Social networking’s next frontier: the mobile phone

MXit users in South Africa
Because today’s social networking rarely function or perform well on a mobile device, Oz Communications CEO Jim Knapik argues that carriers must find a simple way to bring the best social networking communities to the mobile masses.

A complete mobile social networking experience is composed of three specific elements:

  • Sharing and storing personal information and profiles, including browsing for friends and contacts, reading status messages, commenting on photos and blogs, uploading photos to a personal profile and updating personal status messages.
  • Asynchronous messaging, including e-mailing and sending messages. These types of messages are generally stored and are available in offline mode.
  • Real-time messaging, including instant messaging and the ability to chat synchronously with friends. This type of communication is online, interactive and collaborative in nature.

[…] None of the solutions currently covers all three components in one seamless application. Without providing all of these elements, we believe that the mobile operators will be unable to deliver the social networking experience that consumers expect on their mobile handset.

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(via Usability News)

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