How social networking revolutionizes relevance

Without a doubt, "relevance" was the buzzword of Mobile World Congress 2009. On Monday, when Nokia launched Ovi Store, its entrant into the increasingly crowded mobile application storefront segment, the handset giant touted a more contextual, user-relevant vision that promises to distinguish the service from its rivals by enabling consumers to activate social discovery features for updates and recommendations on content enjoyed within their network of friends. "The central idea is that the media you consume is no longer just about what you bought, but also where, when and who bought it," said Nokia executive vice president Niklas Savander. "Ovi Store is about immediacy and personal relevance. The service will learn your habits and tastes, and anticipate what you want to consume."

Ovi Store content partners include MySpace and Facebook, the two brands at the vanguard of the mobile social networking experience. So it's no surprise that during today's Mobile Backstage event here in Barcelona, MySpace founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe also trumpeted relevance as the driving force behind social networking both on the web and on mobile. "MySpace is about contextual relevance," DeWolfe said. "Part of that is geographical, but it's also about discovery through the lens of my social world--the lens of my friends." According to DeWolfe, MySpace was founded on the principle of viral marketing, and it remains the engine behind the firm, which reports that 20 million global wireless subscribers now access the site each month. "Once all your friends are on MySpace, if you're not, you're left out," he said, adding that this kind of social influence extends across the consumer consciousness--DeWolfe cited the example of how a restaurant or music recommendation from a trusted friend is far more profound than conventional marketing.   

DeWolfe adds that relevance extends to advertising as well. He said the ad-supported MySpace model is predicated its HyperTargeting program, which inserts advertisements according to data profiles of users in myriad demographic categories (or "enthusiast buckets") like moms or alternative music fans. "All the technology we've built for the web, we can port over to mobile," DeWolfe said. That process is already underway: Earlier this week, MySpace announced the launch of a new, more integrated and device-optimized mobile website that extends the company's global site redesign to handsets, promising a look and feel more consistent with the online MySpace experience. "I've been hearing about the mobile web since 1999, but it never came to fruition," DeWolfe said. "Over the last year, that's changed. I believe in my heart that [mobile's] the future." -Jason