One phrase I just heard in Global Mobile Internet Conference is SoMoLoCo. This can be said as the key of successful internet services in China, which I think the same globally.

What is SoMoLoCo?

Four factors playing main part in a service’s success is Social, Mobile, Local and Commercial, or SoMoLoCo. Actually these are not new points, but many often forget one of these points in their service. There are a lot of success stories from services that are able to synergize these four points to serve their users. Now let’s see what they are.

Social

The “social” feature is a must-have on every web / mobile based service. This feature exploits relevant information for users based on friendship network / relation they are building.

Mobile

In several countries with large number of mobile users, especially in Indonesia, “mobile” is another must-have for a service. It takes special strategy for service provider to serve their users who are active using mobile devices like smart phone, feature phone, or tablet computer. Users’ experience who access through browsers on PC / laptop with mobile device is certainly different and they have to be treated differently as well. This sometimes creates difficulties for service providers in designing mobile strategy, the lack of understanding on users’ behavior when using mobile device.

Local

Now, this feature is still relatively new for us. Location based social networks is still young in mobile internet industry, perhaps only been about 2-3 years. Basically it is similar with “social”, by asking: “What relevant information is available nearby at the moment?” Right now, information has higher value when it is local, close to users who make the information more useful. Services such as Koprol, Urbanesia, PersonaFlag and other location based social network live up to this concept and combined with other concepts.

Commercial

This is still debatable, especiall the matter of when is the monetized time from your service. But one thing for sure startups need to live on, and to live they need to monetize. How to make revenue comes their way depends on their creativity, but revenue is indeed an important part to ensure the startups keep going. But please keep in mind not to sacrifice good products for monetization, because often in early stage plenty of good ideas gone wasted just because they don’t have business value, when that good product already has higher value than any kind of “business value”. But of course, this issue is still debatable.

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Let’s try and look at several best services in the world, most of them are successful in implementing these four features. It won’t hurt to study and try to integrate them to our services. They can be the key to your success. Have you used this four factors well? Come and share it with us. 🙂

Translated by Nita Sellya.