I had the opportunity a month or so ago to moderate a CTIA panel of really neat people who wanted to talk about mobile social networking. Panelists ranged from execs from online gaming companies to those who operate online walled gardens (around dating and gaming and just general networking) to a company that aggregates mobile social profiles and makes it easier for publishers to reach them with relevant content.

At first blush, the topic seemed to be a little ahead of its time – after all, we are all still trying to figure out social online? But, when you consider that 46% of those who use social networks on line also use Social networks on the mobile, the topic is not as “out there” as once imagined. Couple that with a recent eMarketer report that stated that ~800 million people will access social networks via the mobile by 2012 - a nearly 300% increase from where it is today – and you have a channel that we obviously cannot ignore for much longer.

I thought I would share highlights from two of the discussions we had that day and one anecdote related to this topic.

Discussion one was an interesting debate about whether the mobile phone book is one’s true social graph. Those who said “yes” presume that the phonebook really does serve as the repository for the relevant information related to the peeps that we regularly stay in touch with (friends, relatives) or need to (doctors, babysitters). We contrasted that to the online address book, which most agreed was not the true social graph – since it also captures the names of people who have absolutely no connection to you (e.g. one of the sea of CC’s on an email) and therefore are not all that relevant. We concluded that if you looked at your Facebook friends and then your mobile phone book, there was probably more of an overlap than what might exist in the outlook address book – and so there is something potentially powerful about the intersection of mobile and social.

Discussion two centered on who’s likely to dominate the mobile social networking space – existing online networks or mobile-only networks. The vote was split. So far, none of the stand alone mobile networks have achieved more than a 15% adoption rate…including MocoSpace which is huge, mobile only and whose users spend 6x more time on Mocospace than Facebook and 2x more time on My Space. But, a closer look reveals that Mocospace users are, by design, non-Facebook/MySpace users – that is why it was launched in the first place. But it is hard to imagine, that as the larger networks like FB and MS continue to add more users (and phones come with better browsers enabling a more user-friendly experience on those networks) that stand-alone networks will survive long term.

Now for the anecdote. In doing some research on this topic, I came across a case study about the growth in the use of the landline phone in the 1980s. During that period of time, the growth in the volume of live voice traffic increased 3X the rate of the population growth. How could that be? The answer is simple: the answering machine was invented during that time which – overnight - captured calls that otherwise went missed and prompted people to return those calls. Fast forward nearly 30 years later and we now have the beginnings of a spike in yet another “voice” communications device – the 63 million people today who use the mobile internet, and the 35% of those who use it daily. And, this usage has doubled in just one year.

Many point to that increase being driven by the growing usage (and dependence) of social networking applications that also cause people to visit the web via their handset to check in on their friends and friends of friends. (Many large employers who block access to Facebook and MySpace only fuel this behavior… I am convinced that a lot of the Apple iPhone sales are because corporates want to check Facebook during the workday.) In any case, the device that was designed to further communication on the go is starting to evolve as the bridge between people and their communities.