Google Inc.'s decision to shutter its Dodgeball.com mobile social networking service is yet another acquisition or non-search offering that didn't pan out.

Originally positioned as a competitor to Twitter, Dodgeball let users share their location with friends through text message. Its reliance on SMS may have pushed up costs which Google must not have been able to offset with revenue.

"We have decided to discontinue Dodgeball.com in the next couple of months, after which this service will no longer be available," said Vic Gundotra, vice president of engineering at Google, Mountain View, CA, on the Google Code Blog. "We will communicate the exact time-frame shortly."

Mobile Marketer interviewed two experts on Dodgeball.com's fate and the state of mobile social networking and its future. Nic Covey is director of insights at market researcher Nielsen Mobile. Justin Siegel is cofounder and CEO of Boston-based MocoSpace, one of the leading mobile-only social networks.

Here's what Chicago-based Mr. Covey had to say, followed by Mr. Siegel.

What could have precipitated the planned closure of a brand such as Dodgeball? What does it say about the difficulties of the mobile social media space?
There's a strong and rapidly growing demand for mobile social networking.

Dodgeball's situation doesn't reflect lackluster consumer interest, but more broadly a challenge around monetization and engagement and specific to them, a failure to develop a critical mass audience.

Dodgeball didn't grow the audience necessary for advertising to work -- so much so that in Nielsen's messaging report which tracks SMS activity, we monitored Dodgeball but never saw an audience large enough to actually report.

Dodgeball's functionality, innovation and with a cult-like following though it may be, was matched in function and passed in ease of use by Twitter, Loopt and even Facebook.

Is mobile social media gaining traction? Who are its users?
Social networking is the great bridge of the mobile phone's communications past to its media and entertainment present.

Mobile social networking continues to gain traction through both mobile Web and over short codes.
Facebook, the leading social network over mobile Web, quadrupled its audience between November 2007 and November 2008. Today Facebook mobile has more than 5 million active users.

Mobile social networking's not just for teens. Take Facebook, for example, the leading mobile social network. As of November, well over half of their audience was over the age of 25.

Which brands have been successful in mobile social media?
In addition to Facebook, Twitter is successful over both mobile Web and SMS.

Twitter had a monthly unique audience of more than 400,000 users on the mobile Web in November 2008 and an estimated 600,000 users over SMS.

But it's hard to monetize mobile social media, even more so than online social media, isn't it?
Mobile social networks can increase engagement with a network once accessed only over the PC, where channels are finally learning to monetize the medium, but mobile social networks should also provide an opportunity to monetize social networks in a different way.

From a targeting perspective, you might know that a social networker likes coffee and so deliver a related ad when they are accessing the network on their PC.

With mobile social networking, however, you know not just that they like coffee, but they may report when they are actually at a coffee shop.

The targeting moves from the general to the present, allowing marketers to capitalize on mobile's most unique functionality.

Are advertisers gravitating towards mobile social media?
Building a mobile social network won't be for the weary -- you have to build an audience before you can monetize it.

Google must have projected that the audience for Dodgeball was not going to be big enough, soon enough, otherwise they would have stuck it out.

For the time being, other mobile social network players are doing well to build an audience, build engagement that provides that constant feed of location-based and activity information, and await the rush of advertiser interest that will be due to a medium that can so precisely reach a target customer at the best possible moments.

It's hard to second guess them but what do you think was behind Google's decision to close Dodgeball?
First off, I don't want to pretend to know something other than what's been said by Google because I don't.

In my opinion though, it comes down to two things most likely.

One is that the founders left, so there were no internal cheerleaders to drive the project forward.

Second, Google appears to be focusing itself more, and so without the founders it's hard to see how Dodgeball could be part of that focus.

Does this mean that mobile social media needs different than online social media?
The simple answer is yes.

Television, radio, print, online, and mobile are all different for fairly obvious reasons.

As good as mobile phones get, PCs will get even better. The screens will never be the same size, the processing power will never be the same, the connection speeds are not likely to be the same in terms of speed or reliability, and the use cases will be different.

Let's use YouTube as a simple example.

How much fun do you think it is to watch a 10-minute video clip on your mobile? How's the audio stack up to your PC?

Another example would be in the way you communicate with your friends.

If you're online, you are much more likely to write a long, well-written blog post that could go on for pages with photos and video clips inserted into it.

We don't see many people writing long blogs from their mobile. The same is true of emails.

In short, it's different in many ways, but not to the same extent that online is different from print.

Dodgeball numbers?
We've got no clue what the numbers are, so I wouldn't even dare a guess.

What makes a successful mobile social media brand?
What makes a good brand, regardless of medium, is a good product.

In the case of mobile, MocoSpace aims to deliver a safe, fun, authentic experience, which provides a lot of value to our members who rely heavily on their mobiles to connect with people anytime from anywhere.

Any new MocoSpace milestones?
MocoSpace has over 5 million members generating 2 billion page views a month almost entirely from mobile phones in the U.S.

We've got great members from all walks of life, but they're typically young -- mostly late teens to mid-20s -- hip, very social and absolutely addicted to their mobiles.

Our partners such as Def Jam records, AdMob, Quattro, Google and many others have been a blast to work with. And we couldn't ask for better investors than General Catalyst who've invested $7 million in us over two rounds.

How do you monetize a mobile social site?
Well, the primary engines are advertising and subscription.

There are other opportunities around virtual gifts, transactions, premium features, et cetera, but the bread and butter are the two I mentioned before.

At MocoSpace, we've focused on advertising because that's where we think the market is going. So far it's worked well for us.

December was a record month for us that beat our expectations and January is looking good as well.