Keeping tabs on your Facebook and Myspace friends via your cell phone? You’re probably also playing games, watching video, emailing, listening to music and texting on your phone twice as much as the average mobile phone subscriber.
ABI Research attributed the findings to three possible reasons.
75 percent of social network subscribers surveyed were between the ages 18 and 29, while regular mobile subscribers ages were distributed normally between 14 and 59 years. The 18-29 age group is known to consume more mobile content than older moible phone users.
Avid users of online social networks are expected to be more tech-savvy. Their keen use of technology translates also to the mobile phone in most instances.
Outgoing links on my Facebook Newsfeed entertain me when I've run out of my own content to surf.
Finally and perhaps the only insightful conclusion in this whitepaper is social networks don’t just aggregate the activities of friends but links to content as well. Right now, I can access video clips, news stories and online games from my Facebook Newsfeed. And I’m more likely to follow the links since they’re coming from people I know and, sometimes, with interests similar to mine. And if I’m stuck on the bus with a capable phone, I’m even more likely to entertain myself with this mobile content.
As phone technology evolves, data plan rates fall and Internet on mobile phones become standard as text messaging, “the mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the internet for most people in the world in 2020.“
Questions for discussion
At what point will the “mobile phone” turn into a data consumption device more than a voice communication tool? We’ve already added a video and still camera, mp3 player, countless applications and games. Are these current “extras” or “features” going to be central and perhaps more important to consumers (regular mobile consumers) in the future? I’d say they are already more important to me, but I’m a geek and totally dig being connected at all times.
Finally, what will it take for mobile subscribers, particularly demographics that don’t adopt technology quickly, to embrace the mobile phone as more than just a phone?
