos and games) than their “asocial” peers.
That would suggest a golden marketing and advertising opportunity yet, says Wolf, that isn’t happening: “[Operators and social networks] are not offering the right kinds of products for these users. The advertising isn’t that sophisticated yet. Social networking applications have to be uniquely mobile and not reliant entirely on advertising-based revenues, at least not initially.”
