Word-of-mouth rocks on mobile but be careful with mobile payments

We surveyed our users recently and got some very interesting results we would like to share with you. Firstly, 68% of our users already invited friends to Wauwee.com which shows a strong interest in spreading the word about Wauwee but also brings up a deeper point. The sharing of Wauwee was mostly done via word-of-mouth. We had no real stat on what this number was because word-of-mouth is difficult to measure online. However our survey shows word-of-mouth is very powerful when it comes to mobile services, particularly those services with a low barrier to adoption. Sharing a service with your friend is as simple as pulling out your phone and showing them around your world then your friend can immediately signup and be instantly engaged with the service on his/her mobile phone. This is more difficult to achieve with traditional online services where you tend to perform the viral aspect via email in an asynchronous fashion hence the lack of user coaching amongst friends. This is a powerful trend and one we plan to keep a close eye on in order to continue on our growth trajectory.

Another finding from our survey showed a large number of users would like to buy something via premium SMS. In today’s world, most ecommerce is performed via the internet with credit cards however mobile savvy users prefer buying via SMS when buying something on the phone versus using a credit card which is not all that surprising but nonetheless a problem to solve for Mr. Visa if he wants to play in the mobile space. Hooking up with the likes of the iTunes App Store is also a pretty neat way to achieve mobile payment but not so for countries like India where most of the vast mobile internet population don’t have credit cards in the first place. When we started Wauwee.com as a mobile social network we had no idea India would become our largest growth market, it just took off like a rocket from day one. Most of our Indian users tell us they prefer to have the full functionality of a social network on their phone rather than a slimmed down version because they don’t have ready access to an internet connected PC. This makes sense when you look at the broadband penetration rates in India versus the mobile subscriber uptake (60m broadband versus over 300m mobile subs and growing daily!). Users want to engage fully with a service on their phone which requires payment processing to be achieved in a seamless way on the phone. Mobile users have grown accustomed to pay for topups and games via SMS or a phone call and hence we need to be serving this market wisely. The alternative to go with carrier integrated billing is not looking rosy right now! Stay tuned for more on payments and also India in future posts.