Just 1.7 percent of all UK mobile subscribers (812,000) used a mobile social network in Q108, according to new Nielsen research. Even so, the research firm said the space “could be the next big thing”. It said 44 percent of mobile phone users belonged to web-based social networks, and a quarter of them used such sites whilst mobile.

So whilst the takeup from the overall pool of mobile users is low, it was never a given that all mobile users would take to the social nets. Convincing a quarter of all mobile-owning social net users to try out the services whilst wireless is not bad going at this early stage.

Identifying the leading sites is pretty easy - they’re exactly the same as in the desktop web world, with Facebook’s m.facebook.com getting over 557,000 hits (nine percent of all UK mobile web users) in the quarter. But travel net Where Are You Now? fares much better on mobile (seventh against 21st on desktop).

• MySpace And Facebook Already Biggest Mobile Social Networks