More People Using Phones for Social Networking

There's no doubt that social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are becoming more and more popular, but the way people access these sites is changing. In January, over 10% of smartphone users accessed a social networking site with their phones; that's over 5% more than January 2009.

That means that during that month, one in three smartphone users accessed a social networking website with their mobile browsers. According to ComScore, a web metrics firm, Facebook saw a 112% increase in mobile web suers, while Twitter saw a whopping 347% increase. Because the numbers came from the users who access the websites through their mobile web browser, it did not include the almost six million users who mobile applications to access these websites.

Mark Donovan, the senior VP of mobile at ComScore, said in a statement, "Social networking remains one of the most popular and fastest-growing behaviors on both the PC-based Internet and the mobile Web. Social media is a natural sweet spot for mobile since mobile devices are at the center of how people communicate with their circle of friends, whether by phone, text, email, or, increasingly, accessing social networking sites via a mobile browser."

Despite the overwhelming increase in Twitter users, Facebook still reigns as the most popular social networking site. Facebook more than doubled MySpace with its 25 million mobile browser users in January. Twitter saw 4.7 million mobile web users. And not only is social networking on smartphones seeing an increase, more and more people are using smartphones to access the web in general. At the end of 2009, 17% of mobile phone users were using smartphones, vs 11% at the end of 2008.

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A Mood-Based App for Your iPhone

How many iPhone apps can they come up with? Well here’s a new one! As if status updates weren’t enough to inform your friend how depressed, ecstatic, infuriated, or bored you were, you can now let them know exactly what you are in the mood for.

Moodspin is a social-networking add-on that has just been endorsed by the iPhone App Store. Currently you are only able to use Moodspin through Twitter, but through it you are given the capabilities to broadcast exactly how you feel to everyone that follows you.

To make Moodspin even better, it is not just text that appears when you set your mood but a mood-related emoticon is added to your photo. This allows people to see how you feel no matter what it is that you just tweeted about.

So the big question about this app would be…is it useful at all? Honestly, not really, but it doesn’t have to be useful for you to enjoy it. It is interesting how Moodspin will track your moods. Every time that you update your mood status it will be charted on a timeline. This can show others what you have been up to throughout the day if you wish to display such information. You can easily compare and contrast your mood graph with your friends or everyone else on Moodspin.

Moodspin is relatively easy to use on your iPhone. You simply select your in mood in three taps and it instantly becomes a personalized Twitter update. It also will tack on a URL that can lead others to your Moodspin profile so they can view your moods in the past 24 hours.

Supposedly sometime this month Moodspin will update to also allow Facebook users to access their service. This way you can include your mood right along side your status.

So no this isn’t the most incredible app for your iPhone, but for those that obsess over social-networking sites this could be an app that can add some flair to your constant tweets and updates.