We knew this was coming… but results from a new report from Opera, a Norway-based mobile browsing company even surprised me!

According to the report, 40% of global mobile web traffic starts with popular social-networking sites such as MySpace, hi-5 and facebook. 

That number grows to 60% when you look at U.S. numbers - which is not surprising as Americans tend to spend more time on the mobile web relative to SMS than other markets. No Canadian specific data was published in the report.

It will be interesting to see how mobile-first social networking site and utilities will impact this number in the next 12 months.

Other mobile social media sites to watch are:

• itsmy.mobi (and check out the blog & demo I published back in Feb here)
• bebo.com
• faceparty.com
• friendster (making a come back?)

Interesting enough, Nokia’s own mobile social media site (mosh) did not make the top 10 most visited on any of the countries reported in detail within the report. I guess owning ~40% of the global handset market does not guarantee software or mindshare dominance.

You can read the full report here.

As reported in mocoNews.net, Nokia is in talks with facebook to both port their platform to Nokia and to potentially buy a share. With around 40% of the world hand set market, Nokia could significantly increase facebook’s exposure in Europe.

This proves that just because you build it, it doesn’t mean they will come.

Partnering with facebook to get their mobile platform on every Nokia device could mean their own mobile social network Mosh will never make it out of beta as it has not been successful in capturing significant mind share. This follows another mobile social networking flop from 2007 - the Sprite yellow yard.

Looking at the failure of mobile-centric social networks just re-enforces my point of view that mobile can’t be treated as a stand-alone channel. It’s a natural extension of interactive (web & email) and works best when supported by a multi-channel marketing plan.

This will almost certainly remain true until the mobile web catches up to the “desktop” web in terms of consumer usage and adoption.

The announcement of Google buying Jaiku is making waves in the industry. Imran Ali at Mobile Messaging 2.0 is calling it the most significant acquisition ever by Google. I’m calling it the continuation of a cold war arms race between Nokia and Google for world domination. Well World Mobile domination (the new WMD?) anyway.

From the East (or near-East… or near-near-East) there is Nokia. They are already world leaders in the mobile device space and have a neat mobile social network called MOSH. With their acquisition of Enpocket they now have a best in class mobile ad-delivery platform. With their acquisition of NAVTEQ they now have a best in class GPS-based mapping system to compete in the location based services (LBS) space.  With the Gartner Group forecasting that GPS based handsets will grow to around 40% by 2011 from 13% in 2007, clearly GPS or LBS could become the next killer mobile application. With all these acquisitions in the social networking / content space, Nokia is starting to look a lot like Google… 

From the West we have Google. They own search world wide and have become a massive advertising power with their Google AdWords platform…. a platform that is now being offered for free for mobile for a limited time.  Some have speculated that a mobile AdWords platform could subsidize carrier costs for the eventual release of a Google phone into the marketplace. Imagine a 3G phone loaded with Google widgets that costs little to nothing for the consumer. The g-phone could be an i-phone killer… or anything Nokia killer.

Combine the Google acquisition of Jaiku with the other recent announcement that Google also purchased Zingku - a mobile social utility tool that is web and SMS based and we have the makings of a mobile social networking platform that will rival all others.  Consider that Google already has a great installed base with Orkut (which is more popular than facebook in some parts of the world), it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that they’ll be playing in the mobile social networking space very soon. With all these acquisitions and developments, Google is starting to look a lot like Nokia…

Who will win this cold war…or will one buy the other eventually? One thing is for sure, following the mobile space is going to be very interesting over the next 18 months!

UPDATE 10/11: Nokia is also going into mobile search - check out this article on mobile semantic search!

Recently I’ve come across discussions around the future of online identity - specifically around the idea of creating a global or universal ID badge / profile etc… that you can reference or link to when you need to. Instead of filling out multiple profile forms for every social network you register for or instead of creating multiple online avatars for your favourite metaverse, why not have one global digital identity mechanism….kind of like having a passport or driver’s license that will be recognized across the web as authentic ID.

Today we can identify visitors through the tracking of their I.P. address and /or through cookies…but the problem is that it’s nearly impossible to track people as they switch computers or restart their machine (assuming dynamic IP addressing is turned on).

Check out the video by Dick Hardt. The video really brings to life the idea of “identity 2.0″ and offers some insight into where or how this will evolve on the web. You should also check out Mitch’s blog entry on global avatars and Mike Kujawski’s article on the importance of branding yourself as an authority online.

In the mobile space we use phone numbers instead of I.P. addresses as an identifier. With people changing their phone numbers less fequently then they would change computers, leveraging your mobile number as your access key to a global digital avatar is an interesting concept to explore.

Recent efforts by Sprite and Nokia’s (with MOSH) to create mobile social communities could mark the beginning of the mobile device becoming the primary digital interface…and therefore a potential leverage point for those seeking the holy grail of identity 2.0.