If you think about it, one of the greatest successes of Twitter has been the ability to easily communicate while on the go. You can view what your friends are talking about and participate in live conversation all from the comfort of your mobile phone. For those with little time, sites like Facebook and MySpace can be too time consuming to become involved on a regular basis. That’s why social networks are going to rapidly become more mobile.

Browse through Facebook and you’ll rapidly begin to notice that it resembles a phone book in the way that you can search through your “friends” and view all of their contact information. In a session at the GSMA Mobile World Conference, RIM’s co-CEO stated that social networking is the future of the company. He stated that social networking will soon become as pervasive within enterprises as instant messaging already is.

Mobile companies will need to either become “pipes or platforms.” As I wrote earlier this morning, Zynga has already launched a platform. It appears that the concept of building platforms that any developer can build on has extended beyond social networks and has moved into social networks and will soon enter mobile. So far the best mobile social network tool that I’ve used is Facebook for Blackberry.

There is a whole new wave of services being offered for mobile and soon enough we’ll begin seeing new mobile services appear at the same pace that new “Web 2.0″ sites have been sprouting up over the past couple years. Have you used any highly engaging mobile social networks?

We have all heard about internet dating and finding true love via a social network. Well Karen over at Cordarouns.com is about it hit the streets of San Fransisco looking for her true love.

Karen has enlisted a myriad of social tools to help her on her quest ranging from Facebook and the others to the video/picture/text streaming service Zannel. Karen is going to hit the streets in an 8 hour frenzy to find her man.

Karen, who happens to be way cute, will start the day with a police sketch of her perfect man. She will then hit the streets and use followers input to help her make a V-Day date choice. I think the idea is fresh and fun and I am going to follow it.

Don’t get me wrong, I know this is a marketing ploy but I love it. These are the types of fun social media events and tools that ALL marketers should be looking into. This is the Budweiser Super Bowl Commercial of the web 2.0 age.

Look I am stuck at my desk maybe 3 to 4 hours a day, I have a rough job, but many people spend 8+ plus hours in their cube with nothing to do but work (how much of that can you do?). Karen’s experiment will let them watch something fun, funny and let marketers get some product placement while it happens.

I say good show to all parties involved. Karen and Cordarounds, way to think out of the box. Zannel, good job with highlighting your service in a fun way. Social networks, well you guys don’t need any more praise you created a platform for all of this to happen on.

To bad Karen isn’t doing this in DC, I know plenty of single guys who would love to meet her. Is anyone else out there going to be following Karen? Do any of you out there know of any more fun, online social events like this that you could tell me about? If so let me know.

Follow Karen at Zannel.

Thanks to Alec Saunders who points out a press release posted on the Cellular-News website. The press release states that mobile social networks will account for $52 billion in revenue by 2012 given the high growth scenario. How did they come up with these numbers? Well if you take 30-50% CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) multiply that by seventeen divide by twelve, throw that number into the mobile social network growth calculation formula you will end up with a bazillion dollars.

Well maybe not a bazillion but you get the idea. According to the post, mobile social networking has reached critical mass and Japan is poised to explode in the U.S. This will be a follow-up to the attack of the killer bees that will begin by killing off most of Texas sometime later this year. Toward the end of the press release it is stated that much of the growth will be dependent on mobile network operator policies.

There is no doubt that mobile social networks will be big in the coming years but the amount of money to be generated by them is still questionable. Not even web based social networks have come up with effective revenue models. MySpace, the largest social network on the web, made less than one billion dollars last year. Facebook brought in approximately $150 million in revenue last year and is expected to reach over $325 million by the end of this year. So how did they come up with $52 billion from mobile social networks?

Rafe Needleman of Cnet is reporting that Yahoo is taking a jump in to streaming social video. The service is called Yahoo Live and sadly it is down at the moment. Rafe mentions in his post that the service faltered after 800 users signed on.

I have heard that Yahoo is going through some staffing problems right now but last time I checked Yahoo has a MASSIVE user base, myself included, and should have expected a flood of traffic. All that being said I am actually pretty excited about this development.

In the past couple of days I have been experimenting with services like Comvu and CommetNow to find a way to stream video from my phone to a website. I have a windows smartphone and I have been trying to find a way to remove latency from what I see and do, to what I can post.

Rafe says the Yahoo Live will have an open API to encourage users to ‘Mashup’ the Live product. I am a HUGE Yahoo fan and I hope this service takes off. The Live function will also have a chat function which could be fun. My dream is to have the Yahoo Live service go mobile somehow and let me stream right from my Motorola Q to a blog post.

I see it happening something like this: I am attending a networking event. I see that a good speaker is about to take the podium. I twitter to all my contacts that I am about to stream. I pull out my Q and begin to live stream to an embedded clip on one of my blogs. Hello world this is how social media should happen.

I know other services out there offer a ’similar’ service but none of them are perfect. I need to be able to do all of the streaming media things, without my laptop, and it need to be free. Sure I have an evdo connection for my laptop, but I don’t want to have to lug my laptop everywhere and who really knows when I will need to stream video.

Is anyone else out there excited that Yahoo is making the jump into the streaming media family? I see great potential in this field for bloggers and journalist and would like to see someone with the resources to make it happen take up the cause. I guess my final plea is that Yahoo gets this service back up and running so I can play start working with it.

Caroline McCarthy does a wonderful job detailing the overall trend at tonight’s New York Advertising Meetup at Googleplex East: “Old media’s not dead, it just has to be Google-ized.” Over the course of an hour, Google executives from radio, print, search and agency relations discussed (read: pitched) their online and offline products to the Madison Avenue audience.

Granted the event was hosted on their turf, Google did have a right to pitch their products and talk up why a YouTube campaign may return the greatest ROI of all online initiatives. Sure, there were some blanketing statements like the one I just listed, but I couldn’t help think about spaces outside the dominant Google; of things that Google has yet to touch.

What about mobile? Yes, Google makes great mobile applications like Maps, Search and Reader but what about advertising? “None of us know what the [mobile] monetization models could be,” Derek Kuhl, Head of Agency Relations, admitted. In the US, search is king, expected to hit $1.4 billion in revenue by 2012 although three in ten mobile users recall seeing mobile advertising. Ouch.

Above: A pamphlet with a QR Code in the Google logo. Text reads, “Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. - Gore Vidal. ‘I hope it is the same half!’ Print Ads TGIAF at Hemisphere (Google’s NYC cafeteria) 1/31/08″

In the most subtlest of ways, Google introduced a comprehensive (what marketer’s like to call, “integrated”) mobile advertising initiative via a soon-to-be-announced product for Newspaper Print Ads: QR Codes. Already available and widely popular/useful in Japan, QR Codes will work in tandem with Google’s offline advertisements in newspapers. (Wait, I thought print was tanking?) Similar to a bar code on a cereal box, QR Codes are compact enough to store valuable information (think a website address or coupon). For Google, this means taking a text ad that was placed in print, utilize the corresponding QR Code and draw the reader to another destination.

This may seem menial in comparison to Android efforts, but Google’s foray (at least in the US) into mobile advertising via QR Codes changes the dynamic completely. As the sales and engineering teams test the product internally, expect the industry to steadily roll-out awareness programs and updated software for leading smartphones and the iPhone.

P.S. I also asked Kuhl if he or any other panel speakers had any update about Twitter-competitor Jaiku and (I guess) the answer was expected: “I don’t have any updates except that we acquired it.”

Update: Dan Frommer at Silicon Alley Insider points to Google’s Print Ads barcode information website.

Dan Zarrella just posted an amazing guest post over at Read Write Web about how to get real value out of your twitter account. Learning to be a better tweeter is something I am trying to do and I found his list to be invaluable.

1. Match Your Usernames and Avatars
2. Search Twitter for Twitter Users Mentioning Your Favorite Social Site
3. Search Google for Profiles on Your Favorite Social News Sites Mentioning Twitter
4. Link to your Twitter Account from All Your Social Profiles
5. Ask Readers of Your Blog to Follow You
6.”Twitter-jack” Active Social News & Twitter Users’ Friends
7. Ask Questions
8. Don’t Just Spam Twitter, Add Value
9. Post the Title with the URL
10. Consider Using a Social Media Specific URL Shortener

I just wanted to add two more points that I thought would make the list complete.

11. Go mobile: Twitter’s real value can be when you have that moment of inspiration while standing in line at the grocery store. Either through the SMS client or download an app for your phone, make sure you tweet on the go.

12. Own it: You have to make a conscious effort to use twitter. Wake up in the morning and remind yourself to start the day off write with a quick post about your dreams or what you plan to do for the day.

Do any of you out there have any ideas on how to use twitter more effectively or how to make it more fun? Let me know.

I grew up in NY and PA, my father was a NYC police officer and when he retired we moved to PA. Living in this area I was exposed to skiing, something I never actually did, but saw plenty of cool guys do it. Ever winter all the cool kids would break out there cool skiing jackets that happened to have years of lift tickets attached to the zipper of the coat. One look at the coat and you knew two things, this kid was cool and they skied.

You might be asking why is this important for networking and marketing, well the answer is simple… Where is your lift pass? At a recent launch event I picked up a small key chain from a company called Utterz. The key chain was a small cow that had ‘be heard’ written on it, genius, almost.

The Utterz cow is a great lift pass, I gave it to my girl friend who promptly put it on her keys where it will die I am sure. It will have a great life, a few people might even ask what it is for, but it still isn’t as effective as the lift pass. Why you might ask, because it still isn’t attached to her phone. The lift pass worked at saying someone was cool because it was directly associated with an object that was needed to conduct a cool activity.

What is your lift pass, well that really depends on what you do. Most people have a generic lift pass that they hand out at networking events, their card, but the successful lift passes are ones that separates you from the herd. Maybe its your twitter account, maybe its a custom ring tone that you can send to people, or maybe its your blog. The point is what ever you decided to make your calling card it has to say, “here is my lift pass and you are cool if you have it.”

If you have a cool lift pass let me know, I love hearing about neat things people do to market themselves.

Over the past couple days there has been a bunch of buzz about MTV’s new latin-focused mobile based social network. The new social network is called Con3xion. According to Marketing Vox, “San Diego-based mobile social networking company Intercasting will provide its Anthem platform to create a simple interface for users to ‘view photos, send and receive messages, post comments and search profiles.’”

Recently, I’ve been talking with a number of executives about their thoughts on mobile. The responses have been widely varied. While mobile technology is growing in the U.S. our mobile technologies still fall behind international markets where mobile has become ubiquitous. It is so widespread that in most countries, mobile use is more common then computer use. This is not to say that mobile will not be booming in the U.S. Many people in the U.S. complain about the lack of flash support but over the next couple years we will see more robust applications appear on our mobile devices.

I have a feeling that Google’s Android platform will be one of the primary driving forces in mobile technology. I would guess that the same boom that we’ve witnessed for web 2.0 startups will be repeated with mobile devices. Many of the industry thought leaders also see mobile as the future and that’s why they are beginning to invest heavily in mobile technologies. Just ask the advisors at LaunchBox Digital, a new seed financing investment fund based out of Washington, D.C.

One of their primary investments is going to be in new mobile technologies and other technologies focused on the social web. This is just the beginning of a new trend that started a couple years back but is now starting to gain traction. The social revolution on the web is in full force. In the U.S. the mobile social revolution is just getting started. What mobile technologies are you looking forward to?

Google has officially announced their Android mobile operating system and is looking to change the mobile industry forever. Engaget has posted a number of videos that provide an overview of the new system. I have included one of those videos below. One of the key components of this new operating system is the ability of applications to communicate with each other. Want to build an app that can integrate with a user’s call history? Go for it!

Previously, I had thought up an application that would automatically update your contact’s information in outlook with the last time you spoke with them. If you went too long without touching base, you would receive an automated reminder to contact them to keep in touch. Google is definitely ramping up with the announcement of their SDK as they solidify their partnerships with the 33 launch partners that they announced. If Google is successful with integrating Gmail, Google Maps and their other applications into the majority of handsets, they will now have access to the vast majority of data that users provide via their mobile handsets.

So how will this all impact the social web? Look for social networks like Facebook, MySpace and other competitors to rapidly integrate with the new adroid operating system. Additionally, sites like Twitter and the Loic LeMeur’s upcoming Seesmic (video version of Twitter), will be able to create applications that integrate directly into your phone. Want to know what your friends and family are up to? Simply scroll to the applications that let you see their status updates and videos of what they are doing. Ultimately, this will be a revolution is communications.

One of the largest challenges in building mobile applications has been the lack of resources due to battery power. This has forced application developers to reduce as much processing as possible and has limited the robustness (is that a word?) of applications. Thanks to recent innovations in battery technology, those restrictions will soon be a thing of the past. It appears that this new android operating system will eventually transform the way we communicate. Go take a look at the Android SDK if you are interested in building applications for the new platform.