Mobilising advocacy
By Molly FlattComScore’s report revealing that that the number of people using their mobile device to access news and information on the net more than doubled from January 2008 to January 2009 confirms our long-held belief that mobile and geo-location capabilities will be at the forefront of the next social media evolution.
But the ComScore data doesn’t even take into account social networks. Forecasters from eMarketer to The Times have commented on the massive growth in mobile networking, with both developments in mobile technology - need I mention the iPhone? - and specialised for-mobile social networks such as aki-aki and Queep boosting the trend. Yesterday SearchEngineWatch announced a (rather small) survey revealing that mobile social networking was more popular than Twitter among 18-24 year olds. This mobile mindset is also driving social media’s investment in realtime communication, and now Twitter is looking to combine the big three - mobile, realtime, and geo-location.
Many of our most successful recent projects - such as the current global Search for N social media treasurehunt for Nokia’s N97 - have employed all three elements. Incorporating realtime, geolocated, mobile social media into a WOM strategy is so effective because of its offline/online integration. Disparate people with a shared passion, who may only know each other from virtual networks, come together to play real games in real time in real places, always bringing the conversation back online as they live stream, tweet and post about their experiences. Innovative technologies, tick. Real experiences and emotions, tick. Whole lot of fun, tick. Result? Some serious advocacy.
