Social drives mobile and mobile drives social

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30% of the UK use mobile internet a month (says the IAB) and over the last couple of years, we’ve seen the use of social media on mobiles explode. For an increasing amount of people, it’s the focus of their mobile web usage and several telcoms brands have run marketing around this.

	Mobile Usage Increase ’07-’08	Mobile Volume ’08
Search	36%	4.3m
Email	20%	4.6m
Social Media	179%	3.2m

(source: comScoreM Metric MobiLens Survey ’07-’08)

However, this changing consumption of social media means that social services have had to change, placing more and more emphasis on quick conversations. For example, in a bid to keep up with micro-blogging platforms, Facebook has focused on short comments. Users can now make these about pretty much anything, but the key theme is that most of them are quick thoughts.

In addition, services and mobiles let you upload an increasing variety of content when you’re on the move. This then sits alongside the more deliberate (often more polished) content that has been added through web services. Over the next year, the most successful social platform will be one that seamlessly combines mobile usage and short content with the rich content and contacts we’ve come to expect from online services.