Promised land of Mobile Social Networks

Mobile social networks have a seductive and mysterious aura around them. Everyone knows they will be bring a huge gazillion of gold chips for the service that is the first to really break through, but to this day everyone who has tried, has failed.

These networks are really a classic example of crossing the chasm, or Metcalfe's law. The value grows when there are more users, and crossing to the side of mass volumes is hard, very hard.

Is the barrier technical? I would say no. The spread of phones that can support advanced connectivity features and GPS is high enough. The hype is just ripe now for getting people to massively migrate to a service, and both phone vendors and operators are looking to service business so there is even a high motivation from the critical value chain.

TechCrunch posted a list of some of the start-up's working in this space, including Aka-Aki, MobiLuck, MeetMoi, and Imity.

When compared to social networks on the web, the complication comes from creating software for phones. It is so much harder to make well behaving and virally distributing software with phones where security models are strict and Operating systems binary compatibility is what it is.

Because of this my guess is that the breakthrough will come from an innovative startup partnering with a vendor early enough.