Social Networking on Mobiles - How will it change our behaviour and the way we do things?

Introduction

With respect to the motivation which drives us to do what we do Maslow's hierarchy of needs states that social interests and individual self-actualization are the least important but also the most satisfying goals. Social Networks and Mobile Computing help us to satisfy these needs and as time goes by it will not be available only on one’s personal computer at home or office but even on our mobiles. As the costs and usability barriers shrink, more and more users can be online whenever they want to interact with their friends and socials. Therefore it’s important to investigate some mobile software to understand about upcoming trends and the changes in our social behaviour.

Background
From the vast amount of mobile-applications which facilitate social networking I picked out 3 for further investigation. The following is a brief overview of the features and social networks the three applications can interact with.

Shozu - Enables a user to interact with plenty of social networks like Facebook, Flickr, Blogger and Twitter. It doesn’t support the full range of features for every site, but provides one with basic functions to upload photos, update your status messages or write an article for a blog. The application enables one to interact with all these networks using a common user interface. Beside the ability to connect to the most common networks it supports a huge variety of unpopular networks like CNN, wordpress or faces.com. The complete list can be found here.

Fring – An application which was originally meant to be a VOIP and Skype client for mobiles, but offers features to interact with a few social networking sites as well. In particular this includes access to your Facebook and Twitter account. For the Facebook part the application won't enable you to be active in the network. For now it is only possible to read the comment and news feeds of your buddies. For Twitter there isn't any restriction. You can post status messages as well as reading those of your friends.

Qik – Live Streaming for your Mobile. You have to register at qik.com and are then allowed to stream videos from your mobile. It has some features to change the privacy and security settings and to adjust the quality. Other Users can watch the stream over your profile, commenting on them and chatting with you. The ability to create groups and have a list of your friends helps you to remain up-to-date about what your buddies are doing.

Focus

The reflection will focus on the features of the mentioned applications and the effects on our life in general.

Reflection

To introduce my reflection I'm going to describe a little scenario in which the interaction of social networks and mobile computing is shown. The 3 mentioned applications are free and can be downloaded from their websites. After the installation of the 3 applications I could immediately start interacting with my social networks. At first I took a photo of an amazing scene out on Stradbroke island, which I then uploaded to Flickr and Facebook using the Shozu application. To inform my friends about whats going on I quickly changed my Status message on facebook and twitter, stating that there is something new on my flickr account which is definitely worth a look. While reading the comments about my status message I initiated a Skype session to one of my friends to provide him with some sounds of the beach and the whales. Followed by this I investigated some comments on the picture and, based on this, I decided to live-stream a little video to all the people who would be interested in it. So again I altered my status on Facebook and Twitter, but this time providing a url to the upcoming livestream. Using the Qik Application I then streamed my view to the internet and both my friends and I were really impressed by the quality and the low latency.

The mentioned situation shows only one possible scenario in which the new technologies and the combination of social networks and mobile internet can be used. As soon as the interaction with your friends is no longer bound to your stationary home computer or office there are a lot of things one can do. And these applications don't even utiilise the program's full potential. Newer mobile phones can provide an additional GPS signal so that one can transmit their location and routes.

With respect to the distance between people that's an amazing possibility which enables you to stay in touch with your friends not only using email or short messages but also with live pictures and live videos. For me being 15000 km away from home this is the perfect combination to feed my hungry peers with images and videos about what I am doing in Oz. To do all this “live” brings the virtual social network and the daily life even closer together.

The fring application is very interesting as it enables us, to some degree, to combine instant messaging and social networks. Sharing pictures, videos and then chatting or speaking about them is an important aspect of social networks. Facebook already has a messenger built in and its really comfortable to use, but it doesn't allow you to really speak with your friends. Fring is a nice application to experience these 2 features and to see how they work together.

YouTube is a service for publishing videos and sharing them with your friends. It's possible to rate videos and to see what your friends are watching. But the videos are not live. It is like watching a soccer match “live” compared to watching it two hours later. What would you prefer? To know that what you see right now is happening exactly at the same time, or that it is just a video recording? I tried it and the live one is really interesting. The qik application requires you to create an account and log in from your mobile. You can configure things like privacy and quality and then start streaming. Based on some test streams the latency between capturing the video and watching it online was only about 4 seconds. This is quite acceptable especially because the viewer was sitting in Germany and the video was recorded in Brisbane. The live-streaming feature is not meant to replace YouTube at all but can be a nice addition in particular certain moments which might not be worthwhile just posting it on youtube but instead letting your friends enjoy it with you. The social features of the qik service aren't fully mature yet but contain the basic elements. This include a personal profile function, the possibility to connect to other qik users and the creation of groups.

The last feature I want to review is the ability to use a built-in gps receiver to enable applications processing your current position. Both, Qik as well as Shozu support that aspect in different ways. With Shozu you can geo-tag your photos so that other users can see where a photo was taken. The same holds for the qik application, but with the important difference in that you can configure which detail regarding your position is used. For the time being there are still too few people who possess a GPS-capable mobile phone so that as a consequence a social network based on one's current location doesn't fully work.

Conclusion

I guess the fusion of social networks and mobile computing is just a matter of time, depending on the costs for mobile internet and the time needed to equip people with the according hardware. But when it happens it will affect our social behaviour, as well as things like meeting up and staying in touch with people over a big distance. It can only be hoped that real life still plays the main role in our life.

References

(1) Basic Thinking Blog about mobile social Networks 09/2008, german
(2) Social Networks dominate the mobile web 05/2008