Increase in
smartphone adoption and the rise of geosocial networking will push the number
of mobile social media users from 650 million in 2011 to 1.3 billion by 2016.
According
to Juniper Research, spend on advertising targeted at tablets is expected to
account for almost half of total mobile social media advertising spend by 2016.
Far East and
China will continue to account for the lion’s share of mobile social media
revenues, followed by North America.
The growing
trend to integrate social, local and mobile experiences is driving the
geosocial phenomena. People want to find out not only what their friends are
doing, but also their location and other available activities in the area.
Geosocial networks are suited to the mobile space as most smartphones now
include GPS, and have an ‘always on, always connected’ experience.
The mobile
dating market is also utilizing geosocial. Location and instant messaging are
the driving forces behind a number of services, particularly those targeted at
younger demographics who consider these to be key features. The mobile dating
market is expected to be worth $2.3 billion by 2016, up from $1 billion this
year.
“Location
features on smartphones are opening up a new side of both dating and social
networking. Adding location features to a service makes the service local to
the user. This will be a key feature for mobile dating services — why send
emails to someone hundreds of miles away when you can exchange instant messages
with someone only hundreds of meters away,” said Charlotte Miller of
Juniper Research.
According to an
Airtel survey,
Google is the most visited mobile internet site by Airtel
customers. Gmail and Facebook are in second and third position. The most
popular social media site accessed by mobile browsers is Facebook (21 percent).
Orkut (6 percent) and Twitter (4 percent) occupy second and third slot,
respectively.
According to
industry estimates, Facebook has around 34 million users in India, while Orkut
and Twitter has 18 million and 14 million customers, respectively.
By
Telecomlead.com Team
[email protected]
