Mobile Innovation

European Myspace competitor Netlog, which has over 33 million users, has released its native iPhone app. Users can get a feed of friends updates, see pictures, upload content and add pictures. Unusually, it is also GPS-enabled, something Facebook has so far steered clear of. It’s TechCrunch’s general view that if Facebook added true, location-based mobile social networking to its iPhone app, it would probably kill off a lot of the startups in that arena fairly swiftly. But it has yet to do so, leaving the way open for sites like Netlog.

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Garmin’s Tele Atlas bid following Nokia’s Navteq offer has implications for IP mapping in these emerging mobile applications: 1)Personalization and customization, 2)Social networking, 3)Interactive sharing.

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Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) via SMS, instant messaging, the Twitter website, or an application such as Twitterrific. Twitter was founded in October 2006 by San Francisco start-up company Obvious Corp.

Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and also instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone is the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, or through an application. For SMS, currently three gateway numbers are available: short codes for the USA and Canada and a UK number for international use. While the Twitter service is free, posting and receiving updates via SMS may incur charges from the wireless carrier.

Continue reading "Twitter: What are you doing?" »

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MusicStrands is doing some new stuff by taking their established music discovery and search engine and jazz it up by throwing in some social aspects. The established service enables the user to build her personal music profile, based on the music she plays in iTunes or Windows Media Player. The personal profile lets the user find music tailored to her individual taste, and let her see and share music charts of her favorite and most played songs.

The latest project of MusicStrands is PartyStrands, which takes the MusicStrands idea and applies it to a bar or a club. PartyStrands is a software that works with iTunes or Windows Media Player. A bar owner could run it on a PC that’s loaded with music tracks, and by using one artist as a starting point, it keeps churning out related tunes from the music library. It gets much more interesting, though as users can “join the party” by sending an SMS in with an alias, and their favorite artist. As more users join, the playlist gets influenced by their collective taste in music. PartyStrands is designed to run on a video projector or other large screen, so it can show the current track that’s playing and album art, while users can also send text messages to be displayed, and eventually pictures as well (some photos of it in action).

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The social networking site MySpace, hugely successful among teenagers and twenty-somethings, is about to become more ubiquitous with the launch of a cellular service that will let users read and post to the site for free.

The service and two accompanying phones will be launched in a few months by Helio LLC, a joint venture of Internet service provider Earthlink Inc. and South Korean carrier SK Telecom Co.

On MySpace, users keep personal pages with journals, communicate with friends and play games. It's a formula that has attracted more than 54 million users and the attention of media conglomerate News Corp., which bought the site last year for $580 million.

Continue reading "MySpace users to get their own cell phones" »

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MySpace, the largest and most successful social network on the planet, just announced the exclusive way it will enter the mobile arena. It’s worth noting that existing MySpace users effectively include every single mobile-savvy young adult in the US. And, Enpocket’s research finds that 30% of respondents age 18-24 prefer to access information from mobile phones rather than TV, newspapers, the Internet, radio, and magazines.

So, does MySpace repeat its initial success by keeping the barriers to adoption as low as possible and giving their users a highly social, highly flexible environment in which to express themselves? Nope, MySpace cuts an exclusive deal with a yet-to-be-launched MVNO named Helio whose current installed base is zero. Further, this MVNO only offers the latest, coolest phones, and “’MySpace Mobile On Helio’” will leverage the devices’ advanced capabilities.”

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