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Mobile life is blooming. Some 47 mobile social network companies have emerged globally, to help cater to our need to message and communicate while on the go.

But what about the huge incumbents, like MySpace or Facebook? Will they thrive on the mobile web?

Well, the 47 mobile-only networks will probably tell you that mobile is a whole different animal, and downplay the threat of a switch by their millions of users to those big guys. But in reality, even though some mobile-only social networks have gotten big — Mocospace, for example, has 1 billion page views worldwide, most of it in the US — their computer-based rivals are catching up now that new wireless devices, such as the iPhone, are making it easier for internet apps to transition to mobile.

My goal for this article was to find the top ten most significant social mobile companies.

It was difficult reporting. With so many different players competing in the mobile social network space, we’re seeing a lot of different approaches and fragmentation. For my own thinking, I sketched out a diagram during lunch with an entrepreneur (see above for a cleaned up version of it). It’s partly based on generalizations, but it’ll give you an idea of what’s happening here in the U.S.

I’ve organized the mobile social companies into four groups. In addition to heavyweights MySpace and Facebook, I’ve picked eight companies — based on market share, differentiation through features, niche market and technology — that seem to be emerging as the most significant players.

[Disclosure: I consult for one of the companies named here, Peperoni.]

Group 1: The internet heavyweights – MySpace and Facebook
When I talked to MySpace and Facebook to see what kind of uptake they’d been seeing on their mobile sites (eg. m.myspace.com) I got quite a surprise. According to the user numbers they provided, both companies have already passed Mocospace.

MySpace’s Brandon Lucas, Senior Director of Mobile Business Development told me MySpace Mobile USA had 1.4 billion visits last month. That’s compared to 1 billion visits to Mocospace this March, according to Mocospace CEO Justin Siegel. A source at Facebook confirmed to me that Facebook Mobile has also passed Mocospace’s numbers in the USA, too, but didn’t give me specific numbers. Expect announcements on that in the coming weeks.

MySpace Mobile launched in December 2006, followed by Facebook Mobile a month later. The growth of MySpace Mobile and Facebook Mobile is mainly due to operator deals that put them “ondeck.” MySpace and Facebook are looking to close as many deals with operators as possible. For Myspace Mobile, the goal is to be available on-deck with “every major operator, everywhere,” Lucas says. As of now, MySpace Mobile has signed 23 carriers in 13 countries, and we expect the number to rise. M-Metrics told MySpace Mobile around three weeks ago that they are the fastest growing mobile site in the US, says Lucas.

The barrier to traffic growth, according to Lucas, is awareness. Expect more banner ads for MySpace Mobile on its web site very soon to raise awareness. MySpace is willing to split revenue with operators, he says. Despite the split, “mobile advertising has grown in the last six months to be a real business for us”, he adds. He sees MySpace as playing the same role on mobile devices as it does on the web. He wants MySpace to be a “mobile advertising driver” for the industry — and wants to lure the brands advertising on its online version to add mobile advertising too. He said MySpace Mobile “wants to build a business for everybody” and that “we will share insights for everybody to profit.”

I also asked Lucas to comment on a MySpace strategy statement I came across in Stuart Dredge’s recent article on social mobile networking in New Media Age: ”We expect that half of our total traffic will be coming from mobile devices within the next five years,” the article quoted a MySpace representative as saying. Brandon said that’s a January quote from MySpace CEO Chris De Wolfe and reaffirms that mobile is one of the Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the latest action:

1. Yahoo ad and IM leaders head to successful startups
2. VC’s confidence at a four-year low
3. Intel launches chip intended for larger-than-a-cell-phone portable devices
4. Ex-Jobster chief executive Jason Goldberg gets angel funding for new startup
5. Report: MySpace, Facebook image uploading software vulnerable to hacks
6. PR folks, Marketwire has a new way to make your press releases “Web 2.0″
7. Mobile-only social networking site MocoSpace raises $4 million round
8. Is Obama a Mac and Clinton a PC?

Yahoo ad and IM leaders head to successful startups — Glam Media, the advertising network, has nabbed Dr. Kiumarse Zamanian, who formerly led the Yahoo team responsible for serving, targeting, logging/tracking and predicting inventory for graphical ads across Yahoo’s ad network. At Glam, Zamanian will oversee the development of “premium” Glam ads that appear during prime viewing times and to targeted audiences. Glam has also hired Adam Souzis of StyleMob and expert on XML and RDF web code standards. Pic of Zamanian, left, via his consulting company. (See our our recent coverage of Glam’s fundraising effort, here.)

Meanwhile, instant message service Meebo has hired Chris Szeto (pictured, left), the newly ex-Director of Product Management for Yahoo! Messenger. Szeto was an early believer in Meebo, chief executive Seth Sternburg says. Now, Szeto will be Meebo’s new senior product director.

VC’s confidence at a four-year low — That’s according to a new survey by the Silicon Valley Venture Capital Confidence Index published less than two months after a national survey showed a more positive outlook despite the economy. The confidence level dropped to 3.54 from 4.14 on a 5-point scale. One year earlier, the index had been at 4.38. See this Mercury News article for more. I’ve recently had local investors tell me that the best time for startups to raise venture money is passing now or has already passed, considering the economic outlook. If you’re an entrepreneur looking for funding, you can also check out this list of seed and angel sources — and don’t stop thinking about how to bootstrap your way up.

Intel launches chip intended for larger-than-a-cell-phone portable devices — The company envisions running “full Windows Vista software loads” on these mobile Internet devices, as InfoWeek puts it. The smaller-than-a-laptop devices need very low power consumption to preserver battery life, which the chip offers. However, “[i]t’s not clear if Windows makes it down into this [ultramobile] form factor successfully. The initial ultramobile PCs from Samsung and OQO have not set the world on fire,” as one analyst is quoted as saying in the article. The leader of the mobile pack, however, is the more phone-like Apple iPhone, which analysts expect to grow from fewer than 100 million units this year to to more than 400 million units by the end of 2010. It doesn’t use Intel chips. More Intel product launch coverage on Techmeme.

Ex-Jobster chief executive Jason Goldberg gets angel funding for new startup — Goldberg left job site Jobster last month to start a new company — which will be focused on disrupting the news industry, as he writes on his blog, here.

Report: MySpace, Facebook image uploading software vulnerable to hacks — If you’re on either Myspace or Facebook, and you use the photo uploading services provided by either site, be careful. Two recent reports by researcher Elazar Broad detail how Myspace’s image loader could be hacked to allow specially designed web pages to crash Windows systems. Older versions of the Facebook image uploader are separately vulnerable and could allow for denial-of-service attacks or for malicious code to run on your PC. Recent versions of Facebook PhotoUploader 4.5.57.1 are not vulnerable, according to the report. The company behind both uploaders, Aurigma, recommends upgrading to the latest Myspace uploader versions. You can also disable all ActiveX within Internet Explorer or just disable the uploader completely.

PR folks, Marketwire has a new way to make your press releases “Web 2.0″ — More here.

Mobile-only social networking site MocoSpace raises $4 million round — The funding came from previous investors General Catalyst, Pilot Group and former eBay executive Michael Deering. The site has quickly grown to a billion mobile pageviews, it claims. Techcrunch has more here.

Is Obama a Mac and Clinton a PC? — The New York Times compares the two.

Boston-based MocoSpace, which offers a mobile social network to let you find friends in your area, send them photos, and chat with them, has raised $3 million in a first round of funding.

The poor company originally told us the funding round was scheduled for announcement next week, but then rushed out the announcement today after it leaked out last week — only to have its site go down today without warning (it is down of this writing).

It says it has “nearly” a million users, though it isn’t clear how many of those are active.

It’s clearly betting that mobile users want to be social and that the major social networks like Facebook and MySpace, who have won the game on the Web, may not adapt as well to the quick-based nature of people on the move. MocoSpace is easy to use, though how many people will adopt MocoSpace over the range of other possible services is open to question. It says 76 million people have mobile in the US 6.7 percent of them use mobile chat or dating applications, according to Telephia and M:Metrics, respectively.

The funding is led by General Catalyst Partners of Cambridge, Mass., with additional funding through Pilot Group and individual investor and former eBay executive Michael Dearing.

The company also has an office in Herzeliya, Israel.