Social Media is Made for Mobile

Social media is about conversations. Mobile phones are about conversations. Social networking is about conversations. So how much insight is required to figure out that social media and social networking are about mobiles?

Today, every major social network offers its users a range of mobile services, from mobile web access to downloadable mobile applications. Although consumers with high-end devices may be the primary users of these mobile services, some social networks also offer a number of SMS-driven features that allow consumers to stay engaged by text, even on low-end mobile phones.

According to Nielsen, more than three million Twitter users in the United States regularly access the service using their mobiles. Additionally, many consumers are frequently using Twitter though text messaging and a range of downloadable mobile applications for iPhone, BlackBerry and other mobile devices. In fact, those third party applications might represent as much as 80 percent of mobile Twitter use, suggesting there could be as many as 15 million U.S. mobile Twitter users.

According to Nielsen, about 15 percent of Facebook users (11 million) in the U.S. regularly access the social network's mobile web version, plus three million users who use text messaging for Facebook access. There also are third party apps for mobile Facebook use as well.

More than 4.6 million users use the mobile version of YouTube as well, Nielsen says.

Net Neutrality Not Good for Real-Time Services?

One of the unknowns at the moment is how any proposed Federal Communications Commission network neutrality rules might affect a service provider's ability to offer quality-assured services.

That's possibly important for any users or providers of real-time services (voice and video), since bandwidth alone is not a guarantee of quality experience.

Real-time services are highly sensitive to latency and delay. The issue then is whether consumers will have the option of buying services optimized for real-time services.

Think of this as an end-user opportunity to buy bandwidth services that are akin to the Akamai content delivery service currently available to businesses.

Mobile Web Use Explodes

As is always the case, the highest growth rates for any product or service come when growth starts at a low base. And that seems to be the case for mobile Web usage, which over the last year has grown faster among users 65 years old, or older.

Over the last year, users 65 or older adopted mobile Web behaviors at a 67 percent rate.

The other trend of note is rapid growth at the other end of the demographic scale. Users between 13 and 17 increased their mobile Web usage by 45 percent. That means teens are buying smart phones, or having smart phones bought for them.

Casual Use Biggest PC-Based Mobile Broacband Segment?

Mobile broadband services used by PC owners likely will follow the pattern seen recently in the U.S. mobile phone business, where prepaid payment plans have grown at the expense of postpaid plans.

By 2011, only 40 percent of PC mobile broadband users will be on long-term monthly contracts, says  Dean Bubley, Disruptive Analysis principal. Most will use prepaid, casual use or “free” access, he predicts.

In fact, the strongest growth probably will come in the casual use segment.

High Social Media Use Also Means High Email Use, Nielsen Finds

At least in principle, as consumers and workers get access to unified communiations tools, there is a chance behavior will change. When a user can get a message in one media format and reply in another format, people might start using the tools they like best, and thereby decreasing use of other message formats.

Researchers at the Nielsen company, for example, guessed that as people began using social media, they would use less email, for example. To test that thesis, Nielsen broke the online population into four groups.

The first three are terciles of social media consumption in minutes, says Jon Gibs, VP, Media Analytics.  The fourth is a group that doesn’t use social media at all.

Nielsen then looked at each segment’s time of web based email consumption over the course of a year.
Finally, Nielsen subtracted the email consumption of those that do not use social media from those that do, basically to show a lift over possible external forces.

As it turns out, Nielsen found the opposite of what it guessed it would find.

"It actually appears that social media use makes people consume email more, not less, as we had originally assumed, particularly for the highest social media users," says Gibs.

In part, that might be because social media sites like Facebook can be set to send messages to user inboxes every time someone comments on a post, depending on user preferences.

But it also is likely that high users of social media are, well, "social." They might use any number of media to keep in touch with friends and associates.

$350 Billion to Build 100 Mbps Symmetrical Broadband Throughout U.S.

Based on an average cost per dwelling of about $2,700, including capital and operating expense (construction and so forth), the Federal Communications Commission estimates it will take about $350 billion to bring 100 Mbps service to about 111 million to 116 million U.S. homes.

Internet Users are Unique, Treat Them That Way

As this chart suggests, there are distinct Internet end user segments, some of which only require moderate bandwidth, others which require more bandwidth, better latency performance and more upstream bandwidth, if not symmetrical bandwidth.

The issue for any facilities-based service provider is that the whole network has to be built to accommodate the most advanced users, even if much, or most, of the demand is from less-demanding users.

Still, given that such investment must be made, there is increasing room to personalize and tailor broadband access and applications to individual users who actually behave in unique ways.

Though the concern expressed by many supporters of strong forms of network neutrality rightly is focused on protecting legal applications from anti-competitive behavior, there clearly are other values that conflict with the  proposed solution for discrimination, which is that no bits, from any providers, can be prioritized.

In fact, prioritizing bits represents a primary tool for personalizing end user services and applications so that those favored applications are optimized for each user. Surely there are ways to ensure non-discrimination without precluding the creation of personalized services that benefit from end-user specified preferences.