Mobile Monday Barcelona on Mobile Social Networks

Today, I moderate this month’s Mobile Monday Barcelona event on Mobile Social Networks. We will explore the new layers of commodities offered to support our mobile social lives in extension to the obvious voice and SMS communications means. The developing fist generation of mobile social networks are characterized by a mix user-generated content, instant messaging, friend finder (location-awareness), ping your buddies, and proximity-based matchmaking. They promise to deliver ubiquitous availability to our friends, our familiar strangers, and their generated content. On kind of mobile social networks rely extend strong web-based platform (such as the upcoming mobile versions of MySpace and YouTube) while others almost uniquely target the mobile space (e.g. Dodgball, AirG, Jaiku). Now, what are the key elements to “bringing your phone to life” (as advertised by Dodgeball), “connect with the people you care about” (Jaiku), “connect with anyone, anywhere” (AirG) and meet users and investors expectations. Speakers will provide different perceptive on this promising yet challenging field. Alex Kummerman has been a long observer and actor in the world of mobile social softwares. His 13 years of mobile telecommunication expertise should offer us an overview of the mobile social market trends. Alex will present YouTribe as a case study for ClickMobile platform, a platform to build and run connected communities. YouTribe is a social networking cross platform (web and mobile) community recently launched in France. Alberto Benbunan Garzón, founder and Business Development Director of Mobile Dreams Factory will talk about their social networking and dating platform called Moviligo, the specificity of the spanish market, the challenges, opportunities and future applications in this area. Finally, Felix Petersen, co-founder of Plazes world-widely used (100,000 users) location-aware interaction system, connecting people and “plazes”. This service is branded as “the navigation system for your social life”.

I expect this event to address the current state of the art in mobile social networks, insights on the current use of mobile social software in order to already think of the next generation of mobile social networks (e.g. ubiquitous social networks?)

Current generation:
What are the key constraints that prevent mobile social softwares to reach the popularity level of their web-based versions. Can mobile social networks cover more than the targeted the 15-24 years old population? Is it really useful for mobile users right now? Do the companies behind make money yet? What are the new business models in this field?

Learn from current use:
What are the activities of member of mobile social networks to be supported, what are the (non-expected) emerging uses. Where are mobile social software used? While being mobile, nomade, at home (example of mobile games being mostly played at home)? So in general: What do they learn form the mobile social communities? How are they different from the web-based communities? How people use the software? When? Where?

The omnipresent privacy issue:
The location-awareness raises issues on privacy. How do people deal with that?

Next generation:
What can be learn from current platforms. What could be the next generation? social network capabilities build-in on other mobile devices (e.g. Microsoft Zune), social network interoperability/integration, more use of the tagged physical space?

Relation to my thesis: mingle with the industry and understand how location is integrated in social softwares.