Social on mobile starts to get a little funkier

Dominic Finney, director at digital consultancy FaR, on why the mobile experience on Facebook is still fairly flat…

Mobile and social are pretty much a hand in glove fit and should work together seamlessly. But up to now it can be argued that the leading player in social has been fairly unimaginative in its use of social as it largely transferred its service onto mobile, albeit in a seamless fashion that provides the perfect app for following the latest updates on the move.

This is how I tend to consume Facebook so I guess this makes me either behind the social curve or someone who just likes to follow the chat rather than be the chat.

But, as a consequence I would say the mobile experience on Facebook is still fairly flat from a mobile point of view, with limited features being developed to embrace the opportunities that consuming mobile on the move throws up.

Clearly, the checking in feature developed by companies such as Foursquare was a real step forward. The ability to check in and out on the move through mobile acts like a public passport that shows your social group where you are and opens up new social opportunities through building a local network from where you just checked in.

However, one of the things it doesn’t do is enable the user to create a record of their life on the move. But this is really starting to change with the development of apps like Instagram and Path, which enable us to create our own digital story on the move. These apps let you to upload images and make comments on the stuff you do when you are out and about.

Though it has to be said the Instagram app appears to mostly have users who are largely focused on uploading cool images of themselves at the moment. In fairness this is one of the strengths of this app as it has the inbuilt functionality to enable you to render your photo in colour tones that enhance your image – so it is best for us advertising people to stay aware of the delusional aspects of this function.

The Path application is less image-focused and instead looks at building more of a timeline facility through which you can share images and comments of what your doing during the day. The timeline is elegantly laid out so that it is easy for you to scroll through friends timelines and with initial add-ons such as share the music that you are listening to function, one can start to see how these apps can offer a rich record of your social life on the move.

The strength of these applications was brought home to me by my 15 year old nephew in law, over from Sweden for the weekend, whom I mentioned the Instagram app to while we were out at a northern soul night in Brixton (fortunately it is highly unlikely that his mum will read this article, but if she does he was on Ginger Ale’s, which the Swedes seem to be strangely hooked on… explanations of said phenomenon welcome) in bid to show that I was still hip. He merely nodded and said that he had the app for a while and that he’d been using it since he’d arrived to share what he was up to (and seeing) in London with his friends back home. And that no, he wouldn’t like me to join his social network.

So the point being that like all really strong digital products it addresses a need you either didn’t know you had or weren’t able to properly address before. Which goes some way to explaining the big numbers these types of apps are hitting with Instagram, which is already at 13 million users and counting.

What the commercial and advertising opportunities for these types of apps are is still unclear – as they currently do not provide any commercial or advertising opportunities. And given that we are in territory similar to Facebook, the challenge will be how to monetise what is essentially a social space, in what is minimal screen room to work with.

But the potential for these apps are significant as the audience appetite is already strong and the fit with brands is obvious – as any application that enables you to express who you are and how you would like to be viewed by friends is just the type of space that brands crave to be associated with.

So my guess is that the phone companies developing these types of apps will start to get really busy with advertisers wanting to have conversations about how they can work together… that is unless Facebook decides to swoop in.

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