Communications

Community applications in Asia

I'm continually surprised how insular people can be, even those of us who think we're globally connected because we use the Internet. Recently I’ve written on various social networking subjects and a few weeks ago I spoke on the subject at VON, so I’ve been getting feedback and having discussions with people all over the world.

If I'm talking to another American, it's a safe bet they've heard of MySpace and, if they follow social networking applications, Facebook, Friendster or LinkedIn.  But few if any have heard of CyWorld, the largest social network in Korea, where over 30% of all Koreans (90% of teenagers) have a “mini-hompy” or homepage.

When the discussion turns to instant messaging, Americans and Europeans have heard of AOL Instant Messenger, MSN, Yahoo and Skype.  But few have heard of QQ from Tencent.  QQ is the largest instant messenger in China and, with nearly 500 million registered users appears to be the largest instant messaging community on the planet.

The Internet is global, it’s wonderful and it has vastly increased the flow of information, but we’re far from overcoming our islands of language and culture.

 

Walled Gardens - not the best way to make money

I've been discussing the evolution of our Mobile Applications business with operators in the US and the EU.  A key issue in most conversations is how the operator will maintain control of their customers.  This is very different than the approach in Japan or China.

In Japan, NTT DoCoMo is famous for the success of their i-mode service, but for i-mode they chose to enlist partners -- tens of thousands of partners.  DoCoMo gets 100 % of the transport revenue, but only takes 11% of the value-added service revenue (in exchange for billing) while their partners get to keep 89%.

A similar scheme exists in China, where most value-added services are hosted by external service providers and the mobile operators focus on transport and billing.  Recently a well connected analyst, who virtually commutes between China and the US, told me Chinese 3rd party value-added services are now a $800M industry.

China and Japan are extremely different -- different cultures, different demographics, different business climates.  But in both cases their mobile operators have chosen to open up their networks to as many 3rd parties as possible, with significant positive impact!  DoCoMo leads Europe and US operators in data revenues. I don't have reliable numbers for data revenues in China, but mobile data usage is soaring.

In recent years, most breakthrough mobile applications start in Asia.  Why haven't US & EU operators noticed Asian business models?

 

CTIA Las Vegas

Tuesday evening, after F2C, I'm flying to Las Vegas for the CTIA Wireless 2006, the biggest US mobile conference.  I fairly booked on Wednesday, but have some time on Thursday and Friday.  If you'll be there and want to meet, send me an email.

Freedom to Connect

I'll be in Washington DC on Monday & Tuesday next week to attend David Isenberg's Freedom to Connect 2006 conference, this year a joint venture of David's isen.com and PulverMedia of VON conference fame. There are a ton of interesting people on the schedule and, based on last year's conference, there will be plenty of interesting people in the audience as well.
From the conference home page:

The future of telecommunications starts now; there's a new U.S. Telecom Bill in the works, there's new networks in Europe, fast fiber in Asia, wireless across Africa and networks a-building in cities and villages around the world. Join the discussion.  Shape the debate. Assert your F2C:Freedom to Connect.

This is a US-centric conference, driven by frustrations with US policy and the fact that, while US broadband adoption has been fast (even more rapid than cell phone adoption), the US is still falling behind other nations in broadband connections, connection speeds and costs.

Of course it's public policy, so there's lots of politics and lots of muddle.  Fundamentally, there are two topics, which should be independent: 

• transport layer connectivity, commonly referred to as "broadband access"
  
• freedom to communicate electronically, a generalization of "freedom of speech"

Unfortunately, most US residents connect to the Internet using a service from a monopoly or duopoly provider, and recently, these providers have been making scary noises about content-based charging, so the two othewise independent topics become mixed and a muddle ensues.  At a very minimum, the telecom monopolist has an interest is being your only viable voice telephony service provider and the cable company in being your only TV-provider.  When these two compete for both telephony and TV, we move from two monopolists to a duopoly. But that's not much comfort for those of us seeking pure Internet connectivity.  15 Mbps?  100 Mbps?  1Gbps?  More, more, just bring it on!

Net Neutrality - No
Many people see the problem.  Quite a few, otherwise savvy, people think the answer lies in more regulation -- in Net Neutrality laws (here's one proposal) or regulations. Luckily Martin Geddes is on the program. He's a sharp cookie who should adequately kibosh the idea. And in the afternoon, there's a panel Muni Tsunami which will address one way around the problem.  But I worry that no one will actually discuss the root cause of our connectivity dilemma.

Layer Zero
Today the relevant monopoly and the only "natural monopoly" is at Layer Zero -- the physical right-of-way in front of our homes and businesses.  Everything else, copper pairs, coax, fiber, is a government granted monopoly that made sense in it's day, but no more. Yes, I've heard the argument that fiber is a natural monopoly, but that argument is based on the assumption that only services are allowed.  If fiber ownership (e.g. condominium fiber) is an option, or dark fiber in any form, the fiber-is-a-natural-monopoly argument falls to pieces.  Many people would still chose a service provider, but the ownership option would drive enormous competition. While he doesn't talk about Layer Zero competition, Bill St. Arnaud of the Canarie Project in Canada is the most articulate spokesman for condo fiber and customer-owned fiber.  Unfortunately, I don't see Bill on the agenda.  Perhaps I'll have a chance to make the point by careful questions during a Q&A.

India vs. Pakistan - A Telecoms Comparison

Recently I had occasion to look for up-to-date mobile subscriber figures for several countries including India and Pakistan. I've separately looked at and written about their telecom markets before, e.g. here & here, leveraging information from public sources and advice and comments from Indian and Pakistani friends. But I had never put to two side-by-side.

India should pay attention.  Pakistan has figured out a winning formula.

Population data from the CIA World Factbook.

 

	Population (in Millions)	Growth Rate	Median Age
India	1,080	1.1%	24.7
Pakistan	162	4.3%	19.6

Pakistan’s mobile market lagged India’s through 2004, but here are recent (14–18 months) numbers and calculated growth rates based on data from RCR Wireless (2004) and the respective regulators (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India [for Feb06] and Pakistan Telecommunications Authority [for Jan06]).

 

	Millions of Mobile Subs	Mobile Teledensity	Growth Rate
India	84.9	7.9	48%
Pakistan	23.1	14.3	332%

So what’s up?

As I commented about Pakistan’s mobile market back in December,

…real changes happened in 2004.  First, in April the government granted two more licenses < thus six competitors>.  Telenor won one of those licenses, built a network and launched services in February 2005.  Warid won the other, launching services in April 2005.  Second, in June 2004 the government abolished the remaining restrictions on foreign direct investment permitting foreign investors to retain 100% equity in their investments.  And third, they dropped the activation tax to Rs. 500 (~ $ 8) <from Rs. 5000 in 2001>.

I’m an outsider, an American with neither Indian nor Pakistani ancestors, but I want to see everyone on the planet with a mobile phone — as soon as possible.  This can only happen if developing countries stop inhibiting telecommunication growth.  The formula is pretty clear:

1. Foster real competition – more than four competitors everywhere in the country.
2. Foster foreign investment — eliminate all restrictions on foreign direct investment in telecom.
3. Reduce taxes — eliminate all telecom-specific taxes.

Pakistan made big advances on all three points in 2004, and look at the results.  India please take note.

 

APIs for BT's 21st Century Network (not)

For a few moments, I thought British Telecom had recognized the value of open APIs and 3rd party developers...

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a breakfast event at the British Consulate Boston (actually located in Cambridge Massachusetts, with beautiful views of Boston) where Paul Excell, Chief of Operations for BT's Technology Office spoke on BT's much touted 21st Century Network (21CN). He was followed by Malcolm Burwell of TTPCom, a panel discussion and questions from the floor, but most of the attention was to 21CN.

I already knew the cost justifications for 21CN and had seen slides for earlier talks. In my mind, it was all about complexity. As this view shows, BTU would go from 6+ networks and 1500 buildings to one converged (dare I say, IMS?) network and only 100 buildings.

But yesterday Paul Excell skimmed over the cost savings and instead focused on the wealth of new services that would become available on 21CN.  More than that, he suggested we would see the richness of Internet applications becoming available on 21CN.

Eventually I got to ask:  what APIs will be available?  and will BT open them up to 3rd parties the way Internet companies (Google, eBay, Amazon, Skype, ...) do?

Reasonable questions, particularly as I'd just read this recent comment by Marc Canter:  "Did you know that 45% of all of eBay’s listings come in through their APIs?"

Paul Excell's answers (paraphrased, but representative):

1. there will be rich APIs, like Parley.  (If you are not familiar with Parley, it's the ultimate API for telephony services on the Intelligent Network, i.e. it's far removed from Internet or Web 2.0 applications).
2. BT has a brand image of quality and reliability, so they need to ensure that applications work together.   (My translation:  very large 3rd parties may approach BT and negotiate for access to their APIs).

Wow!  Nice hype, but they're still clueless...

Watch this Telecom Italia commercial

Mobile Pundit VeerChand Bothra points to a truly moving 60-second spot on the power of modern communications.

It won an Epica (a premier European creative award) in 2004, but techie that I am, I missed it at the time.

Thank you, VeerChand. Thank you, Telecom Italia.

Telecom Impact on Per-Capita GDP

My presentation at VON was focused on availability (aka presence) and contextually-aware communications, but I did begin with a brief mention of subjects I'm passionate about and I ended with my typical closing comments about telecommunications:
1) telecom is good for mankind (more productive than other kinds of infrastructure investment),
2) the underlying technology is improving exponentially (& thus is fascinating for geeks!),
3) 6.5B people but only 2B mobiles ,
This is an enormous opportunity. Have fun, while helping mankind and making money.

Apparently this struck a chord with several people who came up to me afterwards asking about how they could help the spread of telecom to developing countries and did I have references for my statements about telecom is good for mankind?  The answer to the latter is yes!  Even better I wrote up those references just last week in a comment to an article on Teledesity and GDP in Atanu Dey's blog.  Here's what I wrote:

In the case of teledensity and GDP growth, there’s actually been quite a bit of work by economists trying to tease out what is causation and what is merely correlation. Yes, it’s a difficult problem. On the other hand, there are decades of data across more than 100 countries—countries which introduced different political, legal and economic regimes at different points in time. So it turns out there is a basis on which to attempt to determine the impact of telecom and other kinds of infrastructure investments and, over the past decade or so, multiple economists have published on this subject.

A 1999 World Bank policy research working paper entitled Infrastructure’s Contribution to Aggregate Output by David Canning examines the contributions of different factors of production to aggregate output looking at 57 countries over the period 1960-1990. As I commented here last August, Canning found a large productivity benefit to investment in telecom—larger than investments in roads, electricity or even education!

Canning’s work was on pre-mobile phone data. More recently, Leonard Waverman, Meloria Meschi, Melvyn Fuss in their paper, The impact of telecoms on economic growth in developing countries, examine 38 developing countries for which full data was available for the period 1996-2003. The short summary, “There are increasing returns to the endowment of telecoms capital (as measured by the telecoms penetration rate).”

A second post in my blog last October has the full references as well as pointers to popularizations of this academic work published in The Economist (UK, subscription required), related material on the Vodafone website, and regulatory policy work by Wallenstien.

To restate the concluding words of my October post, none of this is to downplay the developing world’s need for clean water, public health initiatives and access to medical care, but if there is one area where capital investment provides out-sized returns for individuals and nations, it’s mobile telecom. And this is one area where developing nations can easily attract outside capital investment with regulatory policies that favor open access, competition and foreign investment.

My presentation at VON

Here is the slide deck for my "Industry Perspective" presentation at VON yesterday, Mutual Disruption:  IM/ Presence Meets the Mobile Phone.

Download mutual_disruption_im-presence_meets_the_mobile_phone_v3.ppt

When Carl Ford interviewed me for a podcast the week before VON, he was surprised to see I wasn't talking about Layer Zero Competition, my topic at the last two VON conferences. So, before diving into my discussion of communities, contextually-aware communications and mobile phones, I briefly mentioned three of my passions:

1. Layer zero competition
2. The next 4-5 billion subscribers
3. VoIP disruption of telephony

and I didn't even mention video...

VoIP disruption is not a surprising topic. It's been a recurring theme for me.  The first time I spoke at a VON conference was in 1996 and my topic was wideband audio.  I had organized an IP-PBX panel and used my position as moderator to advocate wideband audio rather than "toll quality speech," i.e. don't struggle to duplicate the PSTN, use IP communications to do better!

Some of the points in this presentation are:

• With a few exceptions, most VoIP service providers are still thinking like telecom engineers, not focusing what the user is trying to do, i.e. connect with another person in a fashion appropriate to what the user is trying to accomplish and what the other party is available for.
• Presence is the wrong word.  What we mean is availability, with contextual qualifications.  My mobile phone is always with me, always on, but I may not take your call !
• Mobile phones are more important than desk sets.  Indeed, mobile has done a better job of addressing user interests than VoIP has so far. (And, mobile has been far more widely adopted than VoIP).  Even more significant, in developing countries mobiles far exceed PCs with Internet connections. Finally, Asia leads in mobile innovation, so US & EU folks need to pay attention to Asia.
• Person-to-person communications is the biggest opportunity (bigger than content sales and most other "data applications"), but it's centered around communities. Individuals participate in multiple communities, so there is no way a walled garden operator can serve all their customers' communities.
• Communities in Asia are equally available on Web & WAP.  I have some views of my WEB and WAP home pages on 12wap.net (in Singapore).
• Recently the GSM Association announced ubiquitous interoperability for presence on mobile phones. If they succeed with this initiative, it could represent a significant threat to AIM, Yahoo and MSN Messenger.

I closed by suggesting there was an enormous opportunity, in the next 18 months, to create the best combination of communities, availability, Web 2.0 and mobile phones.

Reverse engineering Skype

In the Peer-to-Peer SIP session at the VON conference on Wednesday afternoon, Henning Schulzrinne mentioned the existence of this really interesting presentation that was given by Philippe BIONDI & Fabrice DESCLAUX at the recent Blackhat Europe conference in Amsterdam March 2nd & 3rd.

It's 115 slides with tons of techie detail.  Read the summary first.

Blogging VON: Availability, i.e. context aware communications

I arrived in San Jose for the VON conference mid-day Tuesday and immediately went to Henry Sinnreich's session on context-aware communications. Context-aware communications is the generalization of "presence" as popularized by instant messaging and Henry gave a very complete tutorial from the SIP/SIMPLE-centric point of view. Very thorough. Your availability to accept a phone call can be estimated much more accurately with knowledge of your location -- perhaps including your location within your corporate building as determined by interacting with corporate security systems.  Beyond that, if location is combined with knowledge of your calendar, it's possible to figure out when you are in meetings or conference rooms and guess what kinds of communications you are available for, if any.  Henry's slides should become available, at least to attendees, through Pulver Media shortly after the conference ends.  An good independent source of information is Rajaniemi and Yanev's paper "SIP and Presence." 

My only complaint is with the word presence. The goal is to provide availability information.  I'm always present somewhere. With instant messenger clients on PCs, we get information about whether I'm at my PC or not by whether I have typed anything in the past five minutes.  But the most important phone I use is my mobile phone.  It's always on and always with me, but I may not answer you call ! 

So with a mobile phone, we might want to recognize when I've got the phone in vibrate or silence mode.  At those times, I might be available for text, photos or video, but I'm clearly not interested in audio connections.

My only other quibble: why so negative on presence gateways?  Yes, SIMPLE is a much more comprehensive system, but ubiquity is important for forming communities and there are enormous populations that have more limited forms of presence.  If this initiative works, why not contemplate interconnecting with the resulting large population, even if there is less that complete functionality?

Comparing Telecom growth in India and China

Although India got telecom competition and telecom growth somewhat later than China, I had the impression that India’s rate of growth now matched or exceeded that of China at a comparable period in China’s development. In part that was caused by discussion in the blogosphere in February, the result of this press release from the TRAI.

China has been adding about 4 to 5 million mobile subscribers every month in last five years. India has also achieved this landmark in December 2005 when the mobile subscriber addition reached around 4.5 million in a single month for the first time since the launch of mobile services in the year 1995. Thus India seems to have really caught up with China in mobile growth.

But the press release is misleading. Yes, India’s mobile subscriber growth is ramping more steeply than China’s did when China was at a comparable teledensity (five years ago) and, yes, India did add 4.5 million subscribers in December 2005 (also 4.7M in Jan & 4.3M in Feb). However, China still leads in total telecom adoption rate, at that time and now.

The difference is in “fixed” line telephony which today means fixed wireless handsets, aka wireless local loop or WLL. But the line between WLL and mobile phone service is very blurry.  Indeed one might argue it only exists because regulators are trying to make technology choices.

Despite a national focus on GSM (and later on CDMA), China also incents its local politicians to attract outside investment.  One way or another, UT Starcomm and Huawei managed to sell PAS and other limited mobility WLL systems to a number of second and third tier Chinese cities. So today, there are many different technologies serving different parts of China.  There’s even some CDMA450, deployed in Tibet. Typically these WLL services are effectively mobile service, but it’s called “fixed” in government accounting.

I doubt is the following table provides the whole answer for the tele-density growth discrepancy, but it highlights a likely contributing factor.

Comparative regulatory levies as a % of revenue

	China	India
Svc Tax, GST	3%	8%+GST
License fee	Nil	5-10%
Spectrum Charge	~0.5%	2-6%
Total	~3.5%	15-24% + GST

----------------------------------------------------------

PS:  The data I used for the graph comes from the ITU World Telecom Indicators database for 1996-2003, from the TRAI for 2005 in India and from Yankee Group for 2005 in China.  Here are the numbers:

                    China        China        China           India        India        India

Year        Mobile      Fixed       Total        Mobile    Fixed     Total

1996            0.5                4.4            5.0                0.0            1.5          1.6
1997            1.1                5.6            6.7                0.1            1.9          2.0
1998            1.9                7.0            8.9                0.1            2.2          2.3
1999            3.4                8.6          12.0                0.2            2.7          2.8
2000            6.6               11.2         17.8                0.4            3.2          3.6
2001          11.0               13.7         24.8                0.6            3.8           4.4
2002          16.1               16.7         32.8                1.2            4.0           5.2
2003          21.4               20.9         42.3                2.5            4.6           7.1
2004
2005          30.3               26.8         57.1                7.0            4.3          11.3

   

When walling the garden fosters communities

Normally walled gardens are a user turn-off, however...

Recently the social networking site Facebook changed their membership policy.  It used to be that you had to be a college student (or alum with college .edu email address) to participate.  Last fall they introduced a high school program, presumably because they were jealous of MySpace's incredible success, primarily among high school students.

The high school program operated separately from the college program until February 27th, when Facebook started allowing college students and high school students to add each other as "friends."  That's created a problem as Danny Shea and Matt Feinstein explain in their open letter to Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook) published March 9th in the Daily Princetonian.

Suddenly, we had to begin removing tags from photos of us drinking, erasing wall postings referring to awkward hookups and getting rid of anything else that might negatively influence younger siblings or get back to once-adoring high school teachers.
...
Unfortunately, they don't understand that by posting "OMG how are you? I haven't seen you since our Model UN trip three years ago!" they are undermining the college personas that we have so carefully constructed over the past three years.

So, while walled gardens instituted by a service provider generally work against community formation (the service provider's customers are not usually a natural community), there are evident advantages to walls around specific communities.

Multimedia creation easier on mobiles than text

I just stumbled on a short presentation that VeerChand Bothra gave at BarCampDelhi on March 4th.  It's really great! - in three slides it touches on several topics of recurring interest to me.  :-)

I follow his Mobile Pundit blog for it's coverage of telephony news in India, but this was the first (well maybe the second) time I noticed how much our thoughts on telecom and cultural issues are in alignment. My thoughts, triggered by his presentation:

First, about user-created content.  Mobiles are ubiquitous and as VeerChand points out, with mobiles, multimedia creation is easier than text creation.  We're already seeing explosive growth in Internet-based picture sites, Flickr and the like.  According to this article, most of the referrals to photo-hosting sites already come from blogs and moblogs.  With 3G, user-created video clips are about to soar.  Part of my interest in our recent acquisition of Openera Technologies is it gives us a peer-to-peer video sharing capability. As our "community-based services" kiosk at 3GSM suggested, capturing P2P shared video on behalf of the creator preserves an option for its later use in a moblog, blog or community homepage (think Myspace, Cyworld, or 12wap).

Second, the importance of communications technology to the advancement of civilization.  This was the subject of my immediately previous post.  VeerChand's comment was:

Language, the alphabet,cities, the printing press did not eliminate poverty or injustice.  But they did make it possible for groups of people to create cooperative enterprises such as science and democracy that increased the wealth, welfare and liberty of many.

Third, communities dominate brands. For decades I've put more store in public relations than in advertising. With the advent of the Internet, it's now clear that chat rooms, blogs, etc., i.e. unfettered community discussions are more important than traditional PR.  Organizations that candidly talk with their communities of interest get more useful input -- and more external credibility (leading to good PR) than any advertising or PR campaign could ever generate.

Technology and Long Term Economic Growth

Bill St. Arnaud, on his "CAnet - news" (highly recommended!) today recommends the book ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATIONS: General Purpose Technologies and Long Term Economic Growth by Richard G. Lipsey, Kenneth I. Carlaw, and Clifford T. Bekar. 

After browsing information and extracts on Richard Lipsey's web site, I've ordered the book.  I find the question of how we've gone from hunting and gathering to the modern world fascinating.  I've already read (and recommend) popular works like Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel and I've absorbed various scholarly works like Joel Mokyr's The Lever of Riches and The Gifts of Athena.

One concern in reading Lipsey's website was typified by this:

...focus on these massive technical shocks...  ...perhaps twenty such shocks in all of human experience since we abandoned hunting gathering...  All of these shocks fall into five categories:  Power, Materials, Information and Communications Technology (ICT), Transportation and Organization.

While separately categorizing ICT and organization, the authors don't appear to discuss or even recognize the multiplier effect of technologies such as writing, printing and the Internet.  And, while there is discussion on the website about medieval universities as an organizational structure that helped foster science and the industrial revolution, the authors again don't appear to evaluate the potential multiplier effects of this organizational structure.

Oh well,  I should wait for the book before I get too critical...  :-)

Constructing a cell site in Nigeria

I just came by some great photos of mobile phone cell sites being constructed in Nigeria and Mozambique.  The pictures were taken last summer by friends at Advanced Telecoms (Pty) Ltd. in Pretoria, South Africa.  Advanced Telecoms provides microwave and satellite transmission systems for cellular operators in Africa.  Here's a site going together in Nigeria which uses a VSAT satellite link for backhaul from the cell site to the mobile switching center.  There are additional pictures here and here.

 

Pulver Media podcasting an interview with yours truly

Carl Ford interviewed me yesterday on several topics, including my upcoming talk at Spring VON 2006.  The recording is posted in Pulver Media's Podcasts here.

My "Industry Perspective" at Spring VON next week

Next week, I'll be at Spring VON in San Jose. Due to other commitments, I'm only arriving late morning Tuesday and I have to leave at mid-day on Thursday. My industry perspective presentation, on Wednesday morning at 10am, will touch on instant messaging, presence and the impending collision of VoIP and mobile.  The abstract is here.

Does this suggest an attenuation in my passion for layer zero competition and user ownership of first mile fiber or my passion for bringing telecom to the next 4.5 billion people on the planet. No!  These are critical issues and I'll continue to speak out on them.

But another theme of mine, for more than a decade, has been telecom disruption.  Here VoIP has been disappointing.  Most IP-PBX solutions and most VoIP services like Vonage, AT&T CallVantage or Time Warner's digital phone service are just digital POTS (plain old telephone service).  These VoIP players talk about low cost, toll quality and 5 nines availability.  If they actually thought about user experience, they'd realize that only a small fraction of calls actually work -- most calls end in voice mail.  From a user perspective, telecom delivers far less than 2 nines of success.

Presence is part of the answer (although availability is what counts).  The Mobile Internet in Asia suggests some interesting directions. And recent actions by mobile operators in the EU and Asia could upset the balance of power in instant messaging.

If you will be at Spring VON, please join me in the general session on Wednesday morning.

Communities more important than social networking software

In the past 48 hours, I've had three very different conversations about social networking, touching on US and Asian variants like Myspace and Cyworld (in Korean or about Cyworld in English).  In each case, my perspective was a little different than that of the people I was talking with, so maybe it's worth setting out.

A social networking environment (software, etc.) is necessary but not sufficient for success. Success depends upon communities.  That's the reason Myspace is doing so well and Friendster has languished.  As Anick Jesdanun points out,

...when its founders noticed heavy usage among musicians and fans, MySpace embraced that community with custom features...  ultimately music is what made MySpace special.

Once communities had formed around bands, musicians and their fans, Myspace was off and running.

Of course the underlying social networking software must have competitive features, but I already run four instant messenger clients because the different communities I participate in happen to run on different platforms.  It's the communities, not the platform that counts.

I've looked at (and joined) Myspace and Facebook, but they are both Internet centric, i.e. no mobile support. Not reading Korean, Chinese or Japanese, I haven't been able to join Cyworld. Luckily, at 3GSM, I ran into long time friends Kevin Chia and Michele Chan of Singapore who are operating an interesting Internet/ mobile community under the name 12wap (pronounced "want to wap").  I've just started exploring 12wap which lets you set up both WAP and Internet homepages.  I haven't set up my home page, but you can see my photo on your mobile at wap address 16172850433.12wap.net :-)