Mobile Social Networks - a Primer

What are Mobile Social Networks?

Mobile Social Networks (I will abbreviate it here to MSNs) are communities of people that connect with each other in some way using their mobile phones. While this may sound a little vague, there are so many variants of MSN, this is the only way to sum them all up.

Core differences between SNSs and MSNs

So what differentiates an MSN from your typical Social Networking Site (SNS) like Facebook or MySpace? The answer is becoming more and more fuzzy as SNSs begin allowing their users to use their mobile phones to access their sites. Essentially what this does is make their websites portable, allowing you to access them from your phone. Using this definition, such examples aren't MSNs, per se, any more than accessing Google from your phone is 'mobile search'. Unfortunately, to capitalize on the mobile social networking buzz, many sites who offer mobile internet browser-friendly versions of their sites are self applying the term, blurring the distinction.

There is a key difference, however, and that is using some aspect of the mobile phone for networking that is not available to you on your PC or laptop, the most exciting of which is your location. You are always where your phone is, so if the location of your phone can be identified, so can yours. This has many exciting applications. You can tell people where you are, geotag photos or blog postings, inform people of goings-on in your area and conversely, get the same information from your friends. This real life dimension is what's so exciting about mobile social networking and what's been creating so much hype.

Using your mobile phone to network presents a radical shift in the way technology is used to interact with your community.

Technologies
So how is information like your location transmitted from your mobile phone to other users? Some of the technologies services are using include:

GPS

Global Positioning System, or GPS, calculates your absolute location using a system of satellites. MSN services that use GPS typically require users to download a mobile phone application and only work on phones with internal GPS chips (like the Nokia N95) or phones able to use an external GPS device (like the Sony Ericsson K510i). GPS allows your absolute position to be determined, to a high degree of accuracy (+/- 15 metres for a civilian GPS device). Examples: www.bliin.com, www.gypsii.com, www.loopt.com, www.urbian.org

Cell-Tower Triangulation

This method of determining your position uses the time delay of cell phone signals to travel to and from cell-towers. Using 3 or more cell-towers, services can determine your position within a probability circle. The accuracy of this method is several hundred metres however and is better suited to urban environments.
Examples: www.gypsii.com

Bluetooth

Bluetooth allows you to 'see' mobile and other devices with Bluetooth on in your area, defined by the range of your Bluetooth radio, which on most phones is about 10 metres. In this way, your location is 'relative' to you, not absolute.
Examples: www.aka-aki.com, www.urbian.org

What can I do with MSNs?

A non-comprehensive list of what you can with MSN services:

• See where your friends are and let them know where you are.
• Get recommendations of restaurants and cafés near you.
• Find out what your friends are doing and where.
• Expand your network by finding commonalities with people around you, like common friends and groups.
• Geotag blog postings or camera photos (by attaching a 'location' to them).

I hope this article was useful! Search for my other articles on Mobile Social Networks to learn about MSN monetization, location-based advertising and mashing real and virtual communities. You can contact me directly for questions, literature and source material at c.kahler [at] urbian.org