MySpace numbers proving the trend

MySpace recently reported a staggering growth of 450% in mobile page views.  More importantly, mobile traffic now accounts for 35% of all traffic on MySpace!  That is significant. While the article (above) attributes a lot of growth to smartphones, I would be surprised if WAP is not the dominant access form.  iPhones and Smartphones may lead the way in acknowledging the mobile device as an access point to the online world, but the majority of people (and presumably MySpace user base) have lower end phones which are still perfectly capable data devices.

The statistics also show that a lot of usage is really all about staying in touch, i.e. checking your account and messages. There is no surprise that adding new contacts is not a mobile activity – as it is really not much of a web activity either.  Research by Danah Boyd on Friendster has proven this, and I will shortly comment on a similar study proving this point.  What is a bit surprising – especially given the growth of picture messaging, is the lack of actually creating content on MySpace, given that at least 70% of the activity is devoted to just checking up on things.  The problem lies when you dig into the service (and this is not MySpace specific), where you will see it is quite hard to actually upload pictures in a simple way.  In fact, this is one of the unique propositions we have here at Storyz, to allow for what Tomy Ahonen’s vision is about mobile being the point of inspiration.