Mobile social media blooming… on iPhone

With iPhone apps spiking in popularity, non-Apple devices looking dim, for now

First, social media grew exponentially. Then smartphones started selling like crazy. What’s next? It’s mobile social media’s time to shine!

Representatives from four social media companies met yesterday to discuss this rising star at the MobileBeat 2009 Conference in an afternoon session called “Social Media, Mobile Content: It Used to be Ringtones – Now It’s Social.” In a meeting with such a non-partisan title, much of the talk unsurprisingly swirled around Apple’s ever-popular iPhone.

Why? It comes down to the numbers.

Zynga, one of the biggest builders of social media games, sees about 17,000,000 active users a day and 64,000,000 users throughout the month, many of which come through its iPhone apps. Facebook, currently the most popular social networking site, counts over 30,000,000 active users of its mobile app daily.

Asked what opportunities he sees beyond the iPhone, Facebook Mobile representative Henri Moissiniac says his company is following the numbers. Furthermore, he expressed the company’s refusal to simply port the iPhone app to other platforms: “We are not doing copy-paste.” He did show some interest in the Palm Pre’s ability to run multiple apps at once, hinting at the possibility of integration between Facebook and the Pre’s address book.

Despite efforts of VentureBeat moderator Eric Eldon to steer the conversation away from the iPhone for even a second, nobody seemed terribly interested in Google’s Android, while the Palm Pre only got a few nods. It’s not that the panel found the Apple competitors uninteresting, but the fact that they are so new to the game means they aren’t the focus right now. As SGN CEO Shervin Pishevar said, “If it weren’t for Apple, we’d still be waiting.”

Even with that in mind, the panel agreed for the most part that the future looks bright and free for all aspects of social media on mobile devices. Though Apple certainly blazed the trail and owns the mobile social media market with the iPhone, this won’t always be the case.

Zynga CEO Mark Pincus foresees platforms opening up, increasing standardization, rising competition, acceleration of seamless app distribution, and creation of frictionless payment methods. Zong CEO David Marcus echoed sentiments that frictionless payment methods will be a requirement for mobile apps in the months to come, adding that we should expect very exciting usage of location services, social viral distribution, and enhanced reality apps.

Pishevar said it best: "Right now is a time of great experimentation. The companies that are going to succeed are going to be the ones that iterate really, really fast."