MocoSpace

The other day Justin Siegel of JNJ Mobile shared that MocoSpace has just gotten a facelift. My test drive of this social software raised a few questions which Justin kindly answered and I decided to publish them here.

The first thing that intrigued me was the added value for MocoSpace mobile\web users, having other MoSoSo in the mobile neighborhood:

Justin: Today, there are no sites that offer people the combination of communication, self-expression & content sharing available on MocoSpace. The added value for MocoSpace users is that with MocoSpace they can now enjoy the benefits of finding friends (chat, browse profiles), staying connected to them (mobile email, messaging, guestbook), self-expression (personalized profiles, blogs, favorites, photos, videos, etc.), and content sharing (photos, videos, blogs, wallpapers, etc.) all on 1 great site available from virtually any device including mobile phones, smart phones, and personal computers. 

At MocoSpace, we think that it's crucial to incorporate several "best practices", which include

• safety features that allow members to protect themselves and allow site admins to monitor and address abuse issues
• a design that facilitates navigation and minimizes clicks
• broad handset support (wap 1.0, 2.0, xhtml)
• free and premium service options
• privacy levels for members
• customer support & help sections

MocoSpace’s competitors come mainly from 3 distinct areas. First there are the Web content competitors, ie MySpace, Youtube, Facebook, etc. These are sites with lots of content and big existing social networks. Second are the Web communication competitors MSN, Yahoo & Google.  These companies will continue to roll out mobile offerings that cover email, chat, and IM. Third, are the early mobile competition primarily led by WAP chat sites such as AirG and Jumbuck.

Regarding MocoSpace’s placement at the MoSoSo market:

Justin: MocoSpace is in an excellent position in the MoSoSo market thanks to the strength of its product offering and also its location, i.e. North America. In the US, unlike Asia for example, there are not many if any players really taking aim today at what we are doing in terms of breadth and depth of their offering. Some companies are offering photo sharing or chat, but none are offering a product that truly combines the notions of connectivity, communication, and content they way MocoSpace is today.

And some thoughts about the future:

Justin: MocoSpace will continue to enhance its existing features to further enable communication as well as content sharing & creation. Without giving away too much about our product roadmap, I would suggest that our next area of focus will be music.

Mososo is such a broad term that covers so much ground, it's practically impossible to try to predict it's future because the "it" is vague and continually changing. That said, the future of this category of sites and services is going to be huge, it's going to be ad supported, and it's going to obliterate the remnants of operators' walled gardens. I think it will take the idea of connectivity to a new level in terms of people always feeling plugged in to their friends, peer groups, etc. I'm not a big fan of the pursuit of the "killer app" beyond voice and email. However, I do think that MoSoSo is probably the closest we've come to a killer category. I sure hope our evolution as an industry didn't peak with Crazy Frog!

Comments

[Hubert Hefner]

I don't know if you guys are connected to mocospace and know these guys. I am part of a community called zedge at zedge.net and it's much bigger than mocospace. I also took a look at mocospace and the "facelift" you are talking about looks EXACTLY LIKE ZEDGE!!!! It is an exact copy of zedge!!! Why bother with a copy when you can get the real thing? :)