8th
Twitter client mobile distribution
Quite a few of the top 100 Twitter clients are mobile:
6. txt
7. TwitterFon (iPhone client)
9. Mobile web
With the popularity of Twitter’s SMS feature and iPhone clients it seems like it’s one of the only social networks to be popular on phones. However, Facebook has pushed m.facebook.com, and their iPhone client is excellent.
There are stats on Facebook Insider about mobile access. The iPhone client is currently at #13 on the App Store. The MySpace client is also apparently very popular.
So with the big social networks clearly popular on mobiles, what’s happening with social networks that specifically target phones? Last May ReadWriteWeb featured an article on mobile social networks, and it still seems like most of them are in business. Brightkite has healthy alexa stats.
With Google Latitude and strong mobile support from Twitter, MySpace and Facebook, is there a future for mobile-specific networks? I think it’s highly likely that developers will focus on clients and supporting services instead, so there will be rich innovation in clients and less alternative networks. Just take a look at the number of iPhone and Blackberry Twitter clients, not to mention alternative Twitter mobile web clients like dabr and Hahlo.
