Anyone who’s been reading this blog for more than a few months knows I’m bullish on mobile social networking.

The space is wide open at this point – no one has created an application that has gotten enough traction to go mainstream. That’s partly because of tech limitations – browser based networks don’t leverage the power of the mobile device, and client based applications are blocked by service providers and handset limitations.

But it’s coming. A few years from now we’ll use our mobile devices to help us remember details of people we know, but not well. And it will help us meet new people for dating, business and friendship. Imagine walking into a meeting, classroom, party, bar, subway station, airplane, etc. and seeing profile information about other people in the area, depending on privacy settings. Picture, name, dating status, resume information, etc. The information that is available would be relevant to the setting – quick LinkedIn-type information for a business meeting v. Facebook dating status for a bar.

That requires a social network that has presence, location and contextual information about you. It needs to know where you are (via GPS or triangulation), if you are in business or personal mode, and similar information for the people around you. It also needs, at a basic level, the ability to sort and browse the people around you based on their picture and name, and what they are looking for (dating, investments, job, friendship). Once this network is established, you’ll know everyone’s name who’s around you (if they choose to share it), and enough basic information to jog your memory if you know them, or meet them if there’s mutual interest. Poking someone on Facebook is great, but “poking” them when you’re in the same bar as them can result in much more immediate social gratification.

The mobile social network that wins will go way beyond, say, Facebook’s iPhone site, which doesn’t leverage location information, or help you meet people around you.

So when mobile social network startups reach out to us, we give them a lot of attention. I waded through a bunch of them in September 2007, and followed up with a look at LimeJuice in December.

Frankly, MySpace and Facebook could lock up this space simply by focusing on it, but as far as I can tell from discussions with execs at both companies, they’re more focused on each other than in dominating the mobile space. That creates an incredible vacuum for a startup.

Start With The iPhone

In February I wrote a post called “Will There Be A (Successful) iPhone-Only Social Network?” and presented an argument that the iPhone SDK presented a compelling opportunity to launch a mobile social network while avoiding the chicken and egg problem that any new network, and particularly a mobile network, would encounter. iPhone penetration in Silicon Valley, and among early adopters, is so high that the application could spread virally among those communities. As the network gains traction, it could expand to Google’s Android platform and grow from there.

iPhone users are the perfect group to launch the network to. They’re passionate and elitist, and will like the idea of being in an iPhone-only club. Go to a party and see a picture and first name of everyone there who’s holding an iPhone – then meet them and add them as friends. Then, once mutual friendship is established, see those people wherever they are in the world, along with presence information telling you what they’re thinking, or up to.

I believe in the idea so much that I explored putting together a team to build a basic network on top of the iPhone SDK. But I abandoned that idea last week when I saw a live demo, on the iPhone, of an upcoming social network that does everything I called for in that February post.

It’s Coming

The startup behind the new application won’t let me disclose their name yet. But the application is awesome. It shows you everyone around you who has it installed on an iPhone (default privacy is set to off, but can be changed). Users can scroll through nearby users, and set filters for men, women or age ranges. If you find someone interesting you can pull up their profile and ping them. If they respond you can start a chat, on the phone or in person. Of course, they can also choose to block you.

Location is based on the triangulation feature of the iPhone, which is accurate enough to get this going. And the startup thinks they’ve found a way around the fact that third party iPhone applications can’t run in the background (meaning you’d have to have the application open, and not use any other iPhone features, to run the social network and see others). They explained the work around in general terms to me, but asked that it remain confidential for now.

As I said, I saw the app running on an iPhone and even the early prototype left me speechless. It will, I believe, prove to be very popular, and very valuable.

The image shows a mockup of the functionality I saw working live on the phone (I should be able to show a photo or video of it running in the next week or two as well). Look for a launch when the iPhone app store opens this summer.

Credit for that awesome image at top of post is to Hank Grebe at MediaSpin.

iPhone owners, like users of most Apple products, are a fairly passionate, elitist group of people.

I think an iPhone-only social network, if it had the right features, would be a huge hit with these users. Actually, I think any mobile social network would be a big hit, if it had presence awareness and was able to tell you both where your friends are and what they are up to. And also let you meet new people around you who were open to it.

I wrote about some of the early experiments with mobile social networks last September (see our more recent coverage of LimeJuice as well). The big social networks, of course, aren’t ignoring mobile, either. But even Facebook’s iPhone app is just the desktop version optimized for that phone. It doesn’t leverage the device itself to tell you when friends are close.

The goal here isn’t just to let users see where their friends are and what they are up to. The killer app is to facilitate meeting new people – either for dating (see a picture of everyone around you who’s single and looking, along with their basic bio), or business (see the professional bio and picture of everyone at the cocktail party). Subject to privacy controls, of course.

Once a network has critical mass users will, depending on privacy settings, be able to walk into any gathering and see information on the people in the room. Whoever gets there first will have a far more valuable asset than the existing networks at MySpace and Facebook today. Social networks are about being social. And social implies being around other people. The device they have with them when they’re doing that, and which can enhance those social gatherings, is their mobile phone. The key to doing that is through GPS or cell phone triangulation (which the iPhone now has).

None of the mobile social networks we’ve covered have even come close to establishing a critical mass. The key to winning is getting users on devices that have GPS or triangulation for presence and location, and having software on the phone instead of just accessing it from a website. Getting java apps on phones in Europe is much easier than in the U.S., which is why most of the mobile social network startups are located there.

The iPhone, though, has both. Or rather, soon will have both (the SDK to allow third party apps on the phone may have been delayed). As soon as that SDK is released, look for a flurry of third party applications to try and create a social network on the iPhone.

The front runners will be Facebook and MySpace, who, I assume, will get their users to install software on the phone as quickly as possible and try to add location information for users who choose to share it.

But new startups will try as well. And one way to differentiate themselves may be to offer a social network that is open only to iPhone users, and no one else. The exclusivity factor may be exactly what will draw enough iPhone users to kick start the service.

Fon11 – Giving It A Shot

Berkeley-based Fon11 is one startup that we’re tracking that plans to do this. The service works already through the web browser on the iPhone. In fact, you have to use it from an iPhone – it’s the only way you can register for an account, add friends or do anything else. The website, when accessed from any where but an iPhone, just shows information about the service (note – that isn’t entirely true – you can go to testiphone.com and enter fon11.com/home and see it just like it would appear on the iPhone – but only from the Safari browser).

The service is fairly limited right now to setting presence/status information. They can’t use the iPhone triangulation feature, so they set up a separate service called OpenLandmark to let people set their location information (it works well for places you visit frequently). The service caught the eye of the iPhone team, who made it a Staff Pick earlier this month.

Blackberry has a true GPS and allows third party apps on their phone. And Google’s Android will also do all of this as well. But something tells me that iPhone users might be the first group of people to jump on mobile social networks, and wouldn’t mind letting other iPhone users in the room know they’re part of the cult.

Update: Must-read discussion of this post here.