When I first looked at Tomi Ahonen’s blog - Communities Dominate Brands - and immediately began ordering a copy of his latest book I had the familiar feeling of reading someone’s writings who “gets it” and “sees the imminent future“.

People know me in the Web Metrics Community as somewhat of an authority on Web Metrics, perhaps a “visionary” who sees where things are going, much as Howard Rheingold does in books like SmartMobs. It’s the artist in me that gave me the vision ot see Visual Sciences as the best Web Analytics Platform, bar none, leading many to take a closer look at that high end platform. It’s the same vision that tells me HitWise needs to be merged with Web Analytics vendors, that RSS subscribers are the main measure of loyalty, care of Seth Godin. And now I’m seeing the future in Tomi Ahonen’s ideas about 3G Mobile Networking - the goldmine is there - and he “sees” that goldmine - he knows it.
I think Howard believes in 3G Social Networking ….he wrote THE BOOK on it! Now Tomi Ahonen has taken that idea and ran with it …. looking at next wave ….. the 3G Mobile Social Neworking goldmine.

What’s the future? 3G Social Networking applications are worth more, today, than MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Bebo, Second Life, Worlds of Warcraft, Skype etc!

“……..more revenues generated by similar social networking activity… on mobile phones of course. Led by such services as Cyworld from South Korea (in 6 countries), Mixi in Japan, Habbo Hotel from Finland (in over a dozen countries) and SeeMeTV in the UK, Italy and other 3/Hutchison markets - social networking on mobile is THE first elusive killer app for 3G !”

Today, many of those applications lie outside the mobile phone / device - perhaps a service one subscribes to - it’s not built into the software provided by the mobile network vendor (IE: TMobile, Verizon Wireless, etc). As far as what Tomi Ahonen is saying ….. I totally believe it and here’s why - illustrated by a story. I ran into two friends recently at an art opening in Brooklyn, Matthew and Nichelle, who are part of an art social network in New York that keep in constant communication with each other - they have Google Calanders sync’d in so they can see where each other is and meet up if they want. Matt and Nichelle do what I write about in WebMetricsGuru.com - they practice Social Networking - it’s in their bones ….. in fact they use DodgeBall and Plaxo to see all of their contacts in real time ….. hundreds of messages a day - hundreds of events a week in NYC - 4 people in this network (two I haven’t met yet).

That’s the power on real time 3G Mobile Social Networking……and the whole story of 3G Social Networking is being told for the first time by Tomi Ahonen in his blog and book Communities Dominate Brands.

How big is the pot of gold at the end of the 3G Social Network market THIS YEAR?

Informa tells us it is worth 3.45 billion dollars in 2006. Yes, mobile digital communities are worth more than online adult entertainment, or mobile gambling or multiplayer gaming or iTunes. Like we say in our book, Communities Dominate!

When I’m at Ad-Tech NY next month I’ll be sure to both attend the 3G Social Networking Sessions and put the speakers on the spot (as I’ll be interviewing many of speakers and companies for Know More Media’s www.WebMetricsGuru.com, my Web Metrics Blog that many influentials read (I found that out, to my surprise, at the EMetrics Summit in DC this month….me…they read my blog….yes they do), especially for Web Metrics - I’ll be covering Ad-Tech as a reporter / press). As Tomi says in a recent blog post titled: Why is mobile social networking worth $3.45b?

…..The story, is about people - and what we are - A “we species” - human beings are highly social and are built to be so. But industrialisation, mass-consumption, mass-media - although providing us with greater prosperity - denied us some of our fundamental rights as people.

And now we’re taking our Social Networking rights - enabled by technology.

But don’t believe my word….read Tomi’s blog which has - a lot of material in it - but he makes a case for Mobile 3G Social Networking being the real goldmine that should be looked at much more closely - given much more press than it has.

Links: Communities Dominate Brands - I’ll leave the rest of the links out…they’re all over the post.