Mobile Computing and Social Networks

Assignment 7, CIS 500

Term Paper: Mobile Computing and Social Networks

Introduction

Over the past two decades, mobile operators have been privy to increasingly detailed information about their users. Aside from people who buy prepaid service with cash, mobile operators have always known the identity and location of customers. Now, thanks to big advances in the capabilities of mobile devices and the sophistication of applications and services, mobile users are leaving ever more wireless footprints all over the place.

Credit the arrival of the true mobile Internet. With capabilities such as location-based services, wireless social networking, and pay-by-mobile for travel, ticketing, and myriad other transactions, mobile operators today have the means to establish a fairly complete profile of their subscribers. With no networks to maintain and no geographical constraints, Internet companies can deliver services to a huge number of users at low cost, while increasingly targeting mobile customers with new services. Thanks to the Internet, they automatically become de facto global players, regardless of their actual size or value. There are already hundreds of thousands of such service providers fighting for the attention of Internet users—and increasingly, of mobile users, includes Google (GOOG) and its YouTube unit, Twitter, and streaming music service Spotify

(Nordstrom).

Assess the effectiveness and efficiency mobile-based applications provide to capture geolocation data and customer data, and quickly upload to a processing server without users having to use a desktop system.

Availability of uploading data on the spot via mobile devices provides companies with unlimited flexibility and increases speed of business processes.

A recent survey of marketers by Association of National Advertisers (ANA), found that mobile is the new marketing focus. 17% of survey respondents reported that this was their first year using mobile, and another 17% planned to...