Opinionated comments on mobile phone industry news

Here's a speculative and anecdotal piece on how user-generated content keeps social network services going, and where this is a big advantage for the service providers in terms of what they can and need to focus on. Not rocket science, but still with a possibility for differing opinions. I still don't think I'm that far from the truth.

I also posted this at MobHappy as a comment to Russell's note about User-generated Content, slightly modified.

As the header suggests, the ideal is to create a social network service where you as a service provider only has to deal with the service as such, and the actual information is generated by the users:
* Less work and cost on the part of the service provider (compare this with news and review sites with own personnel for that; very expensive).
* The service provider is freed to focus on adding more and more functionality (some will fly, some won't; doesn't matter) to keep the users from leaving to competing services.
* By the info being user-created and for exchange with other users of that service, it's harder to move it somewhere else, again decreasing churn.
* Pure revenue-driven services (inhouse or licensed) can be introduced, thriving on the large user base. E.g. a music shop with the possibility for the users to write reviews is a very good combination. Same with "home videos" etc.
* Third-party content and (sub) service providers will stand on your doorstep every day to get access to your user community. Read: negotiation power.
* When getting a critical user mass the revenues from advertising can in itself drive all further development and also enable the founders to buy one or two Porsches ... and yachts...

Unfortunately there's not room for many services of one type. Even the second in popularity gets much less attention than the leader (even more so than for e.g. pure blogging services, search services etc). The one with the biggest community wins over almost all of the newcomers as well (at least in a given demographic), so the leadership is self-maintained to a certain degree.

Even if you make a service that does exactly what e.g. MySpace does and more the success is unlikely, so you need to find new aspects of social networking, or special user groups or regions untapped by MySpace. E.g. Lunarstorm is extremely popular in Sweden among young people, despite MySpace. Lunarstorm existed well before MySpace and everything's in Swedish (critical for children), so there are incentives for continuing using Lunarstorm. Then there's BuzzCity in Singapore etc.

I agree there's a big opportunity right now to provide new social network services, and it doesn't have to be a huge investment to get going.

Investors have a lot of money to spend these days, so if the idea sounds right and can be done, and contains "social" in the business idea :), then there are people that are prepared to hand out cash. Just be prepared that if you just provide more of the same to a demographic that's already satisified with an existing service, the chance to succeed is small.

Updates (on mobilizing social network services):

See here for how to (and how not to) handle submissions of content from mobile phones to blogs and social network services, based on practical testing: Abiro - Mobile News: Google Blogger as a showcase for mobile blogging

And this for an example of how the above method can be used to advantage: Abiro - Mobile News: Trying out mojungle