When it comes to keeping track of Mobile Web trends and products, Rudy De Waele has his finger constantly on the pulse. This month Rudy gave a presentation at the Plugg Conference in Brussels about Mobile 2.0. It was an update to the one we featured in September ’07 and as usual it is a fantastic overview of the Mobile Web space. I’ve picked out some highlights below, and embedded the whole slideshow at the conclusion of this post (via Slideshow).
Social Networking – MySpace Leads Over Facebook
The following slide tells a familiar story about the top of the mobile social networking tree – i.e. MySpace currently leads, but Facebook is gaining fast. Also interesting to note that MSN / Windows Live Spaces is a strong third, so they are well positioned here.
Here are a couple pf screenshots of Facebook and MySpace in mobile. I myself access Facebook every now and then via iPhone – and I’ve found the experience to be good, albeit very limited compared to accessing Facebook via PC. I get the feeling that the first social network to really break open with a slick, feature-packed mobile UI is going to quickly ramp up. And my bet is that it won’t be one of the established players that does that, but a new Mobile-native social network.
Mobile Web Space
The following graphic, credited to Raimo van der Klein (who runs a cool Mobile Web blog here), is a representation of where the main action is in Mobile Web. It shows that the intersection of Mobile with Communication is where the interesting things are happening – GrandCentral, Zinghu, Jaiku, Google Maps, etc.
Here is Rudy’s breakdown of the primary categories in Mobile Web, along with startups and products to watch:
What’s Next?
The following slide lists some hot trends in Mobile Web:
Presentation
Below is Rudy’s full presentation. And for a full primer on this topic, be sure to check out the guest post Rudy wrote for ReadWriteWeb back in Dec ’06. It’s called Understanding Mobile 2.0 and it has stood the test of time!
