According to ABI Research the answer to the above question is yes. By 2013, location-based social networks accessed on mobile phones will be a $3.3 billion business globally. How much money they make now is negligible. In fact, web-based social networks such as Facebook that have user numbers exponentially greater than the likes of Loopt and Whrrl still aren’t doing all that well. VentureBeat reports that Facebook only expects to bring in a maximum of $350 million in revenues in 2008, three times that of 2007, but only roughly $9.78 per profile (a rough estimate from 35, 780, 441 unique visits).
Surprisingly though, mobile advertising won’t be the big driver of earnings in mobile social networking. ABI Research says if anything, dollars will be generated by licensing and revenue-sharing models with wireless carriers. If this is this case, then networks such as Loopt, carried by all major US wireless carriers are in a good position as is uLocate’s Where platform on which is built many mobile social networks.
Things could change in the next few years though. Giant web-based networks like Facebook and MySpace will likely become mobile-friendly and with such giant user bases pose a serious threat to the present big names in location-based mobile social networking. Loopt seems to know this, recently announcing the upcoming integration of Facebook Connect into their service allowing access to both networks’ profiles. If you can’t beat them, join them, right?
There are still complications in mass adoption of mobile social networking at the present time. First is privacy concerns. Knowing that anyone in the world can know your exact location at any time is enough to cause nightmares for anyone. And without unlimited data plans, playing around for hours on Loopt or their competitors platforms can be expensive. Guaranteed though, by 2013 these two currently-big issues will be non-issues altogether.
