02 & MySpace

Thomas Husson | October 04, 2007, 03:32 AM

Sounds like the exclusive agreement between MySpace and Vodafone is now over, since O2 UK just announced that 02 customers would enjoy a free access to MySpace for November and December 2007.

It makes sense for Newscorp to try to reach the widest audience possible. A free access is the best way to get users try the service, get accustomed to it and then leverage the opportunity to sell the brand new 02 Web Bolt on (a data package with a fair-use policy capped at 200MB for GBP 7.5). It is a very good news to see that the industry is slightly moving to a "try before you buy" experience instead of the until-now prevalent rule "buy before you try". The mobile experience is still not good enough to ask a premium to access content on top of the data charges, all the more if customers are used to access the same content for free on their PCs.

Cyworld, Go Fresh, BuzzCity, Facebook, Hyves, Bebo, Loopt, Plazes, Dodgeball, Twitter, Jaiku among others have very different approaches and face different issues, but they are all part of the nascent mobile social networking phenomenon.

Clients, if you want to know more about online social networking sites moving into the mobile space, click here, we have just published a new report on this hot topic.