Mobile gaming community MocoSpace is releasing the results of a new study focused on virtual goods consumption and engagement by age. The report found younger gamers (25-35) spend the most time playing social games, but gamers over 45 years of age buy exponentially more virtual goods than their younger counterparts. The study surveyed nearly 500,000 gamers on MocoSpace’s network of 22 million users.

Basically, MocoSpace is reporting that age directly correlates with amount of money spent on virtual goods within social games. The older the gamer, the more virtual goods were purchased. Gamers over 35 years of age, who made up 18 percent of gamers surveyed, were responsible for 42 percent of all virtual goods spending. In contrast, 18- to 25-year-olds, who made up 43 percent of those surveyed, were responsible for only 18 percent of virtual goods purchases.

The report shows that the 25- to 35-year-old is by far the most active social gaming demographic, spending nearly twice as much time gaming as any other group. Those 45 and older spent the least amount of time playing games.

Interestingly, a trend emerged from the study showing younger gamers are less likely to spend on virtual goods, while older gamers are much more likely to buy that sword or shield to advance in a game. Of course, it’s important to consider that older demographics may have more disposable income, or a desire to progress further within games via virtual goods to save time.

The results also highlight that different monetization methods may work for different age groups. If younger gamers spend the most time, an advertising-driven model may be more profitable than a purely virtual goods-based approach.

MocoSpace is backed by SoftBank, and has raised $10.5 million in funding.

MocoSpace develops a web-based social network that counts over 16 million users and three billion page views per month. While the network, which launched in 2006, was previously only mobile web-based and prided itself on its users mainly being non-techies who don’t own an iPhone, Android or BlackBerry device, the site has evolved into smartphone apps as well. The company just raised funding to expand into mobile social gaming as well, specifically for developing browser-based mobile social games.

MocoSpace’s two in-house social games, Street Wars and Stage Hero, have a combined total of over 700,000 monthly active users, average session times of over 4 minutes and players averaging nearly 2.5 sessions per day. The company is currently working with a number of game studios, and expects to launch its first 3rd party titles this spring.

Interested developers are invited to submit existing games and game proposals and those selected will receive cash and marketing support to develop and promote their titles on the MocoSpace Games Platform.

MocoSpace recently made waves when it announced its “intent” to purchase torubled social network MySpace from News Corp. MocoSpace CEO Justin Siegel said that MySpace would probably sell for between $50 million and $200 million.

Mobile social network MocoSpace has raised $3.5 million in a round of strategic funding from SoftBank Capital. This brings the startup’s total funding to $10.5 million.

MocoSpace develops a web-based social network that counts over 14 million users and three billion page views per month. While the network, which launched in 2006, was previously only mobile web-based and prided itself on its users mainly being non-techies who don’t own an iPhone, Android or BlackBerry device, the site has evolved into smartphone apps as well. The site makes money with its virtual currency and through advertising and mainly reaches the 18 to 34 age demographic.

MocoSpace recently launched an Android app, which allows for live chat with friends currently on app or on the mobile website, photo uploads, profile viewing and commenting and message notifications. And MocoSpace now offers users a website, a feature phone site, a smartphone site, and and iPhone app.

The new funding will be used towards expanding social gaming on the platform. The MocoSpace audience already plays one million games on the site per month, but the company will soon be launching its own browser-based mobile social games, and is currently developing partnerships with mobile web game developers to provide a wide range of game titles on its platform. New funding will also be used towards hiring developers and engineers to support the new gaming platform.

MocoSpace, which launched in 2006, was previously only mobile web-based and prided itself on its users mainly being non-techies who don’t own an iPhone, Android or BlackBerry device. The site makes money with its virtual currency and through advertising and mainly reaches the 18 to 34 age demographic. And MocoSpace claims to generate 3 billion pages per month, with users mobile users accessing the site over 5 times per day on average.

The functionality of the Android app is fairly simple. It allows for live chat with friends currently on app or on the mobile website, photo uploads, profile viewing and commenting and message notifications. The company decided to launch an app on the Android platform first because number of Android users accessing the MocoSpace mobile website had spiked by 40% over the past six months and is growing faster than other devices, including the iPhone and Blackberry.

Though not nearly as popular as Facebook or MySpace, MocoSpace is now one of the largest mobile-only social networks. It should be interesting to see if the network can create a userbase from smartphone apps.

MocoSpace, which launched in 2006, makes money with its virtual currency and through advertising and mainly reaches the 18 to 34 age demographic. The site claims to generate 3 billion pages per month, with users mobile users accessing the site over 5 times per day on average. The site is also generating interest from musicians using the site to share their music, with over 200 artists submitting music on MocoSpace every day. Though not nearly as popular as Facebook or MySpace. MocoSpace is now one of the largest mobile-only social networks.

The startup prides itself on its users mainly being non-techies who don’t own an iPhone, Android or BlackBerry device. MocoSpace also claims to have a diverse user base; 1/3 of their user base is Hispanic and 1/3 is African-American. We recently published some surprising stats about the breakup habits of MocoSpace users.

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This Valentine’s Day, make sure your loved one isn’t texting another love interest while you are out on a date. Mobile social network MocoSpace has released a study today revealing that one out of three MocoSpace users admitted they have flirted with someone else using their phone while on a date. MocoSpace surveyed close to 20,000 of their 10.3 million members for the report.

When asked if they had ever used their mobile phone to break up with someone, 57% said yes, with 48% of those using a text message to end the relationship. 90 percent of users said their “About Me” information is most important after pictures in making the decision to take the first step toward connecting with someone on MocoSpace. 79 percent said the recession had had no effect on their dating habits. And 60 percent did not have a date yet for Valentine’s Day, with 80 of those respondents do not consider it a priority to find one.

Many of these number seem to border on the ridiculous, but MocoSpace claims that most of its users are under 30, so perhaps these stats are plausible. MocoSpace claims to generate 3 billion page views per month, with most of the views coming its site via mobile phones, of course. The startup’s network targets users who have non-smartphones, that have simpler interfaces.

Using your phone to create or enhance real world interactions is a killer application, but no one has cracked the nut yet. The reason is that the network is useless until it achieves a critical mass of users who are online and using the application via their mobile phone. If no one else is online, there’s little point in you being online, either. And presence detection is another (technical) problem. Even if people have joined the network, how do you know when they are near you?

But once it does happen, look out. You could be in a bar and see who’s single, who thinks you’re cute, who wants to talk to you, etc. (if they choose to share that information). Forget meeting via an online dating site and then organizing an awkward in person meeting that usually falls flat. Instead, you can do the online an real world thing simultaneously.

We’ve kept an eye on the new startups launching in this space. Check out Rummble, Mig33, ZYB, Mocospace, Aka-Aki, Nokia Sensor, Dodgeball, Mobiluck, MeetMoi and Imity, just to get warmed up. But none of them yet have critical mass (Mig33, however, is turning into a very large cheap VOIP provider on the side).

LimeJuice now joins the group with a unique product. Users can actually join on the fly, via SMS. And the company is sponsoring party after party at bars and clubs in San Francisco to get users to try out the product with lots of others at the same time. The test results are encouraging – people are using it. A lot.

How It Works

The goal is to allow people in a bar or other social gathering to learn a little about the people around them, and flirt via the mobile network as a way to break the ice. The details are what makes LimeJuice interesting. It’s dead simple to join and use.

First, users can register for the service via SMS. That means if just one person in a bar is a member or even knows about the service, they can tell others and quickly get a core group to join. When you create an account, you tell it something distinctive about yourself (tall blonde, red dress!) so that people searching will be able to quickly know who you are. When you go to another event later on, you simple update the description for the evening).

Second, all of the key interaction (for now) happens via SMS. So every phone is ready to go. No need to download a java app or even go to a web page. Just send a text message to the service along with the identifier of the person you want to talk to (which you can get via search), and the message is sent to them.

Third, even though people are using the service to send text messages back and forth, phone numbers are not exchanged. LimeJuice sits in the middle, and you can block someone easily.

Beta Events

LimeJuice has seen a good level of participation at the handful of events they’ve sponsored. An average of 40-50 people participate per event. They spend about 1.5 hours each using the service over the course of the evening and average ten text messages sent per person (some people send as many as 180 text messages). At one event, over 2,500 messages were sent to the service from participants.

For now the company will continue to sponsor events in San Francisco, hopefully building up a core user base that will begin to spread out and get others to join. If/when they get a lot of people in San Francisco to use the service, they’ll then expand to other cities.

The company, founded by Tobin Van Pelt and John Garrett, is based in San Francisco and has four employees. They’ve self funded to date with $100,000 and are currently pitching for a Series A round of funding.

This only works, of course if you A) have friends on Radar, and B) they post pictures on a regular basis. Radar, which launched more than a year ago in the summer of 2006, has only 600,000 users worldwide. But that number has been doubling every month for the past three months. So we might be at an inflection point here, especially as more capable phones come onto the market that can take advantage of its Web-like features. Radar serves 250,000 pictures and videos a day. Eighty percent of its traffic comes from mobile devices (it also has a regular Website), and 70 percent of its users are outside the U.S.

While most of the conversations and photos on Radar are private, you can choose to make them public. And today the company is also launching a public gallery, where advertisers can try to entice Radar members to subscribe to their photo streams. Right now, there are photo streams for the upcoming movie Hitman, pictures of frivolous but funny merchandise from iWoot, top video picks from Vimeo, and CEO John Poisson’s own Radar stream. There will soon be Radar channels from Hendrick’s Gin, iTunes, and the stealth Web video series Nowhere Men (which will focus on a group people “missing” since 2002 and the audience has to help unravel the mystery). This sort of advertising will only work in so far as people don’t see it as advertising, which is why I like it.

Here is a page from Poisson’s Radar channel. Taking picture of food seems to be popular on the site:

And here is what Radar looks like on a regular Sony Ericson phone:

This is the Holy Grail of mobile social networking, and one of the main reasons for taking the networks off the desktop/laptop environment in the first place. Imagine walking into a meeting, classroom, party, bar, subway station, airplane, etc. and seeing profile information about other people in the area, depending on privacy settings. Picture, name, dating status, resume information, etc. The information that is available would be relevant to the setting – quick LinkedIn type information for a business meeting v. Facebook dating status for a bar.

Knowing when your friends are around, and having the ability to meet new people who share your interests (even if it’s just that you are both single), will drive massive usage of networks. But, as with many new services, a chicken and egg problem looms. Until everyone is using this, there is no real reason for anyone to use it. Meetro, an instant messaging service that finds friends based on location, has struggled to gain users over the last couple of years for this reason.

Technical barriers aren’t an issue – cell phone tower triangulation and bluetooth solve a lot of the problems of locating users and transmitting information between phones. What’s harder is just plain getting a critical mass of users.

The Failures

There is a trail of failed attempts at getting this right. Nokia released Nokia Sensor nearly three years ago. It broadcasts information about yourself to others via bluetooth. Never heard of it? Neither has anyone else, although it is still available for download. Google’s Dodgeball is another example that’s fallen flat – it tells friends (and friends of friends) who are within 10 blocks of you where you are and what you are doing.

The New Experiments

A bunch of new startups are giving this a shot, too. In a post yesterday TechCrunch UK mentions Germany’s Aka-Aki, Paris-based Mobiluck and MeetMoi (the lone U.S. startup). Another startup is Copenhagen-based Imity. It’s not surprising that most of the innovation is occurring in Europe. The current approach is to get java-based software on the phone – very few U.S. carriers and handsets allow user-based installs of java apps.

Aka-Aki

Aka-Aki, based in Germany, is just a couple of weeks old. Create a profile and download the java app to your phone. You can also create and join groups that say things about your life, job, etc. When you are near other people who are members, data about you is transmitted to them via bluetooth, and vice versa. Users have control over data flow with privacy settings. And the groups supply another layer of privacy. You may transmit that you are single only to other singles, for example. Or share your sexual orientation only with others with the same orientation.

After a silent launch, word is getting out. Thousands of people in Berlin are using the software, and there is a chance for them to get critical mass there with proper marketing. The company has raised a small seed round from FoundersLink and is currently looking for a larger round.

Imity

Copenhagen based Imity, which launched in April, has also been flying under the radar. Like Aka-Aki it detects other members via bluetooth and send basic profile information to your phone. It also keeps track of people on its website, so you can check that out periodically from your normal computer. It’s bridges mobile and traditional social networks, which may help it gain critical mass. Co-founder Nikolaj Nyholm is also behind Polar Rose, a facial recognition and image tagging service.

Imity went open source in February 2007.

MeetMoi

MeetMoi, the only U.S. based service, is most like Dodgeball – it uses text messaging to help connect people. It’s dating focused – text your location to the service and it notifies other users in your area that you are there. If they are interested, they can contact you. The company has raised $1.5 million from Acadia Woods Partners and is based in New York.

MobiLuck

MobiLuck, based in Paris, is another bluetooth solution similar to Aka-Aki and Imity. Download the software to your phone and it vibrates when other users are nearby. You can then chat with them, send photos, etc.

Update: Per a comment below, we’re adding Britekite to the list. We actually covered them briefly last month as part of the TechStars event.

Most of the big networks have mobile versions of their site, with stripped down functionality. Facebook has, hands down, the best mobile application if you happen to own an iPhone. But for the most part, competition in the desktop arena has limited the amount of attention any of the big networks are giving to the mobile world.

That might just give some runway to new startups focused solely on mobile. We recently covered ZYB, a Danish startup that just launched a mobile social network on the back of it’s mobile address book backup service. The specifics of their service largely limit them to Europe, where users have more freedom to add applications to their mobile devices.

In the U.S., one of the stronger contenders is MocoSpace, a Boston based startup that launched a mobile-only social network last year (see coverage at MobileCrunch from April 2006).

The service is very easy to use from a mobile phone. Registration is dead simple – it took about 20 seconds on my iPhone earlier today. Right away MocoSpace starts to suggest possible friends based on proximity, online status or random selections. You can then add photos and video from your phone (or upload them from a desktop/laptop computer), chat with friends, and create a stripped down “blog” which is similar to Twitter in functionality.

MocoSpace says they are serving close to 500 million monthly page views – which is pretty impressive since “almost all” of those page views are from mobile devices. They are also approaching 1 million registered users, and 6,000 new users sign up daily.

MocoSpace raised a $3 million in a Series A financing in January 2007. Investors included General Catalyst, Pilot Group and Michael Deering. The company has 15 employees (half in Boston, half in Israel).

If you are a startup targeting the mobile social networking space, we want to hear from you.