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Staying connected has taken on a whole new meaning now. Its more handyliterally. Yes, we are talking about your favorite networking sites on your mobile handset. But beware, its addictive!

Twenty-three year old Prashant Ahuja is high on energy these days. He has just finished his final year pharmacy exams, and is looking forward to Catching up with friends, of course And what better way to network than staying connected 24x7 via mobile!

Gosh, I am totally addicted to my mobile now! What a great way to stay connected to the web world, and to my friends, he says. It all started when his friends introduced him to Orkut and Facebook. And that was it. As soon as he realized the importance of being there and reconnecting with all those people hed lost touch with, he was already hooked. All my friends were there. It was a great feeling to get back in touch, says Prashant.

This continued till he found a better way to stay connectedby using his mobile. My friends had been pushing me to come online through mobile, but I wasnt sure if it would be worth it. But once I started using it, I realized what I had been missing. I have just changed my phone for a better looking screen, so its going to be lot of more fun now, he says.

Add the case of twenty-two year old Vandana Sebastian. Because of her dads army background she has yo-yoed across India from childhood. That obviously meant adding up more friends spread across the country. While she actively scraps and walls with her friends, the ability to sync her Orkut and Facebook accounts with mobile has given a new definition to how she connects with her friends now.

These are just cases in point. Welcome to the world of socially networked Indians; its a big, big trend that is catching on. According to market estimates, there are now close to a million people in India who are using the popular networking sites like Facebook and Orkut on their mobiles.

Communication and socializing have been the two major needs of the human race since time immemorial. And at every stage of development man has found new ways to do that. Its the same trend that seems to continue even today: the world of SMS and MMS and voice mails merging seamlessly with the world of emails, instant messaging, blogs, twitters and the highly popular socializing sites.

Various stakeholdersmobile handset vendors like Nokia or Blackberry or service providers like Virgin or social networking sites like Facebook and MySpaceagree that it is the younger profile of users like Prashant and Vandana who are driving the mobile adoption of social networking.

Nevertheless, its not just trendy youngsters, even corporate users of all age groups are gradually getting addicted to the phenomenon. Take the case of Arvind Chandrasekhar, country sales manager, AMD India or Shyam Malhotra, MD, CyberMedia India. Both of them have had their Facebook accounts synced to their Blackberry phones for quite sometime.

Malhotra, who is an internationally certified trainer too, receives the beep-beep on his Blackberry device in the midst of his training sessions. He admits (to the curious participants) how addictive the habit has become and whenever any little opportunity is available he effectively becomes socially active on his mobile. Agrees Chandrasekhar, even as his Blackberry beeps during a business conference in Bhopal.

Social networking on the mobile is truly binding Indians across age groups; its secular and neutral to age, profession or hierarchical designation. You only need to be friendly and inclined to be connected with a large segment.

Positioning and Strategizing
Therefore its not surprising that all the big social networking sites are vying to get a pie in this space. Right from Orkut to Facebook, MySpace to BigAddaeveryone is in various stages of freezing plans on catching them young. And, obviously, holding them till they are old. As well as catching the not so young.

Its time to start rolling out features which gel well with mobile phones. We see a lot of scope. Globally, we have 20 mn people using the site on mobile. As far as our strategy goes this space is a big focus area for us, says Hari Krishnan, country manager, MySpace India.

MySpace has recently collaborated with Virgin Mobile to provide access to its site to all the users of Virgin Mobile devices in India. Says Vandana, a Virgin mobile user, I just need to click on the MySpace link on vBytes to log in with my details. Its just so simple. Virgin charges Rs 5 per day for the access it provides to vBytes.

Not just MySpace, the other popular sites like Facebook and Orkut too are looking at the mobile space with a lot of interest. And why not, for a country that boasts of a mobile subscriber base of over 300 mn, it would be worth all the attention, even if they can attract 10% of that population in the beginning.

While Facebook just got into a worldwide tie-up with Nokia early this year, Googles Orkut went live on mobile last year. Though not all features are available on Orkuts mobile version, searching and viewing profiles, scrapbook, are some on offer.

Reliances BigAdda too introduced Mobile Adda, a concept of anywhere-anytime mobile version of the site in August last year. IndyaRocks is another social networking site on the mobile.

Market experts expect this year to see a high usage pattern of Internet via mobile. Currently, active mobile Internet users in the country stands at 30 mn, while nearly 100 mn people have activated GPRS on their mobile phones, which shows that mobile in India has come of age. And while till now it was more of mail checking or cricket scores and stock market watch that were the standard patterns of usage, social networking is now the new buzzword.

Says Shivanandan Pare, COO, BigAdda, With clarity on the launch of 3G, it is going to be bigger than we even expect. We are very clear on our positioning. At present there is no site in India, which is completely focused on local content, and thats where we are filling in the vacuum. Our very flavor is Indian.

Interestingly, Nokia too is considering options ranging from creating its own service or application for use of social networking on handsets. While Facebook has been available on iPhone and Blackberry for quite sometime and sounding out Palm now, Nokia is now teaming up with Facebook to integrate the latters software into its handsets.

The big idea is that contact information stored in Facebook is being integrated with the phones address book. Users could see if their Facebook friends were logged on, send them messages and post comments on their profile pages. One bone of contention between the two companies is how much information Facebook would have access to. Nokia does not want the service to provide Facebook with an avenue to compile data about cellphone users, such as their Web browsing or purchasing habits.

Exploring the Opportunity
Some of the most popular social networking mobile features include blogging, messaging, photo sharing, and sharing music play list. Says krishnan, The idea is not just to allow people to stay connected, but to enable them to do fun things on their handsets.

In India, most mobile users of networking sites use phones with a smaller screen, which may not qualify as a smartphone in the true sense. Krishnan expects this year to be marked by specialized product tapping. The penetration of smartphones has started, and it is going beyond business users. So we are hopeful, he says.

Besides the players that are into hardcore networking, there are others like SMS GupShup, a mobile group that allows its users to create mobile communities, that are helping people interact within the groups or communicate using mobile phones. Webaroo Technologies launched it last year.

GupShup works directly from the cell phones without downloading any application. Technically, the SMS service uses Java-centric technologies backed by Linux servers and standard Linux hardware. The nature of SMS GupShup App (applications) is similar to those of large social networking applications used by Facebook and Orkut. Webaroo has over 100 servers which are linked with multiple operators offering services across India, and has about 15 mn registered users.

There are also several players out there who are working on the content development side. For instance, Wirkle Technologies developed a mobile based application ClickAndShare which allows users to upload pictures taken from their mobile directly to Facebook without going through the rigorous process of first downloading it to their PCs and then uploading them separately.

There is another mobile social network, Qeep designed for Java based phones owned by Blue Lion, a company based out of Germany. Qeep has also launched its application for the Indian markets. A freely downloadable application, Qeep offers features like private messaging, photo-blogging and live multi-player gaming.

RockeTalk is another downloadable application that is now available for with features of instant text, voice, picture, video messaging, sharing of content and interact with mobile communication available. The RockeTalk application is currently available on over 100 Nokia and Sony Ericsson mobile devices.

Clearly, the potential is waiting in the wings. The opportunity is huge, but the real challenge lies in coming up with devices that offer a great user-experience, interesting applications at an affordable price. And that is what we are working on. The opportunity is for someone who can integrate all these, says Deval Parikh, chief officer, handsets and VAS, Virgin Mobile India.

He adds, One touch access on a handset would be ideal. Also there is need for a device which supports all messaging platforms, IM, email, social networking. It will be interesting to see how we can make it exceptionally addictive. One of the other things that handsets in India miss is a full keyboard.

Some of the most popular devices that people use to stay socially active are Apples iPhone, the BlackBerry Bold and Nokias E71 and N96 devices. With these devices we are at the cusp of a new era in which the mobile and the wired web converge. This convergence, when married to location-based services, would create a new real-time and highly contextual Internet experience.

But does that mean that you only need smartphones to be socially active on mobiles? Yes, its true to some extent. While falling prices of smartphones means more and more people using them, vendors like Webaroo are keen to make this adoption more proletarian too. Though there is a Web component to this GupShup service, it is not essential to use the Web for Webaroos SMS service.

The possibilities are endless. From telephone to wireless to Internet to mobile phones, every single day communication is witnessing advancement, bringing geographies closer in a virtual space. These technologies have killed the distance, offering quick interactive means and constant one-to-one and one-to-many communication channels. The Prashants, Vandanas are here to stay for long. Neither are the Arvinds or Shyams going away soon. Rather, they look set to bring in dozens more to the fold soon and add a new chapter to the history of communication.

Urvashi Kaul
urvashik@cybermedia.co.in

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