Social Networking Not As Popular As Expected

M:Metrics just did a study to see how many people were using their cell phones to view social networking sites. The numbers were admittedly low, but in context I was surprised.

I personally have tried accessing MySpace and YouTube both on a couple of basic phones, and it just don't work, like someone starting a daycare and don't like kids. So I would assume that if they did their study and eliminated the phones that were incapable of accessing such sites, and then further eliminated phones that were on networks that were unable to access the sites, the percentages at least would probably come out different.

What they found though was that 12.3 million people in the combined geographic areas of the US and Western Europe accessed some sort of social networking site at least once. The highest percentage was surprisingly found domestically in the US at 3.5 percent (GO HELIO!!). The three most accessed sites in the US, in order, were MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube.

Something else they found that probably won't come as too much of a shock, companies such as Helio trying to add social networking features to their own services, well those services aren't as popular as already well-established social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook. So basically if you are a mobile phone provider looking to make it in the mobile social networking market, stick to what already works, and just integrate that into your phone.

Researchers: Mobile social networking a nascent market [via Crave]