As of 1st December, one of the most popular SNS service RenRen.com has officially released ‘Mobile Open Platform’, which will provide service for browser based mobile internet services as well as a mobile client app for RenRen.com.
RenRen is not the first one having their eyes laid on mobile ineternet for SNS. The competitor SNS Kaixin001.com has announced their mobile service a while go, through signing up a strategic partnership agreement of 3 years with Ericsson, that will work together for innovations in mobile apps. Actually Kaixin001.com went further than just a WAP services by going directly to the manufacturers. Sony Ericsson has already delivered 4 handsets that’re embeded with Kaixin001’s SNS application.
When SNS in China has already educated its population the habit of sharing their status/emotions by a line or two of updates, obtaining informations such as news and buzzwords by reading referred articles on their website and living off various apps that almost consist of a day’s work, i.e. planting and harvesting your vegetables and mild from the virtual farm, it makes perfect sense to deepen this impact onto not only one’s online behavior, but into a lifestyle. How do we do that? By taking it with you everywhere, with your phone on the mobile internet.
Getting bored on the subway? Read that hilarious article referred by your third cousin!
Afraind somebody’s going to steal your new born baby panda in to virtual farm while you’re stuck in a queue? Open up your browser and get them harvested!
A recent report on the mobile internet has shown that the majority of mobile internet populations has shifted to a more mature population, with white collar professionsals rise to 38.9% from 29% in 2008, who are the target demographics of SNS such as Kaixin001.com and RenRen. I can only guess why.
Not to mention the boom of cheaper and more advanced handsets has allowed more and more mobile users to get much better mobile internet experience with larger screens, better browers, touch technology and even the new 3G with faster connection!
And further from there, mobile provides even more the web can offer, such as automatically showing nearby friends on SNS by location based service like Google latitude, mapping reminders of important events marked by your friends to your phone so you won’t forget it because you didn’t get online, or searching for friends on SNS automatically you add a new contact to your address book on the phone!
Kaixin001 has over 40 million registered users; RenRen has active user base of 4 million. But comparing to over 600 million mobile users in China, there’s still a big margin worth fighting for. With the current web SNS situation moslty settled, the margin left for mobile internet seems to be the next battleground for the war.
I’ll grab the sofa, sit back and enjoy.
You can also read the post from Raw Plunger at Going Mobile - Ultimate Destination for SNS.