itsmy.com just released what is probably the largest ever survey in the area of mobile social networks. More than 15,000 users took part from the US, UK, Spain, and Italy. Looking at consumer usage patterns, preferences, and statistics, this report really shows how deeply involved some consumers are with mobile social networks.

The worldwide survey was conducted on the mobile internet amongst 15,000 active itsmy.com users between September and November 2008. The age range was between 16 and 52 years. All had current mobile phone types and were from more than 30 different mobile operators.

Although you would expect this sort of sample would consist of people that are interested in mobile social networks, what I found interesting was that it shows how deep this involvement can be.

For example, here is a question about means of communicating with friends and family, and it’s clear that the mobile is the overwhelming choice for communications.

And this isn’t simply a question of people using mobile to access their PC based social network. In fact, across all 4 countries roughly 60% to 70% said that the PC and mobile “have completely different stuff on them.”

Some of the results that I found most amazing were those which revealed how intense the interaction is for many people. For example, this chart shows how many community messages are sent per user per day.

Also, the survey showed that the average user is surfing astonishing 160 mobile internet pages per day. And, over 10% of the respondents check for their personal messages before getting out of bed each day!

With 20 to 35 messages per user per day, average, this type of service is clearly a very integral part of life for many people. With this level of usage, with the large number of mobile page views this generates, and with the detailed consumer profile information which is often available, it is clear to see why the growth of mobile social networks may be very important for the overall growth of mobile advertising.

Yesterday, i have the pleasure to meet Stephane De Luca, the owner of MobileZoo.biz and have made a little interview of him.

Q :Could you tell us a few about you ?

Sure! I’m Stéphane de Luca, 42, and I’ve been in the software development since I’m 12, that is 30 years!
In my profesional life, I have had many positions in various companies managing large projects or businesses. I’ve been 10 years in the video game industry at the time where it was still possible to be really creative.
When the mobile industry emerge wih handset having color screens and the ability to expose games to the user, I joined In-Fusio with the idea of innvate in term of playability in a connected world. I have developed two major project that you can see on my site http://stephanedeluca.com : one is a desktop/mobile massive muliplayer online game, another is a realtime airsimulator that streams images up tp the mobile terminals.

Q : Could you present your service Mobilezoo.biz ?

I get started with MobileZoo in october 2006 because at that time there was no real world figures about what the mobile market were made of. When you decide to develop a title, say a game, you need to know on how many different handset model you have to produce a version. As this have a cost, you need to know what potential ROI you can expect.

Q : What do you propose with MobileZoo ?
MobileZoo is just that, a tool that let you knows what handsets are sucessfull, where they are used in what number. But you can also query the site to know what technical feature an handset supports. Or even what handsets support the list of a set of features. You also have access to the worldwide carrier-related information (# of users from a given carrier for example) or for a given country.
MobileZoo provides J2ME indepth information coverage (JSR and description), wireless network technical description.
You’ll also find the quaterly units sold by the top manufacturers and much more.

And last, but not least, if you are a developer, you can embed a very small library in your own app that will enable you to track your own users statistics when you deploy the app.

Q : How many handsets do you have in base ? How many do new do you detect each month ?
We do have about 1400 different handses currently (Dec 2008) from 70+ manufacturers. The number of detected handset really depends on the manufacturers and the pace of their production. Some times we can detect 10 handsets in a week or even more.
And the cool thing, is that MobileZoo regularly detects prototypes or not-yet-annonced models . Subscribe to the specific RSS on MobileZoo to be the first to know.

Q : What are the benefits for users using your tools ?
The major benefit consists of having a deeper knowledge of the industry you are in, with actual number, not estimates. And knowledge is power

Do you search some partners, investors ?
MobilZoo is free. Meanwhile, we need to cover our cost – - servers IT infrastructure. Currently we’re not break even… We do monetize our traffic through internet advertising. Some corporation approache me to seal deal to have access to our technology or our database thru some web services. Though really cheap, those deals help us to maintain the service.

So anyone out there that can propose a business model or would be interested in m&a is welcome

By the way, there is something else… We are about to release the iPhone version of MobileZoo: anyone developping iPhone apps will benefit the deployement statistics analyzer of MobileZoo

See you on http://www.mobilezoo.biz

Stéphane Thank you for your time