Reuters reports the announcement coming today:
Cingular, the largest U.S. wireless phone carrier, will offer a version of popular social-networking site MySpace.com on its phones in an expansion of their partnership, the companies plan to announce on Monday.
For an additional $2.99 a month, customers will be able to upload photos taken on cell phones, read and respond to MySpace e-mail, update blog entries and view and search for friends from their handsets.
Media and other entertainment services are expected to be a major area of growth for the wireless and media industries, analysts have said.
MySpace, one of the fastest-growing Internet services with more than 130 million user profiles, is also offered on cell phone service carrier Helio. But Cingular’s version will be more expansive, MySpace said.
MySpace video is implicated here; but social networking on mobile devices and one-to-many texting will potentially be widely used services and could create alternatives to directory assistance and mobile search in certain cases (depending on the apps themselves and how the networks develop).
Here’s an earlier post along those lines. There’s also a strong demographic dimension to these use cases too.
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Greg Sterling is the founding principal of Sterling Market Intelligence, a consulting and research firm focused on online consumer and advertiser behavior and the relationship between the Internet and traditional media, with an emphasis on the local marketplace.
