T-Mobile, the fourth largest mobile carrier in the U.S., on Thursday
launched MySpace Mobile, the latest attempt by carriers to profit from the burgeoning social networking craze.
Shifting social networking from a 17-inch computer monitor to a 2-inch cell phone screen has proven challenging, and only a minuscule
percentage of mobile subscribers use their phones as social network devices, according to a recent
survey.
MySpace Mobile, which will be available to owners of T-Mobile Sidekick
phones, will test the technical and integration capabilities of Danger, a Palo
Alto, California-based startup that will host the service.
The service is the third carrier relationship for MySpace, the world’s
most popular social networking site. MySpace has similar mobile deals with Helio,
a youth-oriented mobile phone service, and AT&T.
MySpace Mobile, which has a customized user interface tuned to the tight
bandwidth realties of mobile computing, will be available on the Sidekick iD and Sidekick 3 users by the end of October.
The service, which will have many of the familiar MySpace desktop communications
functions, will be free for the first year and will cost subscribers $1.99 per
month thereafter.
With the immense popularity of both cell phones and
social networking among younger users, many investors see the linkage of the
two as a can’t-miss proposition.
But to date that has not been the case. According to a recent
M:metrics mobile phone usage survey for July, only 3.3 percent of mobile phone subscribers
in the U.S. used their cell phones for social networking.
That works out to be about 7 million people out of a base
of more than 213 million.
And Helio, the first carrier to offer customized MySpace
access on cell phones in the U.S. has reportedly fallen well short of its
subscriber targets.
But the emergence of wireless
broadband vehicles such as WiMAX and others could bring the mobile social
networking experience closer to the PC version, one analyst said.