The idea that the still ill-defined "social networking" phenomenon may become and even bigger mobile phenomenon has just got some new support.
Research in Motion and MySpace report that the MySpace for BlackBerry application has been downloaded 400,000 times in its first week of availability, setting first-week download records for both companies.
The smartphone software went live on November 13. It integrates the main parts of MySpace's social networking with the BlackBerry push-based messaging platform and UI.
A press release says that in the first week, these MySpace/BlackBerry users sent and received "over 15 million messages." That would average out to just over 37 messages each, or about 5 per day every day (though the actual distribution is probably much different).
The application runs on a variety of BlackBerry devices, including the Bold, released earlier this year. It will be available for the just-released touchscreen BlackBerry Storm (see our Storm review) on November 24. The press release didn't give a breakdown on the percentage of users for each device.
The traffic in cellular voice and SMS text messaging indicate people place a high value on something called "keeping in touch," which can range from finalizing mission-critical sales transactions to self-centered banalities.
A recent Arizona State University survey of first-year students and their social networking proclivities found that sites like Facebook and MySpace were an essential medium for campus relationships. But relatively few were making use of mobile phones for this: Only one-third of the respondents accessed their preferred social site a cell phone. Of these, over two-thirds did so less than 25% of the time. Sixty-five percent said they did so to broadcast status updates to their friends, 39% said they uploaded pictures taken with their phone camera.
I wonder if these new numbers from RIM indicate that fast 3G (and for dual-mode phones, Wi-Fi) data access, improved user interfaces overall, and better if not full-featured mobile Web browsers, will make social networking or "keeping in touch" a primary application for mobile users.
MySpace for BlackBerry is downloadable from RIM's BlackBerry site or from MySpace Mobile (member login required).
Cox is a senior editor at Network World.
The Leader in Network Knowledge
Post new comment