Recently in mobile social networking Category

Lots of people like to ease drop and search Twitter to see what people are Twittering to each other.  They want to know what Twitters are from the Twitters with the highest authority, meaning the ones with the most followers.  Currently, Twitter search which was based on a startup Summize which Twitter bought in July, only performs a general search.

Although the latest research shows 35% of Twitterers have 10 or fewer followers. Snoopers, I mean researchers want to know what Tweets with the most followers.

After some blog posts and debate, there are now two Twitter search engines that offer authority rank Twitority and Twithority.

Mobile social network users is growing quickly.

According to a study conducted by The Kelsey Group and ConStat, the percentage of mobile phone users who said they accessed social networks from their handset jumped 182% from September 2007 to October 2008.

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Teenage girls and boys are sending, receiving, posting, and sharing naked or barely-clothed photos at an alarming rate.  According to a survey released by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and CosmoGirl.com, parents and teens have a lot to be concerned about.

Photo sharing technology, social networking services, and MMS make it easier than ever before for people of any age to send photos that can come back to haunt them.

Virgin Mobile has two new social networking features: Connect a new social networking connector and Mobile Lounge, a new mobile community exclusive to Virgin Mobile.

Zumobi is now offering a free iPhone app of Ziibii, available on iTunes. Ziibii users have a new way to stay in-touch and in-the-loop with friends, photos and the world around them. Ziibii blends Facebook, Twitter, Flickr , YouTube, and web content into a new experience,

Ziibii enables real-time social interaction between users across popular social media applications, as well as on-going discovery of news, stories and blogs throughout the day. Displayed on the screen of the handset, Ziibii's visual expression metaphor is a river with content "rafts" floating with the user's pre-defined content, including direct-connect to social networking sites and RSS feeds.

Sprint is offering a new mobile phone application that hooks-up friends, called sniff (social network integrated friend finder), developed by the team at Useful Networks (www.useful-networks.com)

sniff allows users to find friends automatically and in real-time, rather than the last time they logged in to the service, by either sending a text message from a mobile phone or through the integrated Facebook application. It uses text messages therefore it doesn’t have to be downloaded.

Once users receive required permission from their friends, using sniff is as simple as sending an SMS text message. In return, sniff provides consumers with a detailed map view of their friends’ locations.

Through the sniff Facebook application, consumers can easily invite, connect with and sniff their Facebook friends. Registration for sniff is free and takes just seconds by sending “sniff” to short code 76433 (sniff) from a Sprint device. “sniffing out” friends is charged at $0.25 on a “per sniff” basis and users are only charged if they receive a successful result.

Billing is seamless, as sniff is the first Facebook application to apply premium charges to customers’ mobile bills. Standard text messaging rates apply.

Myspacies will be happy to note that myspace now offers a BlackBerry mobile app at www.blackberry.com/myspace



It has the following functions;

• Send and receive MySpace mail
• Update your Status and Mood
• View and send Bulletins
• Add comments
• Post your photos
• And much more.

The my myspace aapp works with

• BlackBerry Storm
• BlackBerry Bold
• BlackBerry Curve
• BlackBerry 8800 8700 7130 7200 7520 BlackBerry Embedded Devices.

According to the Facebook blog usage of Facebook mobile  products has grown from 5 million to 15 million active users since the beginning of the year.

Types of Facebook mobile interaction are:

Facebook mobile site, m.facebook.com, works on nearly any mobile browser in the world
Extended mobile site, x.facebook.com,  is for advanced mobile devices.
Facebook SMS allows you to receive notifications or update your status with text messages,
Device specific Facebook for Palm, Blackberry and iPhone.

When Facebook added ad the ability to comment on your friends' status updates to the Facebook mobile site, they didn't expect that we would receive nearly a million status comments in the first 24 hours.

Mobile location-based social networking is expected to become a key driver for the uptake of location-based services as it provides a unifying framework for a large set of applications such as friend finders, local search and geo-tagging. While many LBS applications will include features allowing the sharing of real-time experiences via fixed social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, fully-fledged mobile location-based social networking sites will also gain momentum with more than 82 million subscriptions expected by 2013.

Moborazzi.com is offering new social photo sharing platform for mobile phones. Their website says it is for members of the mobile generation who take and instantly share candid photographs of life with family and friends using their mobile phones using MMS.

Moborazzi provides mobile phone users over-the-air upload and direct-to-mobile broadcasting of mobile photos to friends and followers. Take a picture, post it to Moborazzi and the photo is on the phones of friends and family, posted to the web, and saved to an online Moborazzi account from anywhere, instantly.

Buongiorno  debuts blinko, social networking specifically designed for mobile use.

It allows users  send and receive unlimited text from the mobile web, photo sharing, and chatting answering the inevitable question "What ya' doing?" in your posse aka flash mob.

Their website states, "blinko changes the way you stay in touch & communicate with your friends whenever you want. Wherever you are. In real time. Creat now your own friends queue!"

blinko is offered to users free of charge: users only pay what their mobile carrier charges for internet access under their data plan.

LBS shop n' share tool Slifter, has partnered  with Virgin Mobile USA. Virgin Mobile USA's five million customers can shop by searching over 300 million products at more than 150,000 local and online retailers, seeing price and availability, and getting detailed directions to the nearest store from Slifter.

Slifter allows users to: find hot deals and products nearby, create a mobile shopping list packed with favorite products and promotions, and spread the savings around to friends and family.

Slifter is immediately available on all Virgin Mobile USA phones at no additional charge on VirginXL and the mobile Web.

ROK Entertainment is offering GeeSpark, the world's first mobile viral messaging service. 

GeeSpark will enable users to chat, share messages, images and YouTube videos on their mobile phones and forward these to their friends and groups, in a viral fashion like broadcast messaging on computers, where users share messages with multiple friends at the same time

GeeSpark has been developed by ROK's Finland-based mobile services development company, Geniem. GeeSpark is currently in invitation-only Beta mode and will be advertising-funded. The service is free to join from www.geespark.com and is free to use provided the user has a data plan in their mobile tariff.

MySpace and Research In Motion announced they are joining forces to develop an integrated MySpace Mobile experience customized for BlackBerry smartphones. The new MySpace for BlackBerry smartphones application is fully optimized to deliver rich content and data to users on the go.

MySpace for BlackBerry smartphones integrates MySpace's main social networking components with the BlackBerry platform to provide instant, push-based messaging to BlackBerry and MySpace users. The application will be available in all BlackBerry markets globally. RIM Co-CEO Jim Balsillie will highlight the MySpace and RIM relationship during his keynote speech at CTIA.

As part of this collaboration, RIM is also creating a BlackBerry community page on MySpace for users to access the latest BlackBerry smartphone news, content, videos, games, ringtones, skins and other unique and engaging features.

A T&T Inc. announced  the launch of "My Communities," a new downloadable gateway that lets users create and manage multiple social networking accounts through a single dashboard view on their mobile phone. My Communities was developed by Intercasting Corporation, a leading mobile social networking company. The launch coincides with recent data showing that a majority of social networking users maintain multiple accounts and that a growing number are maintaining their social networks primarily by using wireless handsets.

Verizon Wireless said today it is offering a brand-new application to give customers one-stop access to multiple popular social networking sites on their mobile phones.  Called SocialLife, the mobile gateway was introduced on the eve of CTIA WIRELESS I.T. & Entertainment 2008 in San Francisco.

SocialLife smartly and simply brings together numerous social networking sites catering to different communities, including MySpace, into one easy-to-use application.  With SocialLife, Verizon Wireless customers will be able to view messages, approve or deny friend requests, post comments or update status or profiles on their favorite social networking site, all on their wireless phones while on-the-go.

SocialLife integrates the camera on a customer's wireless phone, so pictures can be taken within the application, then uploaded with "one-click" to a customer's selected community site.  Photos can also be shared with friends found in the phone's address book. 

Virgin Mobile USA and buzzd announced a partnership that will bring the buzzd service to all Virgin Mobile USA handsets via the no-annual contract carrier’s WAP deck giving Virgin Mobile subscribers an interactive, real-time local mobile service.

The companies are also partnering to provide Virgin Mobile USA customers with a mobile-enabled location-sensitive city guide and social network. “buzzd on Virgin Mobile” service allows local entertainment information to be broadcast and shared among Virgin Mobile USA customers based on their location.

Accessible on all Virgin Mobile USA devices via the carrier’s WAP deck “buzzd on Virgin Mobile” delivers editorially driven event and venue information, along with up-to-the-minute reviews and ratings from friends and other members of the community. The mobile entertainment service currently lists events and venues across all major cities in the United States, Europe and India and is powered by New York-based buzzd.

Social media photo and video sharing app JuiceCaster, is now available for Blackberry Curve devices via a free beta application for users in the United States..In the coming weeks, the free beta will be opened up for Blackberry Pearl users, and for Blackberry users in Europe.

JuiceCaster is the award-winning social media application that empowers mobile phone users to capture pictures and videos, and share them instantly with their favorite online social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Photobucket, Hi5, Blogger, Orkut, and a number of other websites. JuiceCaster enables Blackberry users to connect in real-time with friends and interact with new people in the JuiceCaster mobile community - exchanging public and private multimedia messages on the go.

hi5 Networks, announced the availability of hi5 Mobile. The global social networking site is now available on mobile phones in 26 different languages.

With hi5 Mobile, users can easily send and receive messages, update status, view friends’ profiles, share photos, find out who is online and add new friends. hi5 Mobile has been optimized for performance and display on the most popular phones, including the Apple iPhone, Nokia, Motorola, BlackBerry, LG, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson.

Digg has launched an enhanced mobile version (m.digg.com )- designed for phones that support the full web browsing experience, such as a Treo, Blackberry or that new iPhone you just waited in line all morning to get.

This version provides:

- Multiple views of the most recently popular stories. Just as on Digg, you can tab between the filters to see stories popular in the last 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days and 365 days.
- Increased visibility to distinguish between media types. If the story is tagged as 'YouTube', you can click to play the video directly on your iPhone.
- The ability to favorite stories when logged in.
- Improved usability when surfing between various stories.
- The ability to load more comments on each story.
- Snappier page loads due to less javascript used on the site.

For non-smart phones a basic mobile site is available at diggriver.com.

Please remember to digg Wireless and Mobile News!

GyPSii geo-mobility social networking platform, today announced it has entered into a multi-year worldwide agreement with Samsung Electronics.

Under the terms of the agreement, GyPSii will provide technology, products, worldwide data center infrastructure, and GyPSii branding rights to Samsung, on a worldwide non-exclusive basis for a range of Samsung products.

GyPSii's leading mobility digital lifestyle application will be initially be bundled on Samsung's Omnia (SGH-i900) and SGH-i780 as an embedded application. Samsung's customers will be able to take full advantage of the location-based social networking digital lifestyle features of the GyPSii suite and create and share user generated content (UGC) with GyPSii's global user community, and other interoperable social networks such as Facebook. The agreement has provisions for revenue sharing between GyPSii and Samsung, utilizing the business models enabled by GyPSii.

Loopt social-mapping t has joined Facebook Connect to allow users to "connect" their Facebook identity, friends, and privacy settings to the Loopt service.

Working with Facebook Connect will allow Loopt users to share and discover recommendations for nearby businesses, integrate location awareness into their Facebook feeds, and easily find and connect with Facebook friends both on and offline in a manner consistent with their Facebook privacy settings.

The enhanced capabilities will roll out to consumers in late summer and will initially be available to Loopt users via the iPhone App Store. Shortly thereafter the features will be made available on BlackBerry and feature phones across Verizon, Sprint Nextel and Boost Mobile. For more information please visit www.loopt.com

Alltel Wireless now offers a new user-generated slide show application MyShow. MyShow, enables customers the ability to become social media publishers with a few simple clicks to create custom slideshows that showcase their photos from their phones.

The application automatically composes slideshows that can be personalized with text and background music. Users can upload their slideshows to MyShow's companion Web site http://myshow.funmo.com as well as embed the MyShow "widget" and broadcast slideshows on popular social networking sites. MyShow, also allows users to view, rate and comment on slideshows created by other subscribers. The application is now available through Alltel Shop for $3.99 per month.

GyPSii, the leading geo-location and mobile social networking provider, announced it has entered into a multi-year worldwide agreement with Garmin

Under the terms of the agreement, GyPSii will provide technology, products, worldwide data center infrastructure, development licenses, and GyPSii branding rights to Garmin, on a worldwide non-exclusive basis for a range of Garmin products. Garmin anticipates that future products will include friend finding applications that support the GyPSii-powered location-based social networking services platform.

The agreement provides development licenses to Garmin, to leverage the GyPSii location-based geo-social networking services infrastructure for internal development and integration with its products. The agreement also has provisions for revenue sharing between GyPSii and Garmin.

GyPSii uniquely incorporates a wide range of location-specific functions and mobile lifestyle services - including mobile search, user generated content-sharing and social networking - in a single platform.

AT&T announced the launch of two new mobile applications — JuiceCaster 6.0 and Buzzwire — that keep customers connected to the online world.

JuiceCaster 6.0 enables you to use your AT&T wireless device to instantly share and post your mobile videos and photos with your favorite online communities — including exclusive mobile video postings to YouTube and Flickr. With Buzzwire, you can access and customize an extensive streaming media library that spans popular video and audio content, as well as live Internet radio, directly from AT&T phones.

JuiceCaster 6.0 is available for $2.99 a month on compatible 2G and 3G AT&T handsets. AT&T customers can simply text Juice to 386 to begin connecting and communicating in a rich social-networking environment that includes profiles, pictures, videos, friend lists, comments, ratings and personal status updates. For more information on JuiceCaster, visit http://www.att.com/mediamall.

Buzzwire

Launched last month, this innovative mobile media service from Buzzwire Inc. lets you use your AT&T mobile device to access a broad media library with more than 5,000 clips, including everything from your favorite Webisodes, unique user-generated video content and other video programming created specifically for the Web audience, such as news, sports and entertainment.

Today’s Buzz, which is a daily feature on Buzzwire, gives you a list of the top 10 most popular video clips on the Web. You also have the flexibility to create your own personal media channel — video, audio and live radio — and stream it to your phones with just one click. You can also bookmark any of the content in Today’s Buzz for viewing at a time more convenient for you. In addition, Buzzwire not only compiles and categorizes the popular video clips in one central library, but the content is also filtered and formatted so that the viewing experience is optimal for the mobile environment.

The Buzzwire mobile media application is $4.99 a month and is available today for download via the AT&T MediaMall at http://www.att.com/mediamall on many of AT&T’s most popular 3G handsets.