I found an very interesting article about mobile social networks on mashable.com. It is about a report of M:Metrics, which indicates that mobile social networks are growing worldwide and that they actually can be seen as a driver for mobile web usage in Europe as well as in the US.
By the numbers:
M:Metrics is reporting that in June 12.3 million consumers were accessing a social network via their mobile phones in the US and Western Europe. The US had the largest number of users (7.5 million mobile subscribers), followed by Italy (1.3 million), then the UK (1.1 million) and then Spain, Germany and France.
The most visited mobile social networks:
In June the most visited mobile social networks in the US and the UK were:
- MySpace (3.7 million mobile users in the US and 440,000 in the UK)
- Facebook (2 million mobile users in the US and 307,000 in the UK)
- Bebo (288,000 mobile users in the UK)
- YouTube (901,000 mobile visits in the US)

In France, Germany, Italy and Spain the most popular mobile social network was MSN’s Live Spaces, which is only available off-portal. That means users were accessing this service through their mobile web browser and not through their operator’s site.
Which services were used the most by which operators?
Helio and Nextel -> MySpace
Virgin, Sprint -> Facebook
Amp’d, AT&T -> MySpace and Facebook
Verizon -> YouTube

These are quite interesting facts and it shows a strong correlation between popularity and being on-portal. Those network operators were pushing these services to their users.
And here’s some more stats about mobile subscriber monthly consumption of content and applications in the US and the UK:


What do you think about mobile social networks - on the mobile web or as applications, on- or off-portal? Are you using them - which one(s)?

Source: mashable.com, moconews.net