This is the presentation I gave a few weeks ago at the UXconference 2009.

There were a lot of great presentation and it was a fantastic event that I hope to attend again in 2010.

As I usually do the presentation need some details in order to be better understood. Below you will find some comments on the slides.

Slide 3 – 4

Mobile Social Networks were born at the very same time Martin Cooper from Motorola placed the first mobile call back in 1973. When we decided that mobile phones had to have a contacts applications we can say that mobile social networks were born.

Slide 5 – 7

30 years later 3 launched the first UMTS commercial network in Europe with the NEC E606 and Motorola A835 mobile phone.

Slide 8 – 9

The original sin. We, as operators, have been blind to the fact that the contact application could be the foundation of the mobile social network.

Slide 10 – 11

Actually we can observe a transition from SMS (Short Message Service) to SSM (Short Status Message). This is definitely a quantum leap. (By the way, we should be a little be scared of this as operators 🙂 )

Slide 12 – 17

Usually on Social Networks we can share plenty of content and, while in mobility, most of that can be associated with positioning information from GPS and network assisted services.

Slide 18

We will need to rethink the whole User Experience of Social Networks in mobility

Slide 19

This a process that need to take in consideration the End to End architecture that we, as operators, provide to our users. This the only way where we can provide value and avoid the “bit pipe” nightmare.

Slide 20

How can we do this?

Slide 21

Let user consume Social Networks from his contacts applications. Aggregate everything in there and do no place plenty of single applications into the mobile phone.

Slide 22

Aggregate conversations. We are all parts of several social networks and most of the time they do not overlap too much. Usually when I post something to Twitter it gets automatically reposted on Facebook, Friendfeed, etc.. On each of those place a conversation starts but I have no option, today, to look at those conversations from a single point of view on my phone.

Slide 23 – 24

Let the backend to the dirty job. We have to remember that the vast majority of our customer base does not have an iPhone or a Smartphone. We can aggregate content on the server side and deliver result to a very thin client application on the mobile phone.

We can also think to add push as a premium service to our customers.

Slide 25

Most of the new mobile phones are now touch devices and we need to rethink at usability forgetting what we were used to do with the classic rocker interaction. There are new ways to browse and consume content.

Slide 26

If we aggregate data on the server side we can also discover connections for our customers. At the end of the day we can think at the mobile phone number as a very good proxy to OpenId in mobility (apart from any privacy considerations)

Slide 27

We must allow the end user to consume the content directly from the contacts applications. If one of my contacts posts a photo or a video I do not want to exit the application, launch the browser, wait, and then relaunch the contacts application again.

Slide 28

We can use the phone short range communication system (bluetooth, near field communication, etc) to broadcast our social identity. If we want to, obviously.

Yeah, I know… that was quite fast. If you want to discuss about that just drop me a line.