As 3G arrives and powerful handsets make their way into the market, a new mobile value-added service is poised to redefine the contact list: Social address books are round the corner, that will integrate contacts on the mobile phones with those on social networks.
“There are two trends in the communication domain at the moment, namely a lot of activity among social groups on the internet and a parallel contact group being kept alive through the mobile contact list”, says Mouli Raman, CTO and co-founder of mobile value-added services player OnMobile, who predicts that these two groups would soon integrate.
Raman says what is about to happen is a social address book that will bring together a user’s contacts on social networking sites and the contact list on the mobile phone, for a dynamic contact list, enabling individuals to keep in touch with all of their contacts, while on the move.
What it also does away with is the need to have different log-ins for social networking sites, because all of one’s contacts are accessible through the mobile platform in the social address book.
Raman says the product has significant appeal for both users and mobile operators. On the consumer side, the ease of communicating with all of one’s contacts on the mobile platform is the key attraction, while mobile operators could profitably leverage their subscriber base.
Industry players say the social address book concept has caught on in Europe, and that there is a significant shift of social networking from being web-based to being mobile-based. OnMobile is in discussions with Indian mobile operators for the application, and the concept is expected to catch on with the rollout of 3G services.
Once the mobile numbers and e-mail addresses of social networking contacts are synchronized, it will be easier to read and update status updates and send messages to contacts, using mobile phones. It will also let mobile subscribers create profiles, make friends, create and participate in chat rooms, hold private conversations, or share blogs from their phones.
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