While the likes of OpenFeint, Scoreloop and Plus+ drove the early adoption of social mobile gaming networks, increasingly it's publisher-own networks that seem to be coming to the fore.

In this context, Gameloft's decision to tweet that its Live! service has reached 4 million members is more significant that the number itself.

After all, OpenFeint's claimed total of 90 million registered subscribers dwarfs that number, despite Gameloft's claim "we're now one of the biggest mobile community! [sic]".

Mustard seed

The service was originally launched for web and mobile chat in mid 2008, expanding into iOS with the release of iOS in July 2009.

Yet, given Gameloft announced 200 million downloads just on iOS in June, the Live! conversation rate obviously still remains in the low single digits.

[source: Gameloft]