I Saw The Future Of Social Networking The Other Day
Anyone who’s been reading this blog for more than a few months knows I’m bullish on mobile social networking.
The space is wide open at this point - no one has created an application that has gotten enough traction to go mainstream. That’s party because of tech limitations - browser based networks don’t leverage the power of the mobile device, and client based applications are blocked by service providers and handset limitations.
But it’s coming. A few years from now we’ll use our mobile devices to help us remember details of people we know, but not well. And it will help us meet new people for dating, business and friendship. Imagine walking into a meeting, classroom, party, bar, subway station, airplane, etc. and seeing profile information about other people in the area, depending on privacy settings. Picture, name, dating status, resume information, etc. The information that is available would be relevant to the setting - quick LinkedIn-type information for a business meeting v. Facebook dating status for a bar.
That requires a social network that has presence, location and contextual information about you. It needs to know where you are (via GPS or triangulation), if you are in business or personal mode, and similar information for the people around you. It also needs, at a basic level, the ability to sort and browse the people around you based on their picture and name, and what they are looking for (dating, investments, job, friendship). Once this network is established, you’ll know everyone’s name who’s around you (if they choose to share it), and enough basic information to jog your memory if you know them, or meet them if there’s mutual interest. Poking someone on Facebook is great, but “poking” them when you’re in the same bar as them can result in much more immediate social gratification.
The mobile social network that wins will go way beyond, say, Facebook’s iPhone site, which doesn’t leverage location information, or help you meet people around you.
So when mobile social network startups reach out to us, we give them a lot of attention. I waded through a bunch of them in September 2007, and followed up with a look at LimeJuice in December.
Frankly, MySpace and Facebook could lock up this space simply by focusing on it, but as far as I can tell from discussions with execs at both companies, they’re more focused on each other than in dominating the mobile space. That creates an incredible vacuum for a startup.
Start With The iPhone
In February I wrote a post called “Will There Be A (Successful) iPhone-Only Social Network?” and presented an argument that the iPhone SDK presented a compelling opportunity to launch a mobile social network while avoiding the chicken and egg problem that any new network, and particularly a mobile network, would encounter. iPhone penetration in Silicon Valley, and among early adopters, is so high that the application could spread virally among those communities. As the network gains traction, it could expand to Google’s Android platform and grow from there.
iPhone users are the perfect group to launch the network to. They’re passionate and elitist, and will like the idea of being in an iPhone-only club. Go to a party and see a picture and first name of everyone there who’s holding an iPhone - then meet them and add them as friends. Then, once mutual friendship is established, see those people wherever they are in the world, along with presence information telling you what they’re thinking, or up to.
I believe in the idea so much that I explored putting together a team to build a basic network on top of the iPhone SDK. But I abandoned that idea last week when I saw a live demo, on the iPhone, of an upcoming social network that does everything I called for in that February post.
It’s Coming
The startup behind the new application won’t let me disclose their name yet. But the application is awesome. It shows you everyone around you who has it installed on an iPhone (default privacy is set to off, but can be changed). Users can scroll through nearby users, and set filters for men, women or age ranges. If you find someone interesting you can pull up their profile and ping them. If they respond you can start a chat, on the phone or in person. Of course, they can also choose to block you.
Location is based on the triangulation feature of the iPhone, which is accurate enough to get this going. And the startup thinks they’ve found a way around the fact that third party iPhone applications can’t run in the background (meaning you’d have to have the application open, and not use any other iPhone features, to run the social network and see others). They explained the work around in general terms to me, but asked that it remain confidential for now.
As I said, I saw the app running on an iPhone and even the early prototype left me speechless. It will, I believe, prove to be very popular, and very valuable.
The image shows a mockup of the functionality I saw working live on the phone (I should be able to show a photo or video of it running in the next week or two as well). Look for a launch when the iPhone app store opens this summer.
Credit for that awesome image at top of post is to Hank Grebe at MediaSpin.
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LimeJuice’s Mobile Social Network: It’s Easy, And So People May Use It
Stealth startup Hyphen-8 has been beta testing their new mobile social network called Lime Juice in San Francisco since October.
Using your phone to create or enhance real world interactions is a killer application, but no one has cracked the nut yet. The reason is that the network is useless until it achieves a critical mass of users who are online and using the application via their mobile phone. If no one else is online, there’s little point in you being online, either. And presence detection is another (technical) problem. Even if people have joined the network, how do you know when they are near you?
But once it does happen, look out. You could be in a bar and see who’s single, who thinks you’re cute, who wants to talk to you, etc. (if they choose to share that information). Forget meeting via an online dating site and then organizing an awkward in person meeting that usually falls flat. Instead, you can do the online an real world thing simultaneously.
We’ve kept an eye on the new startups launching in this space. Check out Mig33, ZYB, Mocospace, Aka-Aki, Nokia Sensor, Dodgeball, Mobiluck, MeetMoi and Imity, just to get warmed up. But none of them yet have critical mass (Mig33, however, is turning into a very large cheap VOIP provider on the side).
LimeJuice now joins the group with a unique product. Users can actually join on the fly, via SMS. And the company is sponsoring party after party at bars and clubs in San Francisco to get users to try out the product with lots of others at the same time. The test results are encouraging - people are using it. A lot.
How It Works
The goal is to allow people in a bar or other social gathering to learn a little about the people around them, and flirt via the mobile network as a way to break the ice. The details are what makes LimeJuice interesting. It’s dead simple to join and use.
First, users can register for the service via SMS. That means if just one person in a bar is a member or even knows about the service, they can tell others and quickly get a core group to join. When you create an account, you tell it something distinctive about yourself (tall blonde, red dress!) so that people searching will be able to quickly know who you are. When you go to another event later on, you simple update the description for the evening).
Second, all of the key interaction (for now) happens via SMS. So every phone is ready to go. No need to download a java app or even go to a web page. Just send a text message to the service along with the identifier of the person you want to talk to (which you can get via search), and the message is sent to them.
Third, even though people are using the service to send text messages back and forth, phone numbers are not exchanged. LimeJuice sits in the middle, and you can block someone easily.
Beta Events
LimeJuice has seen a good level of participation at the handful of events they’ve sponsored. An average of 40-50 people participate per event. They spend about 1.5 hours each using the service over the course of the evening and average ten text messages sent per person (some people send as many as 180 text messages). At one event, over 2,500 messages were sent to the service from participants.
For now the company will continue to sponsor events in San Francisco, hopefully building up a core user base that will begin to spread out and get others to join. If/when they get a lot of people in San Francisco to use the service, they’ll then expand to other cities.
The company, founded by Tobin Van Pelt and John Garrett, is based in San Francisco and has four employees. They’ve self funded to date with $100,000 and are currently pitching for a Series A round of funding.
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The Holy Grail For Mobile Social Networks
We’ve been tracking emerging mobile-only social networks such as ZYB and Mocospace and Mig33. All have unique selling points (Mocospace is dead simple to use, ZYB has a rich set of potential users from their address book backup service, and Mig33 has a VOIP tool that has attracted over seven million users), but there’s one solid gold feature that none yet have: physical presence detection and information exchange with other users.
This is the Holy Grail of mobile social networking, and one of the main reasons for taking the networks off the desktop/laptop environment in the first place. Imagine walking into a meeting, classroom, party, bar, subway station, airplane, etc. and seeing profile information about other people in the area, depending on privacy settings. Picture, name, dating status, resume information, etc. The information that is available would be relevant to the setting - quick LinkedIn type information for a business meeting v. Facebook dating status for a bar.
Knowing when your friends are around, and having the ability to meet new people who share your interests (even if it’s just that you are both single), will drive massive usage of networks. But, as with many new services, a chicken and egg problem looms. Until everyone is using this, there is no real reason for anyone to use it. Meetro, an instant messaging service that finds friends based on location, has struggled to gain users over the last couple of years for this reason.
Technical barriers aren’t an issue - cell phone tower triangulation and bluetooth solve a lot of the problems of locating users and transmitting information between phones. What’s harder is just plain getting a critical mass of users.
The Failures
There is a trail of failed attempts at getting this right. Nokia released Nokia Sensor nearly three years ago. It broadcasts information about yourself to others via bluetooth. Never heard of it? Neither has anyone else, although it is still available for download. Google’s Dodgeball is another example that’s fallen flat - it tells friends (and friends of friends) who are within 10 blocks of you where you are and what you are doing.
The New Experiments
A bunch of new startups are giving this a shot, too. In a post yesterday TechCrunch UK mentions Germany’s Aka-Aki, Paris-based Mobiluck and MeetMoi (the lone U.S. startup). Another startup is Copenhagen-based Imity. It’s not surprising that most of the innovation is occurring in Europe. The current approach is to get java-based software on the phone - very few U.S. carriers and handsets allow user-based installs of java apps.
Aka-Aki
Aka-Aki, based in Germany, is just a couple of weeks old. Create a profile and download the java app to your phone. You can also create and join groups that say things about your life, job, etc. When you are near other people who are members, data about you is transmitted to them via bluetooth, and vice versa. Users have control over data flow with privacy settings. And the groups supply another layer of privacy. You may transmit that you are single only to other singles, for example. Or share your sexual orientation only with others with the same orientation.
After a silent launch, word is getting out. Thousands of people in Berlin are using the software, and there is a chance for them to get critical mass there with proper marketing. The company has raised a small seed round from FoundersLink and is currently looking for a larger round.
Imity
Copenhagen based Imity, which launched in April, has also been flying under the radar. Like Aka-Aki it detects other members via bluetooth and send basic profile information to your phone. It also keeps track of people on its website, so you can check that out periodically from your normal computer. It’s bridges mobile and traditional social networks, which may help it gain critical mass. Co-founder Nikolaj Nyholm is also behind Polar Rose, a facial recognition and image tagging service.
Imity went open source in February 2007.
MeetMoi
MeetMoi, the only U.S. based service, is most like Dodgeball - it uses text messaging to help connect people. It’s dating focused - text your location to the service and it notifies other users in your area that you are there. If they are interested, they can contact you. The company has raised $1.5 million from Acadia Woods Partners and is based in New York.
MobiLuck
MobiLuck, based in Paris, is another bluetooth solution similar to Aka-Aki and Imity. Download the software to your phone and it vibrates when other users are nearby. You can then chat with them, send photos, etc.
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