MLM SF: ‘Mobile and Social Inherently Tied Together’

Mobile technologies such as location, check-in and targeting are prime drivers of a new breed of social media sites, according to panelists speaking today at Mobile Local Media San Francisco.

Check-in is the most actionable, noted Localmind CTO Beau Haugh. “We know if someone is there right now.” Haugh adds that local is “authentic” and people “want authentic experiences.” That makes Localmind “double down on local neighborhoods,” he said.

Yelp Director of Business Development Mike Ghaffary noted that mobile and social are inherently tied together. Yelp is not just assigning part of its development to mobile, but innovating on mobile, he added. Features such as photo search and cool visualizations have been key mobile innovations, for instance. In developing mobile features, Yelp asks “what doesn’t make sense on the Web,” for example. “If we are building mobile first, how would we do that?”

Ghaffary added that he keeps hearing about “Big Data.” But what is underestimated is the development of “Big Data 2.0: Consumer big data. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. Anybody can do it on a mobile screen.”

Schematic Labs CEO Steve Jang added that mobile is especially powerful in a social context because information is shared so quickly and with so little friction. “We are playing to that behavior, as opposed to sitting back and leaning back like the Web. Interaction is intuitive, and we give them a feedback loop that really makes a lot of sense.”