Social networking is not new. It has been there for quite sometime now. It’s the cybercrowd that drives such applications. Isn’t it? And the statistics on Orkut, Facebook, mySpace and other famous platforms provide enough evidence that it is limited to young Tech Savvy generation. Mobile will drive the Next-Gen Social networking, Social network 3.0 as they say it. Last September Google bought Zingku, to extend it famous Social network to mobile phones. I was just analysing the trends and using my common man sense (as a mobile user myself) to see what factors would really break the “barriers to entry” for mobile social networking concept and make such apps better accepted by mobile audience. Here are my thoughts…

1. Usability of such apps will be the key- Though mobiles are becoming increasingly popular, they are still used by masses for just making calls. Though the mobiles are becoming intelligent, with new features and processing power, still the user interface remains limited. How many people actually use BlackBerry like PDAs with QWERTY keyboard. The screensize have increased but still it is small enough for users to match the visual experience of laptop or a PC. The mobile social networking platforms have to make the User Interface easy. That is the key. It is a great challenge for all your usability designers and graphics visualizers to make it as simple as possible. Remember, most of the mobile users still sont have a QWERTY keyboard.
2. Disconnected network- After voice, SMS/text is still the single largest way people communicate. The costs are high depending on you mobile plan and country. Especially, when you ask user to text to an international number. GPRS and 3G would be the alternatives, but have lower penetration in parts of the world. The idea here is to allow a disconnected way to connect with your social network. Users should be able to post there messages and store it locally. Once they are near a bluetooth zone, WIFI zone or in a sync mode with your PC, these get syncronised.
3. Low cost Phones - Low cost phones are a real bottleneck. New Gen phones are priced higher. The idea here is to introduce innovative ways to facilitate low cost handset users to network. Once the masses are hooked on to it, this could be a very good incentive for masses to move to more featured phones.

The discussions and ideas could be endless and I encourag that. The key point that I am trying to make is the mobile platform is a different world. The problems are different. Only those applications that bring good things in a simple and easier way to mobile users will see the boom….