Social Networks Won’t Win By Going Mobile
by Aner Ravon

There seems to be a wave of new releases among social networks, putting together yet another serious attempt at positioning competitiveness along the mobile axis. Treemo launched a well built mobile-focused social network. I tried Treemo and it works well, if you excuse the delivery of Video clips to mobile devices via MMS vs. via streaming. I personally don’t find a 6 second truncated video clip very entertaining, and I am still looking for the streaming options to be supported. Right now, the major holdback is with operators open infrastructure, or lack there of, but the evidence from DocoMo, Japan clearly supports this direction.

Wadja is also bankng on mobile features, offering free SMS to members of it’s network. I agree wth Pete Cashmore that this is not enough and that Facebook and MySpace already covered that base.

What I find much more intriguing is the potential for subject oriented, vertical, social networks. A genuine common passion is a much better sticking glue then a feature, any feature, and a start up cannot win a feature war with MySpace. Social networks that successfully aggregate people with a real common interest are verticals that I believe can develop to stay, but they need to be built in fundamentally different way then the horizontal ones.

Aner Ravon
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