It's the latest trend that's set to take over our lives and now mobile phones are beginning to make it a whole lot easier to become addicted to interacting with others online in what many are calling the 'Social Networking' era.
Somewhere, somehow you've probably heard of Facebook, Myspace or Bebo. These sites have seen a massive growth in the last year due to the ever-growing online communities and internet users. By setting up a profile on any of these sites you're able to upload photos, update employment details and marital status, as well as many other areas. Your friends are then able to add you and keep up to date with what's going on in your life; never loosing touch and a great way to track down those old friends or colleagues from years ago.
A feature which many sites contain, most commonly on facebook, is that known as a 'status update'; this enables other users or friends in your network to keep up to date on your moods and whereabouts. This is where mobile phones come into play with users logging on to let their friends know that they're off to the latest sold-out music festival or to the local pub quiz.
Cameras on mobile phones have taken advantage of this technology the best with users uploading pictures from their phones directly into their own profiles for everyone else to see, no matter where in the world they are.
Cast your mind back a year, even six months ago, and dependent on the network you were on the data charges were some what costly. This meant that using the internet on our mobiles was hit or miss, not knowing whether we were going to exceed our monthly bundle allowances. Now unlimited packages are available on most networks for as little as ?5 per month, meaning we can interact as much as we like, as well as uploading photo's directly from our phones.
The benefits of social networking for network operators is obvious and over the next few years we are likely to see more networks signing exclusive deals with these sites for our phones to be ready-bundled with this software but where will it go from here?
