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Vodafone and MySpace announced a deal today to provide social networking services to European customers for the first time. This move is representative of a continued push into the mobile marketplace by social networking services, along with their advertising partners.

MySpace Mobile will be available in the second half of 2007 for United Kingdom users first, with plans to implement the service for the rest of the European Union at a later date. The application will be pre-loaded onto some new Vodafone handsets, but will also available for download from Vodafone Live! as well.

Of course, users will have to be registered with MySpace in order to access the content. The MySpace Mobile service will have many of the same features of the traditional website, except for the ability to upload videos. Users will still able to upload and see photos, send emails, manage contacts and post blogs, however.

The push for mobile visibility is becoming one of the defining trends of the year, and we’re just barely scratching the surface here in February. Mobile search has been an especially hot topic, as Yahoo opened the year by striking deals with several carriers, while the European market is looking to band together in order to create its own viable mobile search platform.

Users may not be so quick to adopt MySpace Mobile, however, considering that Vodafone not only plans to implement a subscription-based model to monetize the service, but will also hit users with data transfer charges for photo, e-mail, and other content transmitted as part of the service.

Michelle Donagan at Light Reader lends a bit of perspective:While social networking applications fit well with the messaging and personalization capabilities on mobile phones, the business models from the different worlds don't currently match: MySpace.com is an advertising-based service, while mobile operators charge for usage.

The value for mobile users is less likely to be apparent in a subscription-based model, when the same content and features can be accessed for free from a desktop. The real challenge facing mobile carriers lies in transitioning from a fee based service to an ad-supported business for monetization.

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