I’ve recently found a couple of very interesting mobile platforms, only available in the US, but with the pace that mobile is going it wouldn’t be long before South Africa gets in on the action.

If you’re a business, please do not dismiss this post too quickly.

From msearchgroove.com I’d like to briefly cover three of them.

WHRRL & RUMMBLE: Location enhanced social networking from Whrrl (LBS application) and Rummble (WAP site) give users real-time location information to connect mobile social networking with real life networking (a novel idea!). Users can broadcast and search for friends in their locality as well as post reviews and photos of places they have visited, geotagging them on their site. This functionality is set to take off by utilising the key characteristic of the mobile communication - mobility.

One standout Q&A for me on Whrrl is listed here:

I am a business owner. How do I update the information about my business in Whrrl?

That leads me to Utterz.

UTTERZ: Voice is one of the main propositions of this mobile user generated content offering. Users can match their voice ‘Utterz’ with text and photos by calling a clearing house and Utterz does the rest, autoposting onto sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Although you can manage and edit postings online, there are some usability issues that make mobile account management tricky.

Utterz allows its users to publish audio (voice), video, pictures, text (blog) to their Utterz account. These can then be fed to just about any social networking site available such as Facebook, MySpace, Livejournal, Blogger etc.

Their tagline epitomises their service offering: Mobile post voice, video, picture, and text mashups right to your page. Evolve. Be Herd.

Smart Businesses keep a pulse on social and corporate trends. In some of my clients’ case, I am that person. What is overwhelming is possibly the vast amounts of mobile social networks that keeps popping up. Here in South Africa we have the now much discussed “the Grid” from Vodacom, Mxit and in all probability a host of new ones in the not too distant future.

A couple of things I would encourage businesses to keep in mind are:

1. Your target audience spends time on social networking sites during office hours.

2. Your target audience accesses these sites via their mobile phones after hours.

3. Regardless of the amounts of mobile platforms popping up, your target audience will find one (or more) to their liking and spend considerable amounts of time on them (their mobiles)

4. I call it your target audience because they are just that. It is not only 16 year olds that use their mobile phones to its capacity. The sooner businesses get that, the better.

5. Mobile marketing is not as expensive as you think. Just ask.

The list goes on, you can always add to this in the comment section.

[Note, I hope Agent Craig could shed some light on the parallel these applications draw with the Grid]