Ninety Ten News & Mobile Social Networking Blog

What Services Can Trigger Growth in Mobile Internet Usage?

Having been involved with NinetyTen for some time now I am delighted to see the growth of our own mobile social network BuddyPing. In October this service was being used as a test bed and demonstration tool, and here we are 6 months later inching towards 200,000 registered users with a decent rate returning. Although I like to view our BuddyPing application as an innovative application I believe that it’s growth and the consistent usage we are seeing is evidence that consumers are becoming far more comfortable using mobile Internet services. This is very much inline with the view of several market experts I have had the opportunity to speak with recently. Everyone is holding their breath and waiting for the explosion in usage. So what will trigger it? Can BuddyPing be that trigger? – On it’s own no service or application can inspire a huge increase in usage, however services along with better handsets and improved rate plans from the operators are a fundamental part of the reason consumers are starting to use more mobile Internet minutes. I believe that a combination of BuddyPing and services in the social media arena along side mobile search and sport related sites will ultimately be the most visited mobile internet sites and the services who can drive heavy traffic for mobile surfing. If you draw direct comparisons with the online world the most used websites are social networking site, search engines and news/sport related sites. It isn’t a huge leap of faith to translate these consumer usage patterns into the mobile world. How does BuddyPing become key? - The first and most important thing is that we keep growing at the accelerated rate seen this year. To maintain this growth spurt we are launching a new version of the application, which still provides the full functionality currently available, but more importantly we also allow users to communicate with the large online social networks, providing status and location updates as well as viewing their friends status and sharing media. I am confident this convergence of online and mobile will see us exceed a million subscribers by the end of the summer and become a key service when mobile Internet usage finally explodes.

Filed under: General by David Hogben | 26 Mar 2008Top