SEO Freelancer

June: 12.3 mln of mobile social networkers

M:Metrics announced at first time its measurement of mobile social networkings: 12.3 million consumers in the U.S. and W.Europe reported accessing a social networking site with their mobile devices in June.

The American audience for mobile social networking sites was the largest - 7.5 million mobile subscribers. Italy follows, with 1.3 million, then the UK with 1.1 million, Spain with 751,000, Germany and France.

Interesting the fact MySpace and Facebook are the top two social networking sites accessed via mobiles in U.S. and UK. MySpace attracts 3.7 million U.S. and 440,000 UK mobile users, but Facebook's mobile audience is about 2 million.

'Nearly every online social networking site has added the ability to connect to these communities with a mobile phone, allowing people to access profiles and share content while they're on the go. With the mobile phone playing a central role in people's social lives, it's only natural that social networking sites are working to bridge the gap between the online and mobile worlds,' - Mark Donovan, analyst of M:Metrics.

The Elements of the Mobile Context

(The information below was taken from presentation by C. Enrique Ortiz "The Elements of the Mobile Context"

The mobile context can be defined as the intersection between the elements that defines it. These elements include:

Elements of the Mobile Context

• * Spatial / Location (positioning) information, and related (surroundings)
• * Time
• * Presence and related status (online, offline, available, busy, etc)
• * Handset and their capabilities (capabilities of my handset vs. other handset capabilities)
• * Personal context (User Preferences, calm behavior)
• * Information Genre, Descriptor tags, allows for categorization and context-based processing
• * Social context
• * Represented by Sets and their Intersections (relationships)

The social context consists of the person's social circle, and related attributes and actions.

The Social Context

• * The friends and family - the augmented or live address book
• * The relationship distance or degrees of separation
• * Social information such as events (calendar, location, other)
• * Inbound/Outbound social media channels
• * Social actions - find friends/family, meet, invite/introduce, share content

The mobile handset is the social artifact that together with software running it enables the mobile context.

The Mobile Handset

• * A Social Artifact
• * An object made, and used by people to connect with people.
• * Enable better ways to find, communicate and share with friends and family
• * And to learn about nearby places, to consume information, all while on the go
• * It is about the freedom to connect, interact and find

The mobile context is implemented in software via Mobile Social Software.

What is MoSoSo?

• * Short for Mobile Social Software
• * Wikipedia defines MoSoSo as: 'The basic idea of a MoSoSo is to overlay a location and time element to the idea of digital networking. So it enables you to find people in your vicinity and at that time for social, sexual/dating or business networking. It’s worth noting that the time variable is often overlooked in analysis of MoSoSo dynamics.

While the above definition emphasizes location and time and social networks, the mobile context is more complex than described above.

Elements of MoSoSo

• * Mobile Application
• * Network-aware / Connected, or more likely occasionally connected over various networks: personal to wide
• * It is context-based. Leverages the Mobile Context, as described at the beginning of this page, which in turns leverages the Social Context
• * It is private and secure
• * May or not have a Web-based counterpart (portal)

The Mobile Platform

• * Native, Java, BREW, Windows, Palm or Web - decide your initial target platforms based on your target network carrier and customers
• * The top platforms to deliver are Java ME, Symbian OS, Mobile Web, followed by BREW, Flash Lite, Windows Mobile

The Connected Platform

• * Network-Aware over various networks
• * Proximity and Personal Networks
• * Bluetooth, Infrared
• * Discovers nearby handsets
• * Local Networks
• * Wi-Fi
• * Wide Networks
• * Cellular
• * Connects Social communities over the Internet
• * May consume services on the Web

There are a number of challenges to address when creating mobile social software:

Some Challenges

• * Good Mobile User Experience is key to success
• * Access to native functionality such as the Address Book
• * Application permission, signing, cost
• * Inconsistent Address books APIs on the web
• * Facebook vs. Plaxo, etc.
• * Carrier pricing/business models
• * Subscription + Data Plan
• * OTA downloads
• * How to get to the app?
• * Platform inconsistencies
• * Java, BREW, Symbian OS, etc

Mobile Advertising Guidelines v.4

If you are not a SEO Freelancer and not into mobile advertising, please, don't read that. If you are a SEO Freelancer for Mobile Web 2.0 and work to optimize content for mobile phones you may consider Mobile Advertising Guidelines useful.

Developed by Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) its Mobile Advertising Guidelines v.4.0 is exactly what I searched for, as there are priceless info concerns mobile marketing practice.

Anyway, if you are not a SEO Freelancer for Mobile Web 2.0, you can learn a lot:

• - what is Mobile Web?
• - what is Mobile Web Advertising?
• - what types of Mobile Advertising Campaigns are there?

And more...

Mobile Cookies

'Can we use cookies for Mobile Site Development?' - is a most frequent question for a SEO Freelancer as well for any Mobile Web Developer, which seeks opportunity to save sessions in Mobile Phone or passwords of clients.

Depending on what carrier your user is with the gateway may manage cookies on behalf of the device. Cookies can be used for remembering users (long lived) and for sessions (short-lived). Some gateways may have a tendency to forget cookies before they are set to expire just to save space in the database, but for sessions it's still OK. Some carriers only remember 20 cookies for each user so there is a chance that it will not work for a user that has not been to your site in a week or two

Lee J Andron said.

Don't forget ever expanded Global Authoring Practices for Mobile Web Development.

According to Marcia Kadanoff, Vice President of Marketing at Mobio, we can use cookies for mobile web free for 'customized shopping and wish lists'.