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Approximately 13% of US users currently access dating services from their mobile phone, says a new report from visiongain. This one statistic needs to be compared with the remaining 87% of users who access dating services using fixed-line internet access. These figures show that community based websites are starting to make the transition to mobile and are now being more frequently accessed through the mobile channel.
Visiongain says that it believes that mobile operators must embrace user generated content (UGC) and mobile communities further as they will offer a key source of revenue. Through UGC and mobile communities operators will be able to generate revenue by targeted promotion of tailored content and advertising to the relevant audiences.
The growth of social communities and UGC on the fixed line internet, with sites such as MySpace and YouTube, has encouraged the mobile industry to try to replicate this success on mobile. There are significant potential benefits for mobile operators in offering such services, including the increase of mobile data usage, reduced churn and greater opportunity for customer segmentation. Current mobile solutions that have experienced some success include SeeMeTV from Hutchison's 3UK, which allows users to upload captured video content from mobile, download other users' clips and receive payment from the operator every time a user generated clip is downloaded. The service, provided by Yospace, generates over one million video downloads per month.
However, visiongain believes that the sweet spot for such mobile services will be when they compliment existing or newly created fixed line services. Several challenges face the success of mobile UGC and social communities, including varying user internet experience depending on device or network and smaller screen and keypad on mobile, mean that the services will need to compliment rather than compete with fixed line services.
This convergence will enable users to maintain contact with fixed-line communities in which they engage, rather than restrict usage to operator defined content. This is key to encouraging usage of such services on mobile because MySpace users, for example, will want to be able to contact other MySpace users via mobile and not be restricted from doing so by operators.
The report also finds that UGC and communities will provide a way for mobile operators to generate additional revenue through customer segmentation and advertising. Communities allow operators to monitor user feedback and gain a better understanding of what subscribers want from their content. So, for example, an operator can provide a community that is discussing the latest track by a music artist with links to download the track or video or ringtones.
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