I attended a new CommNexus special interest group (SIG) called WebMo2.0 last Friday. The event featured a panel to discuss mobile technologies and the convergence of the online web services network with mobile networks. It also explored the effect that the growing mobile industry will have on your social graph, as well as provider revenue models.

The event took place place today at 7am (thankfully coffee was provided) at the law offices of Pillsbury, Winthrop, Shaw and Pittman in Carmel Valley. Nice digs, they were covered floor to ceiling with hardwood, marble and stone - that’s what 800+ attorneys worldwide will afford you.

I stood out a bit amidst a sea of suits. Most of the attendees worked in corporate environments, only half of the group had more than one social networking account (I’m active daily on at least 10) and the concept of Twitter had to be explained to nearly everyone. With that being said, their were some thought provoking questions raised during the panel.

The panel consisted of San Diego based mobile professionals. Vikram Natarajan is the VP of Strategy at ventured-backed RockeTalk which specializes in socializing standard apps. Vik gets props for sporting jeans. Chas Wurster is the CTO and Co-Founder of venture-backed Tapioca Mobile which provides a way to deliver rich media directly to your phone’s inbox. Vikram Malhotra of Qualcomm was the final member of the panel.

Here are some brief insights from the panel questions.

“Are all of our online interactions one central social graph or do they exist on different levels in parallel to each other?”

The panel agreed that you can isolate your social graphs based on your relationship with each connection and the medium of the connection. Think of concentric circles representing your connected relationships with your mug right in the middle. The more closely connected a contact is to you, the nearer they are to the middle of the circle. Each medium or account type such as your Linkedin network or your classmates.com network exist as different layers of your social graph.

“How are social graphs affected by emerging mobile technologies?”

Vikram Natarajan made a great point that most of the social networking membership real estate has been gobbled up by the already established websites. Social mobile apps may be the new frontier for membership signups since they are unclaimed and have the ability to extend or create a new social experience.

“What is holding the mobile industry back?”

Chaz brought up the fact that the industry is missing a universal application development platform. With more mobile development platforms being developed such as Google’s Android, it’s even harder to deliver a single product offering for all consumers to use.

I happen to disagree with Chaz on this one. I know for a fact that there are several companies out there that are developing universal platforms for mobile development including GoLifeMobile (disclosure: My company has a strategic partnership to develop mobile 2.0 apps with GoLifeMobile). However, there is still the challenge having to install the application environment on the handset. So we still have some ground to cover until a standard is developed. Standardizing the High-Def DVD market to Blu-Ray was easy, right?

“Are mobile service providers making money from social convergence?”

The panelists agreed that providers are not currently monetizing social applications. They made a good point - why would you pay to get free online content on your phone? Vikram Natarajan suggested monetizing premium services, but are there premium services that are ubiquitous across handset platforms?

I think the service providers are benefiting from mobile social applications with increased data and SMS plans. I had to go to an unlimited plan of SMS to be able to handle my twitter traffic during conferences. Most new phones have advanced capabilities that require an additional data package. Bandwidth is king with these apps and we seem willing to pay for it to check our email faster, mobile order our coffee and run our web enabled apps.

In conclusion, WebMo2.0 was a somewhat informative event. However, I did find myself ironically using my iPhone to check my email and social apps when the conversation strayed. I would suggest more challenging content to keep future events interesting and useful.

Thanks to Andrea for giving StartupSD.net our first press pass on our initial week of reporting!

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