MySpace releases iPhone application, after mobile traffic more than doubles in 3 months

MySpace, the big social network that is vying with Facebook for top-dog status globally, has released a mobile version of its site designed especially for the iPhone.

MySpace has also released new statistics revealing explosive growth among mobile users: Page views of the company’s mobile site appear to have more than doubled between March and June.

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Traffic blasted past 2.5 billion page views in May, from 1.4 billion in March. John Faith, MySpace’s general manger and vice president of mobile, said in an interview he expects the 3 billion number to be broken when June stats are in. That’s impressive, because the company had originally forecast to reach 3 billion by August: “We’ll blow through that, we’re seeing astounding exponential growth.”

While the iPhone still has a small overall market share among phone users, the phone is significant because its full screen and other features such as location and touch technology allow people to browse and interact more easily and fully than other phones.

And while MySpace and Facebook battle for more users, the latest battleground has clearly become mobile. While other companies such as MocoSpace were early to offer mobile-only social networking offerings, MySpace and Facebook have recently shot ahead and become the most popular social networks, as we reported two months ago.

Released in October, MySpace’s mobile site (WAP) (http://m.myspace.com) gets more than 1.7 million daily unique mobile visits in the United States alone, after breaking 1 million in March. The site is seeing 250,000 additional uniques every month.

Facebook is offering its own application at the iPhone App Store.

Here are some of the main features of the MySpace application. MySpace said a key feature was the ability to upload photos directly from the iPhone to your MySpace profile:

— Camera integration and optimized photo management allowing users to snap, sort and upload pictures anytime and anywhere.
— The ability to stay connected with friends through a full messaging interface.
— Pinch, flick and swipe your way through the MySpace navigation using standard iPhone touch support.
— Real-time friend, status and mood updates.
— Feedback mechanism letting users contribute to future iterations of the product.
— Available in 12 languages by the end of this month.

You can download it from Apple’s App Store on iPhone and iPod touch or at http://www.itunes.com/appstore/”www.itunes.com/appstore/.

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Other traffic numbers:
— Projected usage to hit 3 to 5 million unique global users per day by the end of 2008.
— 1.7 million daily unique users in the US (from internal metrics) on MySpace Mobile WAP.
— 1.4 million monthly unique users across Europe (from internal metrics) on MySpace Mobile WAP and growing rapidly.
— North America, Europe and Australia are the heaviest users with additional growth coming from other regions.

Other info/stats:

Users access MySpace Mobile one of three ways:
— Mobile website distributed via carrier portals (on-deck)
— Mobile website accessible directly at m.myspace.com (off-deck)
— Mobile applications built by third parties in partnership with MySpace, and distributed both on- and off-deck

MySpace is working with all major mobile operators as well as major manufacturers including Nokia and Samsung who have built their own custom communities based on MySpace. MySpace Mobile has 27 signed carrier/operator deals in 20 countries globally.

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Mobile advertisers in U.S.: Ford, Saturn, Warner Brothers and Toyota. Advertisers in Europe: Coca Cola, Warner Brothers and Nike.

Sponsorship and CPM campaigns are sold by dedicated FIM sales teams in several of our 29+ territories. Third party ad networks also serve mobile ad campaigns into MySpace Mobile.

General Stats about MySpace:
· MySpace has nearly 115 million monthly active users around the globe (May Comscore)
· MySpace is the United States’ most trafficked site on the internet
· 85 percent of MySpace users are of voting age (18 or older)
· 25 percent of Americans are on MySpace, in the UK it’s as common to have a MySpace page as it is to own a dog
· On average 300,000 new people sign up to MySpace every day

Localized versions exist in 29 regions across 15 languages: U.S., UK, Japan, Australia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Mexico, Canada, Netherlands, New Zealand, MySpace en Espanol, Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, India, Korea, Switzerland Austria, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland.

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· 50 Million mails per day (more than Yahoo, Hotmail, or Google)
· 10 Billion friend relationships
· 1.5 Billion images
· 8 Million images uploaded daily
· 60,000 new videos uploaded to MySpaceTV daily
· More than 5 million artists and bands on MySpace Music

By the way, tickets are selling fast to MobileBeat, our conference on the mobile industry, where Facebook’s mobile executive Jed Stremel and MySpace mobile executive Brandon Lucas will be debating the biggest mobile questions of the day on a panel moderated by blogger Om Malik.