Category: Mobile

Wade Roush wrote:

Quick: Name a consumer passion that generates twice as much revenue as Hollywood movies; in which virtually all of the participants, by definition, have disposable income and an ambition to improve their performance; and which counts among its devotees millions of business executives who carry around gadgets like smartphones.

If you named golf, you were correct. So it wasn’t a stretch for four young tech entrepreneurs from Portland, ME, to pick the sport as the target market for a mobile application that takes advantage of the built-in GPS features of modern smartphones like BlackBerrys and iPhones.

Called AccelGolf, the app duplicates the functions of expensive dedicated GPS golf scorekeepers/rangefinders, showing players the distance to each hole. But it also goes a step beyond, analyzing users’ own play, as well as a large database of historical data from other players, to advise them about the right club to use in each situation. (See the video below.)

The company behind AccelGolf, mCaddie, was one of nine startups to graduate from the TechStars startup boot camp in Boston last summer, and quietly announced this month that it has raised $600,000 in angel funding. It’s beta testing its app on a group of more than 40,000 golfers right now, and plans a public launch of the app when golf season starts in earnest this spring. But it’s spreading the funding news now because “we wanted to let people know we’re still alive and working hard to build the best sports analytic platform out there,” says CEO William Sulinski.

Sulinski says he’d like to reveal the names of the startup’s angel investors, but can’t since each is affiliated with a large public company. However, two of the investors were among mCaddie’s mentors at TechStars, he says.

“TechStars has done an absolutely amazing job of bringing together mentors and investors and generating investor interest for us,” Sulinski says. “We had angel investors as mentors who were …Next Page »

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At the recent Mobile World Congress 2010, Dutch app store analytics firm Distimo presented their findings on the six largest mobile application stores in existence today: the iTunes App Store, BlackBerry App World, Google Android Market, Nokia Ovi Store, Palm App Catalog and Windows Marketplace for Mobile. In their presentation, they analyzed everything including store size, store growth, the most popular applications and where you can find the best deal. They recently shared some of the highlights from that presentation by way of a slideshow embedded on their blog.

For mobile industry insiders, some of the findings won’t be all that shocking, just common knowledge paired with statistics. However, there were a few surprises that caught us off guard, maybe they will you too.

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Distimo collects public application data from app stores and also offers developers an analytics tool which is used to monitor their apps and those belonging to their competitors. After examining and analyzing the data, the company releases market reports detailing their findings.

Free Vs. Paid Apps

One of their most recent reports looked at which application stores have the highest number of free apps. Not surprisingly, the Android Market was the winner here. In an interview with Venture Beat, Distimo co-founder and CEO Vincent Hoogsteder said this was due to multiple factors: the nature of the open-source operating system from Google attracts the sort of developers that enjoy giving away their works and the open nature of the application- approval process (that is, no review board middleman exists between app creation and public release) makes it easier for casual developers to launch. Also, anecdotal evidence points to developers’ dissatisfaction with Google Checkout – paid Android apps are required to implement this payment method for purchase, a much slower process than Apple’s 1-click buying process.

The different ratios of free apps versus paid was one of the findings presented during MWC 2010. In the chart below, you can see the varying percentages by store. (Note that Distimo’s findings were focused on the U.S. market only). Android has the most free applications (57% free) and Nokia has the most paid (85% paid). The next closest store to Android in terms of free is Palm, followed by Apple, Blackberry, Windows Phone, and finally Nokia.

Another interesting finding had to do with the prices for the paid applications. Apple, Android and Palm were all in the same range when it came to the average price for paid apps ($3.27 to $3.62). However, RIM and Microsoft were more than twice as high ($8.26 and $6.99, respectively). This didn’t necessarily have to do with the different types of applications available in each store – sometimes, the exact same app was just priced higher on other platforms. For example, Tetris was $4.99 on Apple and $6.99 on Windows. IM+ was $4.99 on Apple and $29.99 on Blackberry.

Store Size and Growth: Look Out for Android!

Android is now the second-largest application store, reports Distimo, with 19, 297 apps. It’s still a far cry from Apple’s 150,998 apps, though. And other competitors are farther still. Ovi, we were surprised to discover, is the third largest with 6,118 apps available while Blackberry has a respectable 4,756. Palm has only 1,492 and Windows has 693. Apple is also the fastest growing store with a shocking 13,865 new applications added per month. Android’s growth is picking up too – they now have 3,005 new apps per month (15%). Relative to the number of apps housed, Android is actually the fastest growing store.

Games, Games, Games

Also discussed were the popularity of applications by category. On Apple’s store, games and entertainment were the most popular categories (58% and 18%, respectively). Somewhat more surprising was the popularity of games on Blackberry, the platform often used more by enterprise and SMBs than by consumers. Here, games were also in the lead with 29% popularity to only 18% for utilities. One would have thought that would be the other way around – that corporate users would be more likely download apps that helped them work, not play. Apparently, that’s not the case.

For more details on this presentation, you can view the entire slideshow on Slideshare or contact the company itself for a more in-depth marketing report.

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While millions of people were tuned into the opening ceremonies and first weekend of the Winter Olympics, the National Basketball Association was racking up some winter sports numbers of its own during NBA All-Star Weekend 2010 in Dallas: an NBA-record 17 million-plus video streams, up 20 percent over the 2009 weekend—including 4.95 million streams served on Feb. 15; nearly 30 hours of live streaming and original content on NBA.com/TNT Overtime; and a 146 percent uptick for NBA Mobile.

As SVP/GM of NBA Digital, the partnership of Turner Sports and the NBA, Bryan Perez is responsible for NBA TV, NBA.com, WNBA.com, NBADLeague.com, NBA League Pass, broadband and wireless. While the NBA kicked off All-Star Weekend, Perez sat in a red,white, and blue leather recliner in the “living room” section of the NBA TV booth for the paidContent video interview embedded below. We discussed the league’s digital activities; advertising and subscription revenue; the use of social media; its mobile app blitz; and the Turner-NBA partnership. (Look fast during the video and you’ll see TNT’s Ernie Johnson prepping for the live show he was about to do from the open set.) Some highlights:

—Tweet: Players, who aren’t allowed to use social media in game during the season, were encouraged to tweet during the slam-dunk competition. Outside of All-Star, Perez doesn’t see much of an issue about highly paid professionals focusing on the game instead of tweeting.  “While I think it would be neat to have players tweeting during an event, it’s probably more hype than reality, because at the end of the day it’s more hype than reality because at the end of the day it’s all about the game and winning and that’s what makes every other moment that they tweet special and relevant.”

—Repurposing:“We sell League Pass (out-of-market package) separately on television, online and on mobile, It’s a great opportunity for us because we’re basically able to repurpose the same game across every single platform but deliver them in a way that adds value. The ability to get it on your mobile phone is worth something to a fan. We’re always about delivering something that fans really want but also trying to extract some of the value from that.” The most money still comes from television but direct-to-consumer efforts are starting to take shape, including League Pass, mobile apps. D2C is in third place after television and advertising.

—Mobile growth: Before All-Star 2009, the NBA didn’t have a single mobile app. A year later, it has more than 100 across iPhone, BlackBerry and Android. “We have fans. We don’t have iPhone fans or BlackBerry fans.”

—Revenue across platforms: Advertisers “actually pay a lot for ubiquitous brand association … 28 percent of our advertisers that advertise across all three of our platforms account for 73 percent of or revenue. … They pay more and they buy bigger because it’s not something they can easily replicate.”

—Video streams: The league passed the half-billion mark for streams just before the All-Star break and Perez expects to hit 1 billion this season through NBA.com. That doesn’t include the new deal with YouTube. Perez: “The YouTube relationship’s only a month old so we don’t have projections for it yet. But we went into this assuming that it was going to be big.”

Following a string of acquisitions, new product development and vendor chest pounding this year, the cloud collaboration wars are shaping up to be a key competitive battleground. Cloud computing providers are fortifying their positions, aiming to be one-stop shops for enterprises to shed internal infrastructure and move to online collaboration and communications. With this market focused heavily on software capabilities, and a healthy ecosystem of smaller players and startups filling in the gaps, watch this space carefully for more consolidation and acquisitions.

Cloud collaboration has now expanded beyond the core of e-mail communications to include social networking, group content creation and management, presentation sharing, project management, integrated voice and video, calendaring, scheduling and more. Let’s take a look at the big players and other possible entrants.

Microsoft

Microsoft is the undisputed legacy king of enterprise communications with its Exchange mail platform, which continues to hold ground in some part because so many users have been weaned on the Outlook interface. Now Microsoft has put its marketing muscle behind its Business Productivity Online suite which includes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Live Meeting, and Office Communications Online. Microsoft hosts these services, but sells them directly and through partners.

Anxious to defend its turf, the company has launched a competitor-focused website WhyMicrosoft.org WhyMicrosoft, which explicitly details the benefits of the Microsoft offering over IBM, Google Apps, OpenOffice, and interestingly, Cisco. The installed base, breadth of platform, and user-addiction factors are likely to favor Microsoft for the short term, but its leading position is by no means guaranteed.

IBM

In January, IBM hit the PR accelerator when it announced that Panasonic had chosen LotusLive, planning to eventually convert 380,000 employees to web-based mail. Claiming it as the industry’s largest cloud-computing contract, the deal gives IBM and LotusLive a renewed lease to play in the cloud collaboration space, and according to reports, also includes other online collaboration offerings such as  calendars, web meetings, file sharing, and social networking. Few companies have the size and scope of IBM to help enterprises of this size manage these implementations worldwide, so expect to see IBM continue with global deals that wrap LotusLive into a giant package of outsourced IT services.

Google

Perhaps the most exciting cloud collaboration offering from a product perspective is Google Apps, which includes Mail, Docs, Groups, Sites, and Video. While certainly lagging in some of the functionality delivered by Microsoft, Google continues to add new features at a blistering pace. The company has its own enterprise customer roster and has been actively promoting Google Apps through its Gone Google campaign.

While traditionalists claim that Google’s offerings lack the sophisticated capabilities of Exchange or Office, many see them as light years ahead on the collaboration side. Anyone who has jointly edited a Google Doc should be able to attest to that. And as the world seems to move away from the benefits of fancy font formatting to the speed and efficiency of easy sharing, Google might be in the best position to capitalize on the cloud collaboration race. But perhaps the dark horse is Google’s mobile strategy. Android and the NexusOne phone already appear to be more innovative than Windows Mobile competition, and the integration with Google Apps could dramatically accelerate business adoption.

VMware / Zimbra

VMware boldly entered the cloud collaboration race when it acquired Zimbra in January. Largely hidden within Yahoo! from its initial acquisition, Zimbra will now get the support needed to emerge on the grander stage. The Zimbra Collaboration Suite has one of the most interesting deployment models in the industry. By providing compatitibility with a variety of mail clients such as Outlook and Apple Mail, Zimbra leaps over the competition by eliminating the troublesome issue of asking users to give up their familiar mail program interfaces.

It should be noted, too, that the top three executives listed on the VMware leadership page have a combined 47 years of experience at Microsoft. These folks know how Microsoft profited from communications and collaboration products, and are likely to be in a good position to chip away at that market position.

Others

Without a formidable e-mail offering, many of the other collaboration players are relegated to fill in elsewhere. Oracle plans to develop Oracle Cloud Office following the OpenOffice aquisition through Sun to integrate desktop, web and mobile interaction. And Cisco will approach the market through its unified communications offerings and WebEx products.

Let’s also remember that collaboration habits are changing. As we move away from e-mail to other communications mechanisms like instant messaging, Facebook, and Twitter, perhaps the dominance of the e-mail core will evaporate. Salesforce.com is taking this approach with the introduction of Chatter, leapfrogging the e-mail playing field entirely to social communications.

Meanwhile, the open source and freeware worlds are waking up to the promise of online collaboration, and there are many free, standalone cloud collaboration products. We covered many useful ones here.

There is still a long road to hoe for many users to give up their affinity for Microsoft Outlook and Office. But it appears that now, more than ever, cloud collaboration could turn the tides toward a new slate of solutions.

NearVerse, a year-old startup from Philadelphia, plans to launch a new proximity-based media-sharing service called Lokast next month at SXSW in Austin. Lokast is to debut at some of the festivals’ music shows, with bands releasing exclusive content to the members of their audiences with iPhones.

We haven’t had a chance to try Lokast yet but we spoke to co-founder Vic Singh today about how it works. Basically, once users install a yet-to-be-released iPhone app, they’re able to share and receive content from other logged-in users who are within a 300-foot radius. If you’ve heard of the Bump mobile data-swapping app, which lets iPhone and Android owners swap contact info by bumping their phones together, it’s kind of a similar idea. Singh contended NearVerse’s transfer speeds are much faster than 3G and more convenient than finding a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Content is shared on Lokast on a one-to-one basis over Bluetooth (a coming Android app will support other connections). Of course, this isn’t your typical P2P experience where you start downloading a file and then go about your business, given the iPhone can only run one app at a time. But whenever you want to exchange a local video or photo, you can fire the app up, get your friend or fan to fire up theirs, and send away. This will work despite network congestion, which may well be an issue again at SXSW.

The Lokast app will be free, with NearVerse planning to monetize through advertising and premium products. NearVerse has eight employees and has raised $1 million from backers that Singh is not yet disclosing.

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Wade Roush wrote:

Fluent Mobile, the Boston, MA-based maker of a leading iPhone news-aggregating app called Fluent News Reader, has raised $1.25 million out of a planned $2.5 million round of equity funding, according to a regulatory filing. Fluent executives did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the round. While the regulatory filing did not list the company’s investors, it identified Guy Bradley, a private investor who is a former member of angel investing group CommonAngels and a former partner at CMGI @Ventures, as a director of the startup. Xconomy reviewed Fluent News in June 2009.

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Skype and Verizon announced a partnership earlier this week that would embed the Internet calling service on Verizon’s smartphones. The partnership, at least to me, was driven by Verizon’s fear of the iPhone.

I wondered if the two companies had signed an exclusive deal. But during the press conference, when I asked Verizon chief marketing officer John Stratton and Skype CEO Josh Silverman about the deal, they both dodged the question. Then later during a conversation with Silverman, when I asked if his company would work with another carrier in the U.S. building a solution similar to the one being offered to Verizon’s customers, he declined to answer the question.  “I cannot comment and speculate on this,” is what he said.

Their evasiveness, got me — like many of our readers — even more curious about the deal. I have been making calls to my sources and have picked up some interesting (though no means all) details.  The deal, my sources tell me, is an exclusive partnership between the two that will last for a period of 2-3 years. No other U.S. carrier is going to get a similar Skype offering – which also bolsters my theory that Skype can help Verizon distinguish itself amongst smartphone offerings, especially the iPhone.

Another thing I also picked up: Skype’s iPhone app for 3G is ready to go, but the company is holding it back, mostly because it’s worried about the AT&T network. Silverman recently told me that the company would release a Skype upgrade “very soon.” I wonder how much of the delay is caused by the influence wielded by their friends at Verizon.

Sprint will launch its fist WiMAX-enabled handset in the first half of this year, several months earlier than expected, according to a Forbes story this morning — an HTC Supersonic, a dual-mode, Android-enabled device that boasts a 4.3-inch LCD display and Wi-Fi connectivity. But does Sprint really need a WiMAX phone yet?

The phone will reportedly switch automatically switch between Sprint’s 3G EV-DO network and the 4G infrastructure it’s building with Clearwire, enabling it to take advantage of average download speeds of 3-6 Mbps. But that’s only when it can find a WiMAX network, which covers some 10 percent of the U.S. population and doesn’t yet include cities such as New York, San Francisco and Washington.

Just as importantly, the industry has yet to agree on a handover for voice between 3G and WiMAX which — like LTE — is all-IP. Depending on how Sprint decides to handle voice on its WiMAX network, folks making a call on its WiMAX phone could find themselves unable to use the 4G data services while on a call. Sprint will obviously need to produce phones that leverage WiMAX as it builds out its new footprint and as the industry addresses the technical problems involved in moving to 4G from 3G. But rushing a WiMAX phone to market in the next few months doesn’t seem to make much sense.

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We’re big fans of adding connectivity to everything — from GPS systems to thermostats — but for every wireless connection there’s a price, and figuring out who pays that price and how they pay it is a roadblock when it comes to enabling smart appliances and gadgets, according to a survey by Accenture. The consulting firm surveyed businesses and found that 89 percent are interested in adding connectivity, but 63 percent of companies were concerned about the business models.

So far we’ve seen two examples of successful business models for adding wireless connectivity: buying service monthly from a cell phone company such as for a data card, or a device maker pricing the cost of wireless into the goods it sells as Amazon does on the Kindle. But buying additional subscriptions for a smarter photo frame or a connected navigation system hasn’t really panned out, never mind connected refrigerators. Consumers don’t want 20 different bills for wireless service associated with their devices, nor do they want a refrigerator that uses the T-Mobile network if they don’t have T-Mobile coverage at their home.

We’ve written about this problem before and touched on a possible solution: Wi-Fi. Personal hotspots that use the cellular network for connectivity and convert that signal to Wi-Fi are slowly creeping into the consumer world as a way to turn an iPod touch into an iPhone or merely replace a data card. That covers a range of devices with Wi-Fi chips on the go, and even in the car.

Inside a home, Wi-Fi is even easier to defend, as it’s a technology many already have. Your large appliances never leave the home, so Wi-Fi in a refrigerator or washing machine that talks to the WiFi-enabled box connected to the smart grid to monitor energy usage is a pretty safe bet for consumer appliance vendors to make. Why shell out the big bucks for a cellular connection for devices that stay home?

At a 4G conference in Florida, a Verizon executive gave a presentation outlining a possible use case by which GE would use LTE inside a refrigerator. The refrigerator could monitor things like the water filter, and through the LTE connection, offer broadband to a screen in the fridge and tell GE when the filter needed replacing. Then GE could ask the customer to click to buy a filter on the fridge. In a situation like that the consumer might pay for the access for broadband on the screen and GE might pay for the access to enable it to make more filter sales. That sounds great — for GE — but as a refrigerator-buying consumer, I’m not sold.

So while I’m glad to hear that device makers want to add connectivity to everything, I’m equally glad that they’re thinking hard about how to do it. Broadband will add value to a bunch of different devices, but it may not always have to come from the high-priced cellular network, especially inside the home. And if we are going to deliver it over the cell network, perhaps Wi-Fi is still the best way to go.

Image courtesy of Flickr user fihu

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URBANA – An Urbana man found dead in his home in September was a homicide victim, a Champaign County coroner’s jury has ruled.

But no one has been arrested in connection with the death of Richard D. Combs, 43, who lived in an apartment at 1703 E. Florida Ave.

Urbana police detective Matt Quinley testified that Mr. Combs’ girlfriend arrived home from work about 8:20 a.m. on Sept. 3 and found him in the entryway to their apartment, just behind the door. Quinley said that he had multiple injuries to his face and mouth and that the apartment had been ransacked.

Champaign County Coroner Duane Northrup said an autopsy showed Mr. Combs died of a heart attack with a contributing factor being stress due to an assault.

Quinley said Mr. Combs’ car had also been stolen. It was recovered four days later in the 1500 block of Kiler Drive in Champaign.

Police found grocery bags with frozen food items on the floor near Mr. Combs, leading them to believe that whoever assaulted him was waiting in the apartment when he arrived.

In another inquest concerning an unsolved death, jurors ruled the death of Holly Cassano, 22, of Mahomet, also to be a homicide.

Ms. Cassano was found on Nov. 2 in her mobile home by her mother about 10:30 a.m. She was the victim of multiple stab wounds.

Champaign County sheriff’s investigator David Sherrick said there were signs of a struggle in the home but declined to give many details because of the ongoing investigation.

No weapon was found, and there was no evidence of forced entry to her home on DuPage Street, Sherrick said. No one has been arrested for her murder.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

Peter Sisson, the founder and chief executive officer of Toktumi, a San Francisco-based VoIP startup, is elated. He was jumping with joy when I spoke with him earlier today. Why? Because Apple just approved the latest version (2.0) of his company’s mobile VoIP app, Line2. The app, which costs 99 cents, allows you to call and receive phone calls over both 3G and Wi-Fi networks.

What Toktumi has done is build a back end similar to that of Google Voice — but unlike Google, it’s gotten Apple’s blessing. It’s one of the more complete mobile VoIP apps currently available for download; I especially like the fact that it allows you to receive calls straight to your mobile phone over a cellular network even if you don’t have 3G or Wi-Fi coverage. It comes with its own features such as call waiting, conference calling, call transfer and even voice mails — in other words, the service is like a virtual second line on your phone. The service costs $14.95 a month for unlimited calls in the U.S. and Canada.

Toktumi, which launched at DEMO 2008, has had to traverse a difficult path to get to where it is today, and Sisson is understandably excited about the kind of exposure the approval from Apple of its app will bring. Sisson, a veteran of the VoIP business, sold his last company, Teleo, to Microsoft.

Amazon delivered today a beta version of its free Kindle for BlackBerry e-book app, a quick download that provides access to more than 420,000 books. It marks just the latest example of how the publishing industry is facing seminal changes. Will the end result be the death of quality content?

Amazon has been in the crosshairs of the traditional publishing industry for some time now, with regard to numerous issues. Its standard $9.99-per-title charge for e-books is the same kind of clear and present threat to existing business models in the publishing industry that the music industry faced as low-priced music became available on ubiquitous digital players. The music industry continues to reel from the effects of that revolution, and instead of reaching for workable digital business strategies, aims laterally for questionable solutions such as slapping a performance tax on radio stations.

I got into a discussion on a videocast yesterday with Dan Goodin, one of the best writers over at The Register, about the equally seismic shifts we’re seeing in book distribution and the publishing industry. He made the point that with the low pricing models for digital books, and more devices for reading them, the ultimate effect may be that the quality of written content suffers. Authors, in addition to publishers, stand to have their livelihoods threatened under the new e-book regime, he noted:

“Do we want to live in a world where content providers can’t support themselves? That is exactly where we are moving with the Kindle and the iPad because people suddenly want books for $9.99. I’ve got news: It takes about a year to write a book, you have to travel extensively, you have to do a lot of fact-checking. What Amazon and Apple are trying to do is significantly decrease the amount of money that publishers, and specifically authors, can make.”

“The quality of books and other types of published material is going to significantly deteriorate,” he added. He’s not the first person to allege that the sweeping changes in the publishing industry threaten quality content. Warren Buffett, for example, has predicted that with newspapers dying and reporters losing their jobs, widespread dishonesty will ensue.

I’m inclined to agree — up to a point — with both of them, and I say that as a book author who has always worked in the publishing industry. However, it also seems clear that new publishing models will arise amidst the carnage. For example, Mathew recently noted that some authors are signing exclusive Kindle deals with Amazon. One popular author, Stephen Covey, has struck a deal with Amazon where he gets about 50 percent of the revenues from his Kindle-delivered books, far above the royalty deals that most authors get. Perhaps the very providers of digital content and distribution devices will end up being the ones to make the publishing industry work again.

Let’s not forget that we’re seeing exciting new kinds of devices arrive for reading. I suspect that devices such as the iPad will be both a blessing and a curse for the publishing industry, creating short-term chaos but also long-term promise.  Om has noted that the instant he laid his hands on the iPad, he had visions of exciting new content types that will surely take shape for it. Apple may also introduce higher pricing models for content on the iPad than we’ve seen from Amazon for the Kindle. For a visual tour of how the iPad might be a promising trend for publishing, I recommend watching the video below of Wired Magazine’s concept app for the iPad, which looks quite slick.

The ubiquitous availability of e-books may also usher in more reading, and it’s a fact that readers of e-books buy more books. As a BlackBerry user, I already like the free Kindle for BlackBerry app, and I can see myself using it to read on the train when I might otherwise busy myself with other things. One way or another, quality content will make its way to interested readers on digital platforms, and new types of rewards for authors will arrive, too. In the meantime, though, anyone who writes better prepare for a bumpy — though never boring — ride.

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A recent study from Ruder Finn revealed that Americans are spending nearly three hours per day on their mobile phones. And what are they doing there? Educating themselves, conducting business, managing finances, instant messaging, emailing? All of the above, as it turns out, and then some. But perhaps the most interesting finding from the new data is the fact that more people are using the mobile web to socialize (91%) compared to the 79% of desktop users who do the same. It appears that the mobile phone is actually a better platform for social networking than the PC.

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During the 2.7 hours per day that people in the U.S. spending on the mobile web, 45% are posting comments on social networking sites, 43% are connecting with friends on social networking sites, 40% are sharing content with others and 38% are sharing photos. While those last two figures represent activities that can take place outside of a dedicated social networking service, like a Facebook app for example, they still are inherently social activities.

Mobile Web: A Better Platform for Socializing?

What has given rise to this trend? What makes social networking such a popular mobile web activity? It’s easy to point to the proliferation of smartphones and their host of applications, 3G network speeds and more affordable data plans, built in web browsers and mobile-ready websites. Of course these are all important factors that have helped increase mobile social networks’ popularity. However, these measurements are the reason why mobile web use, in general, is growing, not specifically mobile social networking.

A less quantifiable statistic that may also have impacted the rise of mobile social networking to the point where it has surpassed desktop-based social networking is the fact that it’s an activity that taps into how people – normal, everyday people – go about their lives. Of course, readers of a technology site like this may indeed spend hours upon hours behind a computer screen scouring news sites, reading RSS feeds, updating Twitter and chatting on Facebook, but that’s not necessarily the norm. A good many of folks out there still spend more time offline than on. For these people, screen time is spent doing business-related activities at the office (with the occasional jaunts over to YouTube and Facebook) followed by briefer after-hours web surfing that includes catching up with friends on Facebook and reading personal email, downloading music and other media, streaming videos and/or playing games. But these online sessions have to interspersed with other real world activities like cooking dinner, caring for the kids, watching primetime TV, running errands, etc. That’s why it’s no surprise to find that the rise of the mobile phone corresponds with the rise in Facebook’s (and other social networking sites) numbers. It has become a do-anywhere activity that captures people’s attention whenever they have free time instead of an activity that requires people make time for it.

Beyond Geekdom: Mobile Brings the Mainstream

In addition (and although I don’t have statistics on hand to back this up), the mobile web allows social networks to overcome their more “geeky” stigma of days past. As one friend recently scoffed to me about this particular pastime, “I never saw the point of going home, logging on to the computer and updating my Facebook status. I mean like, who cares what I’m doing? But then I got an iPhone and I could share photos and stuff right then and there. It was cool.” OK, not the most eloquent speech, but the point is obvious: mobile social networking isn’t just convenient, it’s cool.

Here’s the bottom line, a trend we’ve been seeing for some time: the mainstream has arrived. They’re buying smartphones and downloading mobile applications. They’re surfing the web on the go. They’re playing FarmVille on Facebook. They’ll probably get an iPad. And for them, mobile social networking is an easy activity to participate in now that it’s been unchained from the PC. The broader implications of having the less tech-savvy masses online are only beginning to be explored and understood (as ReadWriteWeb recently saw here when Google users accidentally mistook the blog for the new Facebook). Developers and designers will now have to take this into consideration, too. Either they make their applications accessible and simple enough for least common denominator – or risk losing out to competitors who do.

Discuss

Motorola got a much-needed lift this morning with the news that AT&T will begin selling its Android -based Backflip handset next month. The carrier will finally join the crowded Android bandwagon March 7 with the release of the gadget, which rocks a 3.1-inch color touchscreen, Wi-Fi, 7.2 HSPA technology and the Motoblur interface. The gadget, which is the first of five Android handsets AT&T plans to release by June, will sell for $100 with the usual two-year contract and $100 rebate.

The move is a welcome boost for Motorola, which has struggled in recent weeks following Verizon Wireless’s successful launch of the Droid. “Motorola’s coming out party appears to be short lived as the success of Nexus One has impacted Motorola’s share at Verizon,” Ashok Kumar of Northeast Securities wrote in a research note yesterday before AT&T’s announcement. “Due to weaker sell through, we are beginning to set negative revisions to production targets. Refresh of the Android platform from HTC, LG, and Samsung will add to competitive pressures later on in the year.”

AT&T’s move could be especially beneficial if the carrier opts to heavily market the device, as Verizon did with the Droid. But Motorola will have to move quickly to leverage its status as the only Android device on the nation’s second-largest carrier before AT&T rolls out other Android handsets in coming months.

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