Social Networking Sites

An interesting article from Om Maliks Gigaom by Robert Young prompted this debate..

Bottomline - Social Networkings success will depend on its ability to enable you - the social networker - to express yourself in an interesting enough way and find success doing so (get dates, business opportunities, what have you). Arguably the success of myspace rests on it's users success (to get friends and meet people of the opposite sex) .. linkedin is slowing down because people don't get enough business out of it - they need to get better at enabling - which the InMail program is trying to address .. I have not heard any news on how succesful that product is though.

Similarly I would argue an MVNOs success in reaching it's core constituency will depend on it's success to enable you - the MVNO user - to express or empower yourself and reach your goals as a mobile user. Currently those goals are limited to .. making calls. As long as that is the prime deciding factor for choosing your provider it will be hard to stand out as most ways of making calls have been addressed today (prepaid, postpaid, cheap ILD, minutes galore, etc) and leave little wiggle room until VoWifi enables free voice (estimated time of arrival - 6-18 months, deployed nationwide in 3-4 years). So we have to give a more compelling reason to carry a handset .. and be good at it! Camera-phones .. why did that not catch on? The cameras were sub-grade quality and the sharing (the social) ability was hindered by lack of MMS interoperability. The cameraphone-people failed at delivering a compelling product therefore ruining a brilliant market opportunity for many years. True every phone has a camera today - but the functionality and usage it was designed for (and the revenue it was supposed to generate) must be disappointing to the most ardent supporters at the carrier-level.
Is social networking then the key to success in mobile? the answer should be gleaned in above: IF it is delivered in a compelling and efficient way, THAT allow the user to network effectively AND take advantage of the fact that she is mobile WHILE sticking to the KISS principle - she might be interested. Helio's recent launch of myspace mobile will potentially set the bar for social networking on mobile simply by being the first (if you don't ask dodgeball and a few others) - although I haven't seen the functionality, I understand we're talking about a dressed down version of the website - ie, NOT strong enough in addressing the mobile aspect (yet).