Mobile Social Networks
Idris Mootee
Aug 2007
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Social Networks Go Mobile
Consumer appetites for social data
and rich content will spike in the
next 12 months.
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Media mobile communities and
user generated content (often
bracketed together as social
networking) will be worth $13.1
billion by 2011.
Source: Informa 2007
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Personal locator services based on the
GPS-enabled mobile phone are
expected to grow from their current
small user-base of just over half a
million in North America to a total of
more than 20 million subscribers in
2011.
Source: ABI Research 2007
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What is a mobile social network?
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Range
Context
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What are mobile social networks?
Informal
Inactive
Formal
Active
Open Closed
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Business value of social networks
According Example The value of a Value E.g.
Value
to scales
network
depends on
#viewers ~N
Sarnoff's broadcast Content 10
law network
#connections
Metcalfe's computer transactions ~N2 100
law network
Reed's law eBay, group #subnetworks
socially ~2N 1024
forming constructed
networks value
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Social networks Vs. Dynamic Social Networks
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What’s the Next Killer Device: iPod and
iPhone users are locked into a single
brand, a single service, a single source…
and that's not a good idea.
The emerging iPod killer will be a mobile
social network device that plays music.
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Which social networks are you in?
it depends…
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The Meaning of Mobile Social Networks can change
Who
Where
When
Needs
(emotion)
Occasion
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Nature of Social Networks
–Densely-knit (most people directly
connected, once worked together or a
hobby group etc.)
–Tightly-bounded (most ties stay within,
b-school alumni etc.)
–Multistranded (most ties contain many
roles)
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Barry Wellman on Social Networks
–Boundaries are permeable
–Interactions are with diverse others
–Connections switch between multiple
networks
–Hierarchies can be flatter and recursive
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Social Network Visualization
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Context-dependent
Socially constructed
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social networks + jobs to-be-done +
dynamic context
= dynamic (contextual) personal
social networks
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The need to sense, mediate,
visualize and in some cases
interpret social context
information as part of their
service provided to end-users
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Thank you. Gracias. Merci. Grazie.
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