When I joked everything would soon be wired to a social network the other day I didn't realize how close I was to the mark. Because social net giant Facebook is angling to become the vehicle that lets everything on your smartphone get social.

The latest news about Facebook's plans have surfaced at the Nokia World event, where it looks like the company's trying to steal back some of the thunder that Nokia curiously stole yesterday with its Ovi Lifecasting app. And this is no fantasized theory based on speculation: Facebook Mobile's director Henri Moissinac sets it all out pretty plainly: "We can make the whole Web social. Now we are going to do the same with mobile [...] Apps are better when you can play them with your friends. With Facebook Connect for mobile, you will now be able to share them with your friends."

One of the most actively discussed topics in the Twitter universe over the past couple months has been the idea that teens don’t tweet – at least not as much as older demographics, and certainly not as actively as teens who use other popular social networking sites.

Now, it appears that this story may be shifting. According to new data from comScore, younger users – specifically those in the 12-17 and 18-24 year-old demographics – are Twitter’s fastest growing audience segment.

Here’s what the audience measurement company has to say on the trend:

“As the Twitter audience has mushroomed in recent months – to 21 million U.S. visitors in July 2009 (note: this number represents visitors to the Twitter.com website and does not include API or mobile Twitter usage) – the younger age groups are the ones flooding in the fastest.

The share of visitors to Twitter under the age of 35 is increasing at a breakneck pace. The most notable positive shifts are evident among the 12-17 and 18-24 year old segments, which are coming at the expense of the 35 segments.”

The hype around the convergence of social networking and mobile services is set to crank up a notch. Nokia just announced that it will launch a Facebook widget that will enable users of its N97 and N97 mini models to publish their location and status updates direct from their home screen, while also seeing updates from friends. This makes a lot of sense and is a good illustration of the potential of widgets to make mobile multimedia services more compelling and simple to use.

Social networking has the potential to make the mobile Internet as widely used as SMS, but only if it is affordable. Nokia’s so-called “lifecasting” service will initially only be available on two relatively expensive smart phones. Nokia estimates the N97 mini, the cheaper of the two, will sell at retail for 450 euros before taxes and subsidies, when it begins shipping in October. Teenagers and twentysomethings, the most active users of social networks, might balk at that price tag, plus the cost of a flat-rate data plan. Many will be on prepaid tariffs today.

Two weeks ago, Facebook submitted its completely redesigned iPhone application to Apple. Today it was released live in the App Store.

As you may or may not already know, mobile Facebook users, as well as those using geo-location networks such as FourSquare and Loopt, are paving the way for the future of Social Networking.

According to Facebook statistics:

- There are more than 30 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.

- People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are almost 50% more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.

Those numbers are profound indeed.

However, Facebook 3.0 doesn’t represent just another iteration of its already popular mobile app. 3.0 represents the evolution of mobile social networking and a tangible glimpse of the future of personal and professional communications and also the distribution and consumption of media.

Facebook is experimenting with letting users bill their cell phones to buy Facebook Credits for virtual goods.

The social network is teaming with mobile payment company Zong to provide this service, and the credits can be used to purchase virtual goods within Facebook. These credits are normally purchased with credit cards, and they can also be used within Facebook applications to do things like buy extra weapons in games.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman is a senior fellow and director of the Social Computing Lab (SCL) for Hewlett-Packard, which is conducting research into the explosive phenomenon of social networks, and the human interaction with them. That research is being used to produce services and applications for the mobile sector to help users deal with the glut of information that social networks provide in vast quantities. The lab has produced one application for the BlackBerry platform, and another is under development for multiple mobile platforms.

I recently sat down with Huberman, a speaker at our upcoming conference, Mobilize 09, to discuss this research and the products derived for the mobile sector. We talked about how mobile users deal with the massive social networks (Twitter, MySpace and Facebook) and how special technology can leverage it to best effect. An edited version of our conversation is below.

These new reports on the top mobile social networking services in Japan, which I think may be of interest to people/organizations in your network. Without a doubt, all three - mobagetown, GREE and mixi – are doing some incredibly cool things in terms of service design, strategy and business models that are highly relevant to social networking plays, advertisers/brands, agencies, carriers and mobile games studios/publishers trying to figure out the SNS equation on mobile anywhere.

Social networks and mobile phones are a match made in heaven. Om has written previously about how mobile carriers are reaping financial benefits from the growing usage of social networks on cell phones — more people are signing up for data plans to use apps like Facebook. Even Google and T-Mobile have taken notice; the two companies are whipping up ways to make people’s mobile experiences more social. But handset makers and carriers have a long way to go in accomplishing that task, as only 2.3 percent of Europeans visit social networks via their mobile phones, according to a Forrester Research report released today. To boost that percentage, cell phone makers and social networks need to partner to design devices tailored for social networking, Forrester analyst Ian Fogg argues.

German mobile discounter Simyo has created a Facebook fan page in a weird move to connect with consumers. The page, which can be viewed here: http://www.facebook.com/simyoDE, is an attempt by the company to further embrace social media and enable consumers to rate, slate, sing and dance about the mobile discounter.

The Facebook page is the latest knot in the social media strategy which includes a blog, Twitter page, YouTube Channel and online customer care centre.

Now, far be it from us to dismiss a social media strategy but Simyo’s self promotion could be just a tad too much. Indeed in the mobile space a discounter must focus on cost and service to keep consumers loyal and talking – but encouraging users to become “a fan” of a service that they pay for via Facebook seems surreal.

I mean we are not talking Obama here. Or indeed BMW. Politicians need guises for success. BMW makes sexy cars that people desire, so becoming a “fan” is OK. But Simyo?

We love mobile here at the Communities Dominate blog. As mobile telecoms is the fastest-growing of the major global industries (ie those worth 100 Billon dollars or more), I do like to call mobile the "magical money-making machine." But if you are considering getting involved in this, the most lucrative part of the digital revolution, then where to go? Ringing tones or SMS or location-based services or what? I'll tell you what. Look at that part of this industry - the subsector - which is itself growing the fastest. And that is beyond any doubt, mobile social networking.

So its time to take stock of how mobile social networking is doing today. Last year we reported that mobile social networking was the world's fastest-growing billion-dollar business opportunity and various sources reported impressive numbers, like that there were 148 million users (eMarketer 2008) who generated 6 Billion dollars of revenues globally in 2007 (Informa). And many sources are now saying social networking on mobile phones is the first mass-market killer application for 3G mobile telecoms, such as Vodafone, Nokia and T-Mobile have been saying recently.