There is no way to truly capture the rabidity of the social networking revolution. It’s to the point where it’s almost absurd to hear that someone doesn’t have either a MySpace or Facebook account. Of course, this is good for social networks. The more members one has, the more powerful it becomes. That means a greater chance for people to find old friends, make business contacts, or just find others with similar interests. As we see an increased emphasis on data services on mobile phones, so have we seen many social networks adapt themselves to a mobile format. This means that people can carry around these potentially powerful social networks wherever they go. So how do you go social on your mobile?
The initial problem here is that there are so many social networks out there. You can check out digFoot.com, which claims to be able to search 3,158 social networks — and that’s at the time of this writing. This number is only going to go up. So when we say “complete guide” to going social on your cell, what we really mean is “complete practical guide” to going social.
So we’ll start with the big boys, and move on down the chain, also making sure to look at mobile-only social networks.
The Big Boys
It’s been all the craze lately. I remember when Facebook started back in 2004. Only students from a few select schools were eligible to sign up. Mine was one of them, by early 2005, though I never really had a profile until 2007. More and more schools were added over time, until recently when everyone was allowed to join. It actually reminds me of South Park where Cartman owns an amusement park. I wonder if Mark Zuckerberg harbors a similar vendetta and doesn’t allow particular people to join Facebook.
Thankfully, Facebook makes mobile access easy. All you need is a phone with a WAP browser. You open the menu, and go to the option where you can manually enter a URL. From there, it’s m.facebook.com. This is supported in the U.S. by AT&T, Boost Mobile, Sprint and Nextel, Verizon, Helio, and Virgin, and in Canada by Bell, Aliant, Solo, Fido, Rogers, Telus, SaskTel, Virgin Mobile Canada, and MTS Mobility. Facebook does advise, though, that the service should work with other carriers so long as you have a WAP browser. The caveat is that they cannot guarantee that it operates seamlessly.
Those carriers listed can also download the Facebook Mobile application, which gives you a bit more functionality as far as uploading pictures goes.
MySpace
MySpace Mobile became free just a short while ago. In an attempt to tap the mobile advertising market, News Corp, which bought MySpace back in 2005, launched a free, ad-supported version of MySpace for mobile. During each log-in, users can expect to see one banner ad, and one text-based ad. This is a small price to pay for the throngs of MySpace users who want to use the service on their phones.
Of course, it’s not a perfect replica of what you see on your home computer. While you can send and receive messages, friend requests, comments, and bulletins — as well as update your blog and look for friends — you can’t do the one thing that most MySpace users love: Upload photos. Still, for a free mobile site, you could do a lot worse. You can find it at mobile.myspace.com.
There are still a few premium MySpace applications floating around. AT&T offers a MySpace Mobile application for $2.99 per month, plus any data charges you might incur. Helio also offers a MySpace application — and it’s free! The catch: It’s only available on the Ocean, their feature phone. Soon after the announcement of the free MySpace website, T-Mobile announced a MySpace Mobile feature for it’s Sidekick phones.
Mobile social networks
We’re talking about going social on your mobile here, so we might as well dedicate a few paragraphs to talking about social networks developed for mobile phones. The foremost one right now is Zingku, which was recently bought by Google. New accounts are frozen for the moment, but you can be sure they will re-open once the transaction is sorted out. This is a place where you can share information with your ring of friends, just like any other social network, really. However, the difference here is that when it comes to your mobile, all you need is text messaging capabilities. Yes, you can still do things with your mobile Web, but not everyone has that. So for those of you who have the feature blocked, you can still access many of the Zingku features right from your text messaging Inbox.
And let us never forget mobile website a little less than a year ago, which is only furthering people’s addition to it. The best part, really, is that it can help replace SMS. While most people I know have an SMS bundle, some still pay by the message. But in either case, if most of your friends are on Twitter, you can merge your texting addiction and your Twitter addiction, and save on the costs of texting.
Although it’s not a social network by MySpace and Facebook standards, there’s always Flickr, where you can share photos with the world. They have a mobile service through their parent company, Yahoo!. This gives you the ability to share photos right from your phone — you can even take pictures and upload them right to Flickr, which is a feature people are clamoring for.
There are tons of other mobile social networks, far more than we could ever talk about in a single article. If you head over to Mashable, the social networking blog, you can check out their 2006 mobile social networking awards. There are a number of networks there that I’ve never heard of. You can also browse through digFoot’s mobile/cell directory. Warning: You might be there for a while.
Social networking for work
It’s easy to write off social networking as a recreational activity. However, in doing that we’re ignoring the powerful potential social networking holds in the business world. Take LinkedIn for example. Over 19 million professionals are enjoying the extended networking opportunities they received from LinkedIn. Recently, they launched a mobile site at m.linkedin.com. It’s in beta right now, but a full roll out is expected by spring.
Everywhere I look, there’s social
It’s clear that social networking isn’t going anywhere fast. In fact, it’s only growing. And as we advance in mobile phone technology, we’re going to start seeing a lot more of these come to a mobile platform. We’re seeing WAP sites for now, but I have a feeling that as we start buying more and more advanced phones, more sophisticated applications will be released, which will make the features we love most — that is, mostly the uploading of photos — much easier.
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