The Social Networking Weblog

Sp, everyone knows Helio sold its soul to myspace to get into every teenager's pants. I love their absolutely retarded commercial with the "hip" girls saying, "It's only like $50 bucks a month, which is good, cause…". Since when is a $600/year expenditure a cheap one for the average teenager?

Anyway, there's more problems than just their pricing. Shawn Conahan, one of the guys behind Intercasting Corp, a mobile social software company, has written a tell all about the Helio Myspace deal. Of course, he's not privy to the insider details. But, he knows the industry and he has a BIG reason to stay on top of this. Here's his conclusion:

Helio isn't sure what it is, and it certainly doesn't know what consumers think it is. Their only way up is to listen to the market and evolve quickly. Amp'd learned this lesson and made some drastic changes. Boost started as an "extreme sports" MVNO but listened to the market and now is as much about hip hop culture as it is about other key lifestyle verticals. Rather than telling the market they are not a phone company, they will soon find out that the market will tell them what they want. Helio's job is to then pander to those consumers. I don't think anyone was telling them they wanted MySpace on their phones. If asked, the likely response would be, "MySpace on my phone would be great," but nobody was saying, "I will switch to your carrier to get MySpace."

The average consumer views their mobile service provider as they do their ISP: "There is no reason to switch if I am getting decent service because they all do pretty much the same thing." No matter what ISP you use, you can get to MySpace, and that's the way it should be. You can also get to the social networking site of your choosing, which should be more important to network operators who can learn from Helio's mistake: Nobody wants MySpace mobile enough to switch carriers, but they do want MySpace mobile enough to use it on their existing carrier. Consumers will decide what they want, and they want access to a bunch of sites similar to MySpace. Find a way to provide them access to what they want rather than what you think they want and you win.

If I were myspace, I wouldn't be too worried about this. Myspace has quite a bit of an incentive to own the mobile relationship with its clients. Of course, Helio probably would've got them on the device quicker, if it were adopted. But, Myspace, like all the other internet players, are probably better staying focused on content and applications, not starting an MVNO.

• The Gadgets Weblog: Helio will feature a MySpace cellphone
• Weblogs Similar To Myspace
• MySpace and Facebook Rivals are Growing
• Did myspace make the right move into mobile?
• Myspace as MVNO
• Helio Blowin It

~admin

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