Social Networking Going Mobile(in the context of developing countries)

by

Hafiz Muhammad Idrees Butt

COO – SMSall, Pakistan’s Largest SMS Social Network

We are living in a world where most of us ‘think’ that everyone is connected now via facebook/twitter or the internet

Web is easy, convenient and offers great flexibility to present the content

Social networking is not suited on the web anymore or the big screens of our computers and laptops as much as on the cell

phones, that we carry all the times

Social networking is the grouping of individuals into specific groups, like small rural communities. Although social networking is possible

in person, especially in the workplace, universities, and high schools, it is most popular online.

Some Interesting Stats

World’s total population= 7 billion Mobile Subscribers = 6 billion

Internet users = 2 billionSmart Phones users = 1 billion

Some Interesting Stats (cont)

No 3G in Pakistan yet

Out of 114 million Subscribers, only 8 millions have smart phones

in Pakistan20 million Internet Users6 million Facebook users

Feature phones sales still outnumber smartphones 2:1. If your mobile strategy doesn’t include feature phones, it doesn’t include most of your customers.

People are accessing their social networks through their mobile phones now more than ever before

Your mobile phone is the most important screen in your life. The average number of times a person looks at his/her cell phone is150 in a day.

Mobiles offer you some unique abilities such as all time connectivity, payment mechanism that other screens/devices in your life don’t offer.

Not only this attracts existing social networks which are web based to pay attention on the smart phone penetration (facebook bought Instagram for a billion dollars!) but also worries Telecom Operators on the increased reduction of the SMS revenues

What is required is to develop the facebook experience for the 6 billion people on the planet (or the other 5 billion) to get the full meaning of social networking, focusing on a common medium

such as SMS

What is the ‘facebook experience’?

Relationships, information sharing, exploring more connections etc

Hence the networks of people are likely to grow from the mobile phones (smart phones or featured phones)

What facebook experience may look like on the SMS channel

• Friends and Family (Private Groups)• Status sharing which results in reason to chat (generating more traffic)• Sharing your life

• Interest based groups, Public Groups and Communities• Bikers, Coffee lovers

• All modes of communication. Many to Many (Conference messaging), One to Many (broadcast), Many to one (responses), One to One (private)• Profile sharing and searching• Profile alerts etc

• Privacy and Control• Invite, kicking members

• Information Streams• News alerts, Verses, General knowledge

• People following each other• Following of Javed Bashir on SMSall, a very famous singer with over 5000

followers• Multi-lingual (to remove the language barrier)

Integrating Voice with SMS

• Anonymous conference calls • Consulting

• Medical

• Educational

• Buying and Selling

• Jobs

• Polling

Bringing Social Element in the Media with Mobile Phone (TV, Radio)

• Breaking News Alerts• Cable operators block some channels broadcast in sensitive areas

• Communities for the TV shows• Story Prediction, letting people discuss the stories• Engage during Commercials (again Mobile is doing the job for you!)• Polls to win prizes• These communities help you

• to know the rating of a show/channel• Currently the TV channel rating is done through special

devices in Pakistan • advertise the SMS traffic

• Following for the Anchor Persons

Social Element for the Corporate Sector

• Instead of spamming, engage your customers• Incorporating call to action in all sort of advertisements

• Send “LAWN” to 8001• Get the demographics and build the database

• Measuring the ROI by assigning different codes to different channels of advertisements

• It’s through mobile phone you can engage your customers for feedback, for ordering etc

• Legitimate way to reach out to customers, opt-in and opt-out mechanism

Case studies from SMSall

• Political Activism • Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf adopted our platform to run it’s membership drive

nationwide• Over a million members in less than 6 months• Going to hold Intra party elections across the country

• Never happened before in Pakistan or anywhere in the world on this scale

• 3 Other political parties have joined the network for mobilizing the voters and activating them for the elections

• Education• English Messaging Service (EMS) grew to 100,000 members in 2 years

• End users involvement (400,000 communities created, around 150,000 are active, how I felt when I shared my number)• News Alerts• Pakistan’s leading TV channels are broadcasting alerts and important updates

in various groups• Corporate side• Customer database building by various brands

Interconnectivity between operators to build upon a very large

infrastructure

If it is launched with all the telecom operators out there, a typical group

message may find the following path

Same is true for every developing country!

An easy and quick way to capture the market of 5 billion is to make the SMS social for them. Let them find each other get connected

with their phone

Telecom operators should focus on creating more value for their existing subscribers to bind them into a network and generate more and more traffic. This will prolong or may strengthen the revenues coming from the traditional mode of communications

SMS transactions should be very cheap (affordable) for broadcasting and should be monetized through other

means such as demographically targeted advertisements

Why can’t we develop the applications that don’t restrict the connectivity on a platform rather let anyone be

connected from anywhere in anyway (Web, Smartphone or a Dumb Phone!

Questions?

Thank you