$52 Billion From Mobile Social Networks in Next 4 Years
Thanks to Alec Saunders who points out a press release posted on the Cellular-News website. The press release states that mobile social networks will account for $52 billion in revenue by 2012 given the high growth scenario. How did they come up with these numbers? Well if you take 30-50% CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) multiply that by seventeen divide by twelve, throw that number into the mobile social network growth calculation formula you will end up with a bazillion dollars.
Well maybe not a bazillion but you get the idea. According to the post, mobile social networking has reached critical mass and Japan is poised to explode in the U.S. This will be a follow-up to the attack of the killer bees that will begin by killing off most of Texas sometime later this year. Toward the end of the press release it is stated that much of the growth will be dependent on mobile network operator policies.
There is no doubt that mobile social networks will be big in the coming years but the amount of money to be generated by them is still questionable. Not even web based social networks have come up with effective revenue models. MySpace, the largest social network on the web, made less than one billion dollars last year. Facebook brought in approximately $150 million in revenue last year and is expected to reach over $325 million by the end of this year. So how did they come up with $52 billion from mobile social networks?
