Faisal Farooqui, CEO of Mouthshut.com feels that for social networking, the time has come, at least in markets where Internet penetration is high, and this is the right time to start this business. Kids today are growing up with the mobile phone, and any strategy will have to be based around them. They’ve been sharing photos, forwarding videos, and sharing content through Bluetooth. Social media is just a name that they’ve given to it in the last five years. The current generation is rebellious, and they don’t want to depend on the operator to access content. The users are the publishers and the consumers. They want to be stars, and want to be admired. The killer application is going to come from them. Revenue models will evolve. He mentioned cyworld.com, YouTube’s relationship with Cingular, and his company Mouthshut.com’s collection of user generated-point-of-sales information as cases of successful monetization of user generated content (UGC).
Sanjay Goyal, CEO of ACL Wireless feels that one needs the right medium for a community, and GPRS is it; even 3G isn’t necessary. Access will have to be priced right, and need to be cross-carrier. He also feels that content management is needed, to be made socially acceptable; it needs to be kept clean and moderated, as do mobile communities. He believes the business model is in profiling, and them monetizing once a critical mass is reached. There might be a business model in an advertising ecosystem. Gopal Krishna, COO of Handygo.com, moderating this session wondered about the rights to content and control mechanisms
I don’t think communities grow and sustain whilst being moderated (except when it comes to pornography and profanities) – Social Media is about freedom of expression, and any heavily moderated community is not likely to grow; moderation can come in at a later stage, when there are enough users already firmly entrenched. Even then, the community can see a mass exodus if users feel that their freedom is being curtailed.