Twitpic and Twitvid opened the door for mobile content loading to a social network. Facebook follows suit with its new service that will enable users to upload photos and video content to their profiles using email. Their blog states,

“You already can upload photos from your mobile phone via MMS or through Facebook applications on your iPhone, Blackberry and other devices. Now we recently added the ability to upload photos and videos by e-mailing them to your Facebook account.”

Facebook provides users with unique email accounts (available here) where they can send their attachments for immediate publishing to their profiles in a “Mobile Upload” album. The subject header of the email serves as the caption for uploaded content.

Samsung has started offering the Mondi, which runs Windows Mobile and sports WiMax, a 4.3-inch WVGA touchscreen, and a sliding keyboard.

It is part of an emerging class: the Mobile Internet Device. This means it is a portable computer bigger than a phone but smaller than a laptop with an emphasis on mobile Web, email, and social networking.

Samsung Telecommunications America (Samsung Mobile) and T-Mobile USA have launched two new text-friendly messaging phones, the Samsung Comeback (SGH-t559) and Samsung Gravity 2 (SGH-t469).

Samsung Mobile said that the Comeback is a messaging phone with a side-flip that reveals a QWERTY keyboard.

1. Social networking goes mobile

One major trend that is already beginning is the move of social networking from traditional desktop computers to portable devices. Clearly, the iPhone has kick-started this trend, but with the rise of smartphones the practice is becoming more popular.

Jim Stewart, founder of SEO firm Stewart Media, says this transition gives businesses plenty of opportunities to rapidly respond to users' queries on social networks in real-time, and this will also help the development of location-specific networks.

"We're only seeing the start of it now, really because we've only had the iPhone for about 12 months, but the idea is you can send a Tweet out to people within a 25km area. If I was in the Melbourne CBD I would have a Twitter client monitoring the word ‘Melbourne' during business hours and would have a Twitter client to respond."

"If someone asks a question and you can help them, they're going to remember you."

comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, reports that social networking is drawing new users into the mobile Web. In November, 34 percent of mobile phone owners in Western Europe who visited social networking sites accessed social media exclusive of all other mobile Web content.

With 12.1 million users in Western Europe (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K.), mobile social networking is a rapidly-expanding category that grew 152 percent from November 2007 to November 2008.

The U.K. boasts the highest penetration of mobile social networking, at 9 percent, nearly triple that of Germany, where the activity is the least popular. The average penetration rate across all countries is 5 percent.

ShoZu, a London-based company connecting phones to social networking sites, is partnering with Touchnote, to let you mail any photos you’ve uploaded through their service as postcards to friends and family.

British startup Touchnote, which won audience award for best mobile service last week at our MobileBeat 2009 conference, allows phone applications to print an image and mail it to anywhere in the world. After seeing the company demo on stage at MobileBeat, Shozu chief executive Chris Wade says he decided to do a deal on the spot. The new capabilities should be up and running within four to six weeks, he said.

If I asked you whether you were a member of a mobile social network the chances are high that you would say no.

But consider for a moment the key functionality that brings Twitter alive -

* The moment you download a mobile app for Twitter

Because I would argue that Twitter is really not a 2nd screen social network any more, its a 3rd screen or mobile social network.

I was first invited to join Twitter in Jan 07 and frankly I couldn’t see the point. My friend @Tinley sent me an invite and at the time many of the posts people were making were around their personal lives. I enjoyed reading theirs, but really didn’t think anyone would be interested in mine. Later after pestering from more friends I thought I would join. But I didn’t really engage until I started to use my phone. After all, if you have a great idea in a pub you are hardly likely to rush home, log on and tweet at that moment. And Twitter is all about the moment so you need a method of connecting with it that is with you moment by moment – your mobile.

Pure mobile social network istmy has substantially upgraded its feature-set, and now offers a range of new functions, including social gaming and easy handling of multiple social presences.

The personal mobile profile pages of itsmy.com members can now be decorated with 'mood sets', and a range of virtual gifts have also been made available.

Jukka Saarelainen, CTO of itsmy, enthused: “Our technology and platform allow us to give all users a great mobile social experience, independent from their mobile handset. People with older handsets can easily play mobile games with smartphone owners. This is the best way to guarantee that everybody has fun.”

Location-based mobile social networking services continue to expand into new markets, as illustrated today by industry player GyPSii’s announcement that its technology would now be pre-packaged with the latest generation handsets from Chinese manufacturer Ramar. Market research firm ABI Research (ABI) has revealed the results of its prospective investigation in the field, estimating that the revenue it generates will reach $3.3 billion by 2013.

In the past few months, I've reconnected with friends from kindergarten through college and beyond. I've discovered thought-provoking online articles and videos I probably wouldn't have found on my own. I've also read meaningless updates from friends, such as "I'm getting in the hot tub," or "just received a special gift from a special friend." And I've done it all through Facebook--the social networking phenomenon where Top Five lists reign, long-lost friends are reunited, and, inevitably, countless hours are consumed.

Israeli startup MobiApp announced today that it has received 800,000 from Maayan Venture Capital. The company’s Mingler product is a mobile social network that works in close range settings like bars & restaurants. Using bluetooth, it allows users to share info about each other, having some implications for bus dev (conference setting), dating (bars) or location based social networking. It also seems like it could have spammy uses if fallen into the wrong hands. From a user perspective, it joins the likes of other mobile social networks gaining steam such as Google Latitude and Loopt.

On the whole the Sense UI is as impressive as the Palm Pre’s and, from a purely functional standpoint, better than the default interface for the iPhone. The Pre, for example, has pages, just like the Hero, but the pages in this case are actually “widget containers” that can hold multiple data points and controls on one page. For example, you can dedicate one of the seven pages to entertainment apps while other pages can be dedicated to email accounts.

The device also has Scenes, an important addition to the UI. Scenes are “themes” defined for set activities. For example, the Work theme has stock information and a world time clock while the Social scene has a prominent calendar and social networking features up front. This is a great feature and works around some of the widget and page limitations imposed by the OS.

Forget music and video downloads, social networking is driving the growth explosion in mobile data usage, analysts said today.

Around a third of young adults (those under 36) in the UK regularly access sites such as Facebook and Twitter from their mobile phones, suggesting that operators should keep working with trusted web brands to fuel internet usage.

The stats came from industry researcher CCS Insight, which noted that the 16 to 24 year-olds are often cited as the most vibrant segment of the market, but when it comes to buying mobile content, it’s those over 24 who are doing the spending.

Are you an active social media user? Do you have umpteen different online profiles that you want to keep up to date, but that’s just too time consuming? Not to worry! The rise of social networking provoked a fast development of services to manage your social media life. Here is a list of top 5 social network aggregators.

MaYoMo (Map Your Moments), a powerful new social network for mobile citizen journalists and the most inspired alternative source for global, multimedia news content, launches improved beta version of its site.

Unlike other sources of world news, MaYoMo delivers independent, global news content with Web 2.0 convenience and flexibility. It is designed for both journalists and independent-minded, socially and globally aware readers around the world who need a new, socially-connected, real-time platform for global news reporting - and conversation about that news.

The consumer location-based services (LBS) market has steadily evolved over the past few years, always promising significant revenue generation, but never quite delivering the critical mass of subscribers that werNow, a number of factors - including the development of third-party location databases and technologies - are poised to finally drive real LBS market growth on mobile phones.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (http://www.wireless.frost.com/), North America Consumer Location-based Services (LBS) Market - The Wireless Carrier Opportunity, estimates that carrier-generated consumer LBS revenues totaled over $480 million in 2008 and projects this figure to surpass $3.0 billion in 2013.

Mobile software on compelling new devices like the iPhone is creating huge new industries, but the world is a year or two away — at least — from seeing the results really manifest themselves.

Or that was the unsurprising consensus among the panelists I moderated yesterday at our MobileBeat 2009 conference (this is one of our last posts about the conference, so bear with me). The panelists included Facebook mobile head Henri Moissinac, payment service Zong chief executive David Marcus, social game developer Zynga chief executive Mark Pincus, and iPhone-focused game developer SGN chief executive Shervin Pishevar. These guys are in the middle of the changes, and they were generally quite optimistic — Pishevar and Pincus both predicted that the iPhone app store would be worth billions of dollars in the coming years.

Could T-Mobile be looking at ways to turn its myFaves value calling plan into a mobile social network of sorts? Maybe, say GigaOM and TmoNews. This makes all sorts of sense while also sounding like a can of worms that might not be worth opening, given the fact that social networks are a dime a dozen these days - especially those not called "Facebook," "Hi5," or "twitter."

I spied both Om and T-Mo USA CTO Cole Brodman at last week's MobileBeat 2009 conference, and so I can picture the following exchange going down in the hotel foyer:

Om: Tell me about myFaves
Cole "It’s going to be more than an economically optimized calling service, Brodman said. “I want it to be more than just voice,” he said. “I want it to be a lens to our social networks.”

GigaOm reports that Brodman hopes his company will "do a social makeover of myFaves and push it aggressively to their customers in 2010.”

OK, so this isn’t going to be a post about the mathematics of Pongr’s visual search technology (sorry if you were hoping for such!). Instead, as the title may suggest, it will loosely touch upon the value of a mobile picture when it comes to the rational economics, and sometimes irrational choices, of what’s going on in the social and physical universe. Mobile picture taking, social network sharing, and how we all, as consumers, make the purchasing decisions that we do are increasingly intertwined and need to be discussed by mobile marketers, traditional media experts and technology solution developers, like Pongr. As regular buyers of goods and services, we think often about how to spend dollars (or dongs, dinars, dirhams, or otherwise hard-earned unit of currency as may be the case for you, dear international reader) and what appeals to us can be boiled down to a few words — value and relevance.

A recent forecast by market research firm Report Buyer anticipates that mobile social networking revenues will grow to $60 billion worldwide in 2012. According to researchers CCS Insight, one-third of users between the ages of 16 and 35 regularly access sites like Facebook and Twitter via a wireless device. And British operator O2 contends that phones will soon become the primary vehicle for all social networking activities, crediting the anytime, anywhere connectivity the mobile platform affords.

While behemoths like Facebook and Twitter generate most of the attention, they're not the only social networking solutions worth talking about. Here are five emerging mobile social networking apps you should get to know.