MySpace Expects Huge Growth in Mobile Social Network Users

MySpace hopes its mobile initiatives can bolster its growth.

By Matt Hamblen
Mon, May 04, 2009

Computerworld — Just about every application is going mobile, as the App Store for iPhone has shown with its 1 billion-plus downloads.

Mobile banking, gaming, and messaging are among the broad categories of mobile applications available, so it is no wonder that creators of social networks have gravitated to the mobile platform.

MySpace is no exception, said John Faith, general manager of MySpace Mobile, during a keynote at the GoMobile 2009 conference here.

When MySpace first began creating a mobile presence more than two years ago, the challenge was finding ways to pare down the MySpace social networking Web site so it would fit on smartphones and other small-screen wireless devices.

But a number of updates have given users more of the desktop-type MySpace, as well as the advent of mobile advertising. "We run a profitable business off mobile advertising," Faith said.

MySpace said it has learned that it has had to convince advertisers of the value of mobile ads, which is best suited for the "end user who is away from a PC, but they want something there and now."

"It's a great time to work in the mobile space, and we have seen 450% year over year growth in mobile [subscribers]. The time of the mobile Internet is now."

Faith didn't say how many users are connected to MySpace Mobile, but he did predict that half the traffic on MySpace with be from mobile devices in the next two years.

Of the top 25 mobile devices contacting and using MySpace, 11 are smartphones, nine are smartphone-like devices with QWERTY keyboards, one is a gaming console and four are multimedia- and music-capable phones.

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