UK Telcos plan moves into Social Networking

By Vivek Puri | September 30th, 2006 at 05:32 pm ET         

 UK telcos are feeling left behind in the social networking buildup dominated by web startups like MySpace, Bebo, Tagworld. O2 in UK is trying to cover up and is in talks with Bebo to offer the social networking site on its mobile phones. Bebo is one of the most visited social networking sites in UK. According to research results of Hitwise in August, Bebo’s market share of visits in UK was 12.91%. In related news, Vodafone will also be launching its own social networking site next month having features similar to MySpace.
 
In the meantime MySpace is also gearing up for launch of MySpace on mobile. Currently only Helio users have access to MySpace on mobile but MySpace is in talks with other major carriers to launch its service on mobile.
 
Social networking on mobile will be much bigger than $15 billion estimates for MySpace. Mobile nets will also play out well for Telcos especially in Asian countries who have experienced the fastest mobile phone growth. From the feature perspective, a product like Joopz has much more potential instead of imitating MySpace on mobile. Joopz effectively bridges the gap between web and mobile world, which hasn’t been addressed till now. Still it is too early to say what MySpace, O2, and Vodafone have to offer.