In last weeks post wrote I that Local Search is predicted to be the killer app for mobile phones based on a Juniper Research report predicting that Local search is to account for 43% of cumulative mobile search advertising revenues between 2008 and 2013.

Hot off the heels of this study comes a new Nielson Mobile report showing a growing number of mobile phone subscribers worldwide are taking online social networking to the pubs, streets and subways!

The Nielsen Mobile report show that the U.K. leads Europe in mobile social networking with the U.S. showing similar numbers.

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According to a new Juniper Research report, 1.3 billion mobile users are expected to use local mobile search services by 2013. While the trends bode well for for the mobile search industry (agencies and marketers alike) the report goes on to caution that these numbers are based on good a user experience.

Image Courtesy - ab initio ad infinitum

So it would seem that everyone is in a race to become as transparent as possible.� It has become (clearly) evident that there is more revenue potential out there by opening up everything and making it available than there is by keeping it all horded and secret and hidden in the dark.

Cell phone technology is a brilliant example of transparency becoming extremely key.� It’s helping mobile carriers and equipment providers to quickly and easily design, develop, and deploy in tandem.� It’s also giving software development platforms such as Google and Microsoft the opportunity to build out their handset web technologies.

According to a bi-annual report from Nielsen Mobile found that 58 million, or 23%, of all U.S. mobile phones users, have viewed mobile advertising in the last 1 month. Of these, 28 million subscribers say they responded to the ad in one way or another.

The findings are based on a study of over 22,000 mobile users, carried out in the last quarter of 2007. Overall there was a big jump in the number of users who recalled seeing mobile advertising, up 38 percent from the last report. In the second quarter of 2007, Nielsen reported 42 million subscribers saw mobile ads, while the number rose to 58 million for the fourth quarter.

Full Disclosure Confession: I don’t get the whole social networking phenomenon. Perhaps it is because I am a gentleman of a certain age. MySpace is mine and I have no real desire to share it with anyone beyond my other half… and my dog. I leave the Twittering to my parrot. I am not Facebooked as I have no overwhelming desire to make contact with my primary school cohorts. I am LinkedIn, but that’s about that.

And I actually don’t get it from a SEO/SEM perspective simply because there is far too much beyond my control which implicitly and necessarily implies I am a control freak. I am a control freak. And I like numbers that have relevance. Who. What. Where. When. Why.

So I was snooping aroiund YouTube to see what information I could find about Windows 7, when I came across this video of Construction Mike managing his day to day with a myriad of various informational and communication devices, all apparently loaded up with Windows 7.

 While I found most of the devices to be soooooo cool and I want them, I have difficulty actually imagining people from most industries, let alone the construction industry, investing in the number of gadgets per employee that Mike had the good fortune to use in his daily routine.

“… it’s really not a matter IF the mobile phone will become the dominant internet platform any more but WHEN…” - Yahoo! analyst Russell Beattie

With 15 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers accessing news and information via the mobile browser, mobile search represents a huge growth opportunity for SEO’s. The Kelsey Group recently revealed that nearly half of mobile users will be looking for a mobile phone with better Internet capability when they make their next mobile phone purchase.

Office Depot’s announcement of new mobile marketing services caught my attention today. These new services include the launch of a mobile store locator, RSS feeds, text message coupons and offers, and mobile sweepstakes capabilities.

I doubt anyone’s getting exited about Office Depot RSS feeds on their mobile device and I’m not alone. According to Steve Levy, President of Market Research in Eastern Canada for IPSOS Reid, 27% of Canadian marketers agree that mobile marketing will be very important in the future with 9% indicating they are practicing it now.

Google and Yahoo didn’t have much of a presence at the CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment conference in San Francisco last week, but their startup competitors and much smaller rival AOL all did.

While Google and Yahoo have been pursuing mobile search and advertising, they’ve met resistance from mobile operators in the U.S. “Some are concerned about Google and Yahoo being stronger competitors, that they will become in effect the dumb pipe that the ISPs became,” said Greg Sterling, an analyst at Sterling Market Research and Opus Research. “I think that’s a valid fear. On a personal note, I just love that quote!

Its true! The image below is a link to a web site! Its not to be clicked on though … its an offline link that needs to be photographed from a mobile device to be activated. In this case, it may reside on a billboard, a poster on a telephone pole, an ad in a men’s washroom, or a tile on a train station floor. But make no mistake … it is a link to a website!