Vodafone's Social Connections

The wireless giant is in talks to give its customers access to social-networking services with their phones

Wireless-phone giant Vodafone (VOD) will let customers use their mobile phones to gain access to online social networking services, BusinessWeek.com has learned. The British company is in talks with a number of social-networking sites, and expects deals to be completed during the first quarter of 2007.

Social networking sites such as MySpace (a unit of News Corp. (NWS)) and Facebook have become a primary communications platform for millions of younger people around the world. They use these sites to create home pages loaded with blogs, photos, music, message boards, video, and more. MySpace, for example, is the second busiest site on the Web, after Yahoo! (YHOO), according to market researcher comScore Networks (see BusinessWeek.com, 7/21/06, "The MySpace Ecosystem").

That same audience is equally attached to its cell phones. Millions of younger people live without a traditional landline, or use it mostly as a fast Internet connection. As a result, the convergence of social networking and the mobile phone is all but inevitable. "The time has come for us to offer social-networking services," says Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin. He declined to identify which service Vodafone was talking to, or whether one or more partnerships were expected.

Tight with MySpace

Mobile-phone companies have stepped tentatively into social networking. Cingular, which is owned by AT&T (T) and BellSouth (BLS), struck a deal with MySpace earlier this year. Both companies will send customers a text message letting them know when people post messages to their MySpace pages, but users can't access MySpace itself with their phone.

Mobile-phone startup Helio has a much more extensive relationship with MySpace, but Helio is still a niche player. Helio customers use special phones that allow them to access a mobile version of MySpace with the touch of a button (see BusinessWeek.com, 5/30/2006, "Social Networking Goes Mobile").

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