Social Networks and Mobile Phones Make for a High-Growth Combination

Press Release - 7:00 am on January 2, 2007

The combination of broadband-enabled mobile phones and online social networking communities is breeding a new extremely high-growth market, according to a recent report by ABI Research.

“The rapid rise of online social communities — gathering places such as MySpace and Facebook — has done more than bring the ‘pen pal’ concept into the 21st century,” said ABI’s vice president of research, Clint Wheelock. “It has created a new paradigm for personal networking. ”

Analysts with the firm are currently predicting that mobile social communities will have attracted over 174 million users by 2011, compared to a projected 50 million this year.

“In a logical progression,” Wheelock explained. “Many social communities are now based on the mobile phone and other portable wireless devices instead of — or as well as — the PC. Such mobile social communities extend the reach of electronic social interaction to millions of people who don’t have regular or easy access to computers.”

Mobile social networks have been available in one form or another for several years now, but the sheer number of people participating has skyrocketed in the last few months, according to Howard Rheingold of TechNewsWorld.

“It’s only really recently that we have had large numbers of people around the world with access to both broadband at home and Internet connections on their mobile phones,” Rheingold noted.