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Focus

How the cellphone is reinventing social computing

A recent survey of social networking users in Japan by Mobile Marketing Data Labs makes for fascinating reading. It reveals that 75.4% of Japanese consumers only ever access their social computing services using their cellphones. That compares with just 2% who said they only ever access these services via their PC. This is a trend that is being followed in the developing world. More people in these regions have access to cellphones than they do to computers, and so they have been quick to embrace emerging social networking services.

In Europe, according to a recent Forrester report, ‘Why Mobile Could Reinvent Social Computing’ (October 2009), on average, 7% of 16-24-year-olds already access social networking sites from their cellphones, compared with 3% of all European online consumers. Similarly, a report from the JRC Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, ‘The Impact of Social Computing on the EU Information Society and Economy’, reveals that, by the end of 2008, 41% of Internet users in the EU were engaged in social computing activities, a figure that rose to 64% if you only looked at users under the age of 24.

According to the same Forrester report, “mobile phones have the potential to become the hub of Social Computing activities”. This is hardly surprising, given that both technologies exist to enhance communication. Just think of YouTube for an example of the perfect marriage between a video camera-equipped cellphone and online sharing culture. So successful has this marriage been that if YouTube were a country, it would be the third most populous in the world. Which just goes to show that all you need to kick-start a revolution is the right catalyst.

For years, people have dreamed about an ‘always on’ society in which a combination of Wi-Fi networks and broadband would deliver the Internet all day, no matter where you were. For most, the reality has been one of ‘not always on when you need it most’. As Generation Next is proving, however, that doesn’t have to be the case if you’re prepared to make the leap from static to mobile broadband.

The newly published ‘Mobile Broadband Study’ by CCS Insight suggests that mobile broadband in Europe will explode this year, with subscriber and revenue numbers set to double by 2011. Elsewhere, that explosion has already gone off.

According to Alexei Poliakov, an analyst with a particular interest in the Japanese mobile market, 3G mobile broadband penetration in Japan has already reached 95% of the market, and 84.3% of mobile consumers are using 3G data plans.

The kind of 3G penetration found in Japan fosters the early development of a localized social networking culture. Twitter has about half a million Japanese users and Facebook 1.5 million, but homegrown network Mixi has a staggering 17 million. These networks appeal to the gaming culture that is so strong in Japan – and they aren’t afraid to charge for premium content.