Throughout our dodgeball experience we always felt confident that someone was going to execute Mobile Social Software in a way that gave it mass appeal, whether it was us or someone else, we felt passionately that there was a niche to be filled there.
I still feel that way but I have to say I’m a little surprised that its now been almost 2 years since our last dodgeball days and there’s still no clear leader in the space. There are a handful of startups getting traction but most of the popular* ones are tied to specific carriers.
* I will always believe that you will never have a truly profound social application if you’re starting off by segmenting your audience that drastically (for fun, count how many of your friends are rocking a Helio phone).
This piece on Crave does a great job at outlining the numerous types of hurdles there are in breaking into that space - from consumer hardware to carriers to the privacy implications that are implicit in these kinds of apps.
Perhaps that’s the natural order of things. GPS and other location-aware technologies will likely transform other aspects of the mobile experience–search, events listings, business reviews, not to mention mapping and directions–before they move on to influence social networking. After all, this is how the Internet as a whole evolved. Most Web users were trusting Google and Yahoo with their search queries long before they were comfortable uploading dozens of photo albums to Facebook.
This could be a disappointment to those digital socialites drooling at the prospect of interactive maps that chart out exactly where their friends are at a given moment. But on the bright side, this means it’ll probably be awhile before your boss is using a BlackBerry to learn exactly where you went on your lunch break.
ps: there’s a part of me that’s excited to see what comes out of Yahoo’s FireEagle once it matures a bit.
The mobile social: Not ready for prime time? | Crave : The gadget blog
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