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Quote:Social networking is going mobile and is poised for spectacular growth over the next five years, according to a research report released Monday.

The report from ABI Research predicts that mobile social communities will be attracting members in swarms, more than tripling in size worldwide from some 50 million this year to 174 million by 2011...

"In a logical progression," he continued, "many social communities are now based on the mobile phone and other portable wireless devices instead of -- or as well as -- the PC. Such mobile social communities extend the reach of electronic social interaction to millions of people who don't have regular or easy access to computers."...

Quote:Mobile manifestations of social networking are springing up as both a cellular extension of existing Web sites and communities that exist only on mobile devices. Complicating the discussion is that there's no strong agreement as to what exactly mobile social networking is or should be.

Some of the more basic offerings revolve largely around joining chat rooms and searching for new friends to communicate with by text message. There's also a growing focus on mobile blogging and uploading the photos and videos that users capture with the increasingly high-end digital cameras built into their cell phones....

User statistics are hard to come by so early in the game, particularly since there's no clear definition of where to draw the line: Does mobile social networking include simple chat, messaging and blogging communities, or does there have to be some multimedia flare to the interaction?...

Quote:A complete mobile social networking experience is composed of three specific elements:

    * Sharing and storing personal information and profiles, including browsing for friends and contacts, reading status messages, commenting on photos and blogs, uploading photos to a personal profile and updating personal status messages.
    * Asynchronous messaging, including e-mailing and sending messages. These types of messages are generally stored and are available in offline mode.
    * Real-time messaging, including instant messaging and the ability to chat synchronously with friends. This type of communication is online, interactive and collaborative in nature...