Social networking was King (or Queen) in 2006 and mobile is often seen as the heir to
that crown for 2007 and beyond. So what better way to hedge your bets than with a mobile
social networking service? We’ve discussed
the potential in this market before, specifically noting that Google owns such a service
already: Dodgeball. What’s more, we noted in our
October 2006 post that two growing Web trends are actually very complementary:
meta-social networks and mobile. Imagine a scenario where an individual’s
identity will be increasingly managed by meta-networks, which we will carry with us “in
small wireless devices so that our virtual identities become seamlessly integrated with
the real world” (to quote
a New Scientist article).
Which leads us to Dada, a mobile SNS that enables users to update personal
blogs with pictures and video, download mobile entertainment, connect with and meet other
local singles in real time and stay in contact with all their friends. Dada can be used
on both PC and mobile and dada.net is its portal
destination page. The 3 main products within the portal are Dada Dating, Dada Life
(personal space and social networking), and Mobile
Entertainment.
Here are some stats provided to me by the company:
- Out of 50 million mobile members, Dada has 5.6 million users (3.2 in US)
- Dada Mobile has 7 million members already with the capacity to mobile
- Mobile content held a $470 million revenue market in 2006 and is expected to hit $1
billion by 2010. - Dada S.p.A’s revenue for 2006 is expected to be above $146 million
Those are some hefty figures! Dada has 5.6 million mobile users and is projected to
make over $146M in 2006. Also 83% of revenues come from “Web & Mobile value added
services”, according to the press kit.
In terms of the market for mobile social networking, two companies loom large in this
space – MySpace and Google. In December ’06, MySpace confirmed
a deal with Cingular to allow customers to access their MySpace account via their
mobile phone. Google has Dodgeball and is also making business deals with Google Mobile
(especially in Asia), and also Yahoo has been active on the
mobile front too.
But Dada has been in this space for a couple of
years now and is making money to boot. It hails orginally from Italy and now covers 12
countries – Italy, the USA, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Portugal, France,
Belgium, Austria, China, Brazil and Australia.
According to some ABI Research figures given to me by the company, mobile social
networking is predicted to rise from 50 million to 174 million users by 2011. So it’s
certain that Dada will face more aggressive competition soon from the likes of MySpace
and Google. But for now, Dada appears to be a leader in the mobile social networking
space.
