Mobile Marketing Magazine

Colibria Offloads IMPS Business to Synchronica

Colibria has completed the sale of its Open Mobile Alliance Instant Messaging and Presence Service (OMA IMPS) business to Synchronica plc. Colibria says the divestment will allow it to increase investment in core areas of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) application servers.
Colibria has seen increasing growth in SIP convergence products over the last 18 months, having won a further three new customers in Q1 2010, in addition to the six new customers announced in Q4 2009, Colibria’s portfolio consists of a SIP Instant Messaging Server; SIP Presence Server; XDMS Servers; and a Social Network Gateway and Internet Instant Messaging Gateway - integrating and interfacing messaging and presence with existing services like Windows Live Messenger and Facebook Chat.
“Colibria's move to focus on the convergence market appears well timed, with the IMS equipment market seeing increasing momentum worldwide, with sales in 2009 up 142% over 2008 and expected to reach $1.44 billion (£950 million) by 2014,” says Diane Myers, Directing Analyst at Infonetics Research. “We have seen particular growth in Rich Communication Suite, LTE trials, enhanced mobile IM, and presence services - all areas that Colibria are embedded in as a leading independent vendor.”

Crowdsourced App is Made for Sharing

iwikiphone, an independent, international community for iPhone users, has released Scrappbook, a crowdsourced app that enables users to create and share scrapbooks of their videos, pictures and audio content. The app costs £0.59.
The original idea for the app came from 16-year old Alistair Heath, and was refined by community members in the US, Bahrain and the UK. Heath, and the members who helped refine the app, get a one-off payment from iwikiphone and a share of the first month’s sales revenues. Scrappbook is already popular with highly social iPhone users in the US and is number five in the iTunes Photography section. It is also included in the ‘New and Noteworthy’ section on the US App Store homepage.
Scrappbook includes geo-localisation for each picture and video; a range of themes, bubbles, notes and signs to choose from; and direct sharing to Facebook. Users can also archive several scrapbooks and export them to PDF for printing. It is available on iTunes in the UK and US, with local language versions on iTunes in Spain France, Germany and Italy. You can see a video of Scrappbook in action here.
“The idea behind the model is that we only develop apps that people actually want,” says iwikiphone CEO, Luca Di Cesare. “Scrappbook is already up on iTunes and selling well. Members of the community that helped develop the app are likely to be our first customers, but I’m sure that it will be very popular with the vast majority of iPhone app users.”
Ideas for apps are suggested, refined and selected for development in iwkiphone’s App Farm. It has bee operational since December 2009, and in the five month since it launched, 600 suggestions for apps have been posted. 16 apps have been published to be reviewed by the community, and four chosen for development. 
Community members can find out about the latest and coolest apps on iwikiphone through Video Reviews; 
AppLists; Circle of Friends (updates from trusted community members); and APPscriptions, which are 140-character user-generated definitions of cool apps.
iwikiphone also provides community members with recommendations on new apps that maybe of specific interest to a member. The app selection is based on the information collected from community registrations and ongoing monitoring of app developments outside of the community.

Telefónica Hands Social Networking Task to Myriad

Telefónica has selected Myriad Group to provide social networking aggregation services to its mobile subscribers across 12 countries in Latin America.
Marketed under Telefónica's ‘Movistar’ brand, Myriad’s services will enable mobile users to simultaneously access multiple social networks, via mobile browsers, downloadable apps and other mobile technologies. The aim of the partnership is to deliver a richer social networking experience for Movistar customers, over a broad range of devices, including Movistar-branded phones.
“Latin American consumers are enthusiastic users of social networks. This agreement will bring them a compelling and affordable way to access these sites from their mobile phones,” says Luis Miguel Gilperez Lopez, Managing Director of Telefónica Latin América’s Mobile Division. “One of the most appealing aspects of Myriad is its focus on mass-market phones rather than just high-end devices, which will enable Telefónica to reach the widest possible audience and make the most of this exciting opportunity.”
According to comScore, two out of three global web users visited a social networking site in December 2009. In Latin America, the adoption rate exceeds 80%.
Telefónica currently serves more than 80 million mobile users in 12 Latin America countries, including Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Optus Goes Social with Myriad

Australian mobile network operator Optus is to offer its 8 million customers social networking services, powered by Myriad, whose software is in over 2 billion mobile phones worldwide.This is the first social networking deal announced by Myriad since acquiring Xumii, which pioneered the use of cloud-based technologies to simultaneously connect mass-market phones to multiple social networks.
The Myriad-powered Optus SocialView service seamlessly adds social networking features to Optus’ existing mobile portal, Optus Zoo. Using a mobile phone browser, Optus users can now view friends’ messages from Australia’s most popular social networking sites – Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Flickr. Users can also post their own updates and tweets, either to a specific site, or to all of their social networks simultaneously.
The service requires only a standard mobile browser, and customers also have the option of receiving free text alerts, including social network updates and one-click access to SocialView.
“Social networking services are a sure-fire way for Optus to increase the appeal and popularity of Optus Zoo,” says Jennifer Zanich, Myriad’s General Manager for Xumii services. “Viewing friends’ updates and changing status are the most common actions on social networks. Enabling these features on a single screen creates a quick and easy way for mobile users to stay in touch throughout the day, which will increase visits to Optus Zoo and ultimately drive the adoption of other services on the portal."

GetJar Celebrates 50m Facebook App Downloads

Independent app store GetJar has revealed that  more than 50 million people have downloaded Facebook’s mobile app from GetJar in the past six months. With GetJar’s App Download Page (ADP) and Mobile Site Shortcut (MSS), people are able to download the app, which gives them a fast and easy shortcut to access Facebook’s mobile website with a single click from their phone.
“With more than 400 million users around the world, people are increasingly looking to stay connected through Facebook from their mobile device,” says Alison Rosenthal, Head of Mobile Business Development for Facebook. “GetJar has helped us bring the Facebook mobile experience to millions of people, regardless of their mobile platform, phone model or carrier.”
GetJar provides a free Mobile Site Shortcut (MSS), which is a small application that launches any phone’s native web browser and redirects it to the appropriate mobile site. The MSS is global, easy and cost effective and appears in GetJar’s store as if it was an actual application people can download. Companies get global distribution and reach without having to develop unique applications for different operating systems. When downloaded, the MSS appears as an icon on the user’s phone, providing them with one-click access to the brand’s mobile website. Companies with an MSS on GetJar include Facebook, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google.
App Download Page (ADP) works by providing mobile developers and content owners with a simple mobile webpage that can be linked to their mobile website. GetJar hosts a mobile web page so the company doesn’t have to worry about supporting multiple mobile device platforms, models or carriers. When a person clicks a link provided on the company’s own mobile site, they are redirected to that company’s ADP on GetJar. The person’s mobile device is automatically detected and they can download the appropriate version of the company’s mobile application for their phone from GetJar. If no application exists, GetJar can provide the free Mobile Site Shortcut (MSS), which will work across a wide range of devices regardless of the platform they are running on. Companies using ADP include Flirtomatic, Facebook, Photobucket and Fandango.
“In the recent Chetan Sharma Consulting Report commissioned by GetJar, we saw that apps downloads will increase from 7 billion in 2009 to 50 billion downloads globally by 2012,” says GetJar CEO and Founder, Ilja Laurs. “Global brands will realize that although applications provide users with a rich and engaging experience, to maximize their reach, they need to complement their offering with a mobile web experience that cuts across handset and operating system fragmentation. As the Wal-Mart of mobile apps, GetJar is committed to providing these content owners with a one-stop shop to distribute both their apps and mobile sites across any platform, handset, carrier or country to help them reach this goal.”

Dating Meets Mapping with FlirtMaps

Content producer Zodiak Entertainment has announced the beta version launch of FlirtMaps, a mobile location-based dating iPhone application, which will be downloadable free of charge via the Apple App Store in the UK, US, and Italy in the coming week.
Based on a user’s current location and dating preferences, FlirtMaps will put forward a selection of “interesting” people to chat to in the area. Its functionality will also increase in the coming months to recommend local places for users to meet new friends. The application has been developed by Neo Network, the digital subsidiary of the Zodiak Entertainment Group.
“FlirtMaps is a new, smart way to meet new people on the go, making digital dating more enjoyable than ever before,” says Marco Ferrari, Zodiak Entertainment Chief Digital Officer. “It’s about real people, looking for real love!”
FlirtMaps will soon be available in Spanish and Portuguese, in addition to English and Italian, and a roll-out to 20 major countries, including Brazil, Mexico, India, Sweden and Denmark, is planned for the summer. Neo Network says that FlirtMaps seeks to connect anyone, anywhere in the world with the kind of people they are searching for, as quickly as possible.
Marco Franciosa, Chief Technology Officer at Neo Network, who designed the product, says: “We have more than 10 years of successful experience in online dating, and more than 2 million registered users worldwide. We now think that the market is ready for a new kind of product and are really excited about FlirtMaps. Not only is totally free for the user, its really easy to use, as well as being private and discrete.”
FlirtMaps’ initial monetisation model will be based on advertising revenue. It will offer a platform for geo-located advertising and encourage users to collect ‘virtual coins’, which offer them extra features, including discounts and free-access to local partner venues such as discos or pubs. When a critical mass of users is met, Neo Network says it will unleash the full potential of the product, increasing the functionality to fully interact with Zodiak Entertainment’s TV dating formats.
Blackberry, Android and Symbian versions of FlirtMaps are currently in development and Neo Network says it is already working on next steps for extending FlirtMaps applications.

Your Plyce or Mine?

Start-up Plyce has taken the wraps off its Europe-focused mobile social networking app of the same name for the iPhone.
Plyce is described by its founders as: “a social network that connects people and places”. To use it, download the app to your iPhone, then launch it when you’re out and about. It will show you what places from the Plyce database are nearby. The database includes over a million places across Europe,  and you can add new places if they're not already on the database.
Plyce has strong privacy controls. Users can decide when to check in, and with whom to share that information; either just with friends, or publicly. Home addresses and the location of other personal places are always hidden to people who are not the user’s friends. Once checked in, users can add comments or pictures to places, and share information either with their friends or with all Plyce users. If they share check-in information, either with friends or publicly, their friends, or all Plyce users, can see where they are.
"Plyce is first and foremost a service that lets you know where your friends are, and discover new places," says Plyce Founder and CEO, Martin Destagnol. "With Plyce, when you go out on a Saturday night, you can tell which friends are out nearby, and parties can get started on a whim."

Case Study: DIY Mobile Social Networking

We Harlem is a social network for residents in the Harlem region of New York City. It was set up just a  few months ago, and has been enthusiastically received by Harlem residents.
We Harlem gives users a very personal and localised experience, with the means to interact and make connections with other people in the neighbourhood, find out about forthcoming events, or up and coming bars, clubs and restaurants.
The site is the brainchild of Sergio Lilavois, who set up We Harlem because he recognised that local residents in the Harlem region of New York needed a more effective way to find out what was happening in the community. At the moment, the site is free, but eventually, Sergio hopes to support the network with advertising revenue from those local firms.
Key to the network’s success is that is so tailored to its niche audience. Lilavois belives that Twitter is “too big”, so wanted to create something far more focused.  However, he also wanted to focus on the content, not the technology, so rather than building the service from scratch, he investigated the market to see if anyone provided white-label microblogging and settle on the DIY social network creation too from Shoutem. “Shoutem stood out from the crowd,” says Lilavois.  
Shoutem enables users to easily and quickly create their own mobile-optimised social networks that are private, location-based and targeted to niche groups. Networks can be created in just minutes. Currently free to download, Shoutem includes mobile apps for the iPhone and Blackberry handsets. 
“Shoutem is the best fit for what we are looking for: good features, reliable technology and the Shoutem team has been very responsive and efficient,” says Lilavois. “I like the flow of Shoutem: it is not complicated and people can easily see what to do. It’s a very user-friendly interface.”
Lilavois is an enthusiastic supporter of the mobile, location-based features included within Shoutem.  “People spend a lot of their time communicating on their mobiles.  50% of the time I’m logged into Shoutem myself it’s from my mobile device. It’s great that there’s a mobile application for Shoutem, not just an API. It’s meant we haven’t needed to develop it ourselves,” he says.
Shoutem says that Lilavois’ experience with We Harlem shows that the marketing potential of mobile social networks is now within reach of anyone with a great idea, regardless of their technology experience or budget.
 

Synchronica Buys Colibria's IM Business

Synchronica, whch provides next-generation mobile messaging services, has signed an agreement to acquire Colibria's IMPS (Instant Messaging and Presence Service) business, reseller agreements, and existing worldwide mobile operator customer base. Synchronica says the acquisition will accelerate its entry into the fast-growing mobile Instant Messaging (IM) sector and help the company to achieve its goal of becoming the leader in next-generation mobile messaging for emerging markets. The acquisition will enlarge Synchronica's footprint in emerging markets by adding key customer contracts in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Russia/CIS, as well as global reseller agreements.
Synchronica will continue to develop, market, and support Colibria's open standards-based IM technology as a stand-alone product. The software will also be integrated into Synchronica's Mobile Gateway messaging suite and will be pre-installed on the recently launched MessagePhone, a low-cost messaging-centric handset using Mobile Gateway.
"Mobile instant messaging and social networking are fast-growing sectors, in particular in emerging markets,” says Synchronica CEO, Carsten Brinkschulte. “Our acquisition of Colibria's instant messaging business will allow Synchronica to offer a range of next-generation messaging products to service providers, improving our competitive positioning and accelerating our commercial growth."

Four Go Flirting

Mobile and online flirting service Flirtomatic has added four more members to its team, including Udi Jacobi as Head of European Business Development, who will be responsible for developing partnerships across Europe as Flirtomatic enters further European territories.
Jacobi joins Flirtomatic with over 15 years of management and leadership experience in the wireless and online industry across APAC and Europe. Prior to joining Flirtomatic, he was VP of Sales, Marketing and Business Development at Cellectivity, responsible for all commercial and marketing activity within the company.
Flirtomatic has also made three further additions to the team. Geoff Wyre joins the company as International Product Manager from Tania Mobile, responsible for all aspects of new territory launches, including translations, testing and reporting, working with different teams in Flirtomatic to keep track of different promotions across the globe.
Liesbeth Bergmans has joined the team as a developer. Previously she was the Development Team Lead for the Belgian digital agency Nascom, working with clients including Sony, VoxMobile, KBC Mobile and Deutsche Bank.
Finally, Mauricio Reyes joins Flirtomatic to consolidate and drive the quality assurance process as a Software Testing Engineer. He has worked in mobile technology for over six years on enterprise and consumer level solutions for Vodafone, T-Mobile and France Telecom.

Lufthansa Launches MemberScout Location-based Mobile Social Network

Lufthansa has announced the launch of MemberScout, the air travel industry’s first real-time, location-based social networking solution for frequent flyers. MemberScout enables its users to instantly swap, share or exchange knowledge and ideas. The application, available as an iPhone and soon also BlackBerry application, was developed by mobile apps developer match2blue, using the Apama Business Event Processing (BEP) platform from Progress Software Corporation.
MemberScout was launched in beta to Lufthansa’s ‘Miles & More’ members in November 2009. It’s an instant information exchange through which participants offer each other help and advice, asking questions and providing information related to destinations and travel. Match2Blue created the mobile app to support Lufthansa’s customer relationship strategy, though rather than using the social network to push out information about flights, it has been designed as a ‘member-helps-member’ service.
“Our vision is to help frequent flyers connect with each other to benefit from peer group advice,” says Lufthansa Head of Social Media, Dr. Torsten Wingenter. “Ultimately, it will support engagement with the Lufthansa and Miles & More brands, but is not a sales tool – we are helping the business community that flies with us to gain the benefits of being in that community, wherever and whenever they need to.” 
Dr. Giles Nelson, Chief Technology Strategist at Progress Software, believes the MemberScout service could prove invaluable to Lufthansa customers. 
“Imagine how essential the service could become to MemberScout members,” she says. “For instance, you land in Heathrow and see updates on the quickest way into London that morning – so ensuring you make your meeting – as reported by other MemberScout members. The possibilities are limitless.”

Pay Per Download System Delivers Results, says Mobango

Mobango, the “social mobile application store”, says it has proof that the combination of its app-promotion service and the Mobango community of 5 million members, helps developers to be dramatically more effective in driving downloads of their apps, compared to traditional promotion methods.
The company says it has found that its Pay per Promoted Downloads (PPD) Platform is five to 20 times more effective than traditional promotion methods for applications. The PPD Platform is a bidding system that enables content owners to bid for premium visibility on Mobango, but only pay for the downloads they receive. Since developers only pay when they get downloads, they are able to generate new users at a fraction of the cost of traditional Cost Per Click (CPC) or Cost Per Impression (CPM) campaigns.
Mobango CEO Fabio Pezzotti believes the viral nature of the Mobango community adds to the effectiveness. "For a developer, if you promote on Mobango, it’s not just random users downloading your app, but a member of our community,” he says. “The various social features in Mobango mean that developers can create strong, long-term relationships with their customers."
The PPD Platform enables developers and content owners to geo-target their campaign by region and by handset, and to allocate a daily budget (e.g. $100 per day) to promote a particular app or mobile site. As developers set their maximum bids for a time period and download (eg $0.30 per download) and Mobango provides analytics to help them understand their users, developers are in full control of their success and can see the installed base of their application grow. Mobango offers PPD both on a self-service basis, and also on an ‘assisted PPD’ basis for brands and agencies.
The Mobango community has more than 5 million young early adopters, and over 1.1 million pieces of content, fully optimised for over 2,000 phones. Mobango saw a 500% increase in mobile applications downloads during 2009.

Make Your Own Mobile Social Network

Croatian-based Five Minutes Group, which has been building social networking and Web 2.0 services since 2006 for clients including Real Networks, Vodafone and Microsoft, has unveiled Shoutem, an iPhone and BlackBerry application that enables users to easily and quickly create their own mobile social networks that are private, targeted to niche groups and location-based. An Android version is due soon.
Shoutem brings together many of the familiar features of existing public platform social networks, but lets users control access, and the look and feel, without the need for any programming or development skills. Networks can be created in just minutes.  Shoutem is designed to bring together groups, whether friends, students or communities, or more specialist niches such as sports fans, clubs and events. The Shoutem platform is being used by social networks worldwide.
Shoutem builds on the success of the company’s original microblogging tool, which has over 11,000 networks worldwide. The new version adds feature-rich social networking tools such as a camera function and file uploads, and is optimised for mobile and location-based communications. 
Five Minutes Group notes that the popularity of social networks has been proven by public platforms such as Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter, but adds that these are open networks, used by hundreds of thousands of users. Shoutem takes a different approach, giving users the tools they need to create their own social networks for smaller numbers of users, quickly and easily.  This means that users have full control over the look and feel of the network and who has access, but without the need to develop their own software. 
Hussein Yahfoufi has created a social network called ‘NFL Shouts’ in the US, using Shoutem. He says: “There is a lot of NFL presence on Twitter, but it’s just an open space with no groups. We decided we wanted to have a Twitter-like site but just for the NFL community. I really like Shoutem because it has given us everything we needed to build our site without needing to do our own development. 
“The mobile function is important to use. We’ve seen that the most traffic on NFL Shouts is during football games, so people can connect with each other at the ground.  Users can even ‘shout’ pictures from the game.”

comScore Stats Reveal Mobile Social Networking Boom

comScore has released a study on social networking access via mobile phones that reveals that 30.8% of Smartphone users accessed social networking sites via their mobile browser in January 2010, up from 22.5% a year ago. Access to Facebook via mobiles grew 112%, while Twitter experienced a 347% increase.
“Social networking remains one of the most popular and fastest-growing behaviours on both the PC-based Internet and the mobile web,” says Mark Donovan, comScore’s Senior Vice President of Mobile. “Social media is a natural sweet spot for mobile since mobile devices are at the centre of how people communicate with their circle of friends, whether by phone, text, email, or, increasingly, accessing social networking sites via a mobile browser.”
In January 2010, 11.1% of all mobile phone users accessed a social networking site via the mobile, an increase of 4.6% over the previous year. Much of this growth has been driven by Smartphone users, 30.8% of whom accessed social networking sites on their mobile browsers, up more than 8 percentage points on the year. By comparison, just 6.8% of feature phone users accessed social networking sites on their mobile phones.
Access of leading social networking sites via mobile browser continues to see significant growth, says comScore. In January 2010, 25.1 million mobile users accessed Facebook via their mobile browser, a 112% over the previous year. MySpace attracted 11.4 million users, approximately half that of Facebook, in January. Twitter attracted 4.7 million mobile users in January, a 347% on the previous year. These figures do not include access of the social networking services by the nearly 6 million mobile phone owners who do so exclusively through mobile applications.

10 Things You Need to Know About Mobile and Social Media

In May 2009, the Interactive Advertising Bureau released a guide entitled: ‘10 Things You Absolutely Have To Know About Mobile Advertising Right Now!!!’
It took the form of a collection of quotes from people in the IAB and elsewhere, talking about a different aspect of mobile advertising. The IAB has just released similar guidance on where mobile meets social media, entitled: ‘Ten things you need to know about mobile and social media’. We’re pleased to share it with you…

1. Accelerating change
While Gartner predicts that mobile will be the dominant form of web access worldwide by 2013, today, already, the combination of social and mobile is accelerating that trend, with nearly the same percentage of iPhone owners accessing Facebook through their mobile (71%) as through fixed-line Internet (77%).
(Source: Ipsos, ‘The Future of Mobile’ study, December 2009).
Steve Wing, Head of Mobile and Digital Attraction, Guardian

2. Social media and mobile are growing
It’s been predicted by eMarketer that mobile and social network users worldwide will grow more than five-fold between 2009 and 2014, rising from 141.4 million users in 2009 to 760.1 million in 2014.
Clark Turner, Editor, UTalk Marketing

3. It’s how we spend our time
48% of time spent on the mobile Internet is on social networking sites.
Alistair Hill, Analyst and Mobile Products, Europe, comScore

4. It’s personal
To get the most from mobile it is crucial to fully understand everyone you see, along with their actions. Use mobile analytics to precisely identify, measure and personalize websites and apps for each person. Then give everything a social element and learn how people share your service and spread the word.
Andy Bovingdon, VP Product Marketing, Bango

5. It’s becoming the norm
We conducted a survey of mobile users who viewed ads on our network to better understand how mobile social networking differs from PC usage. We found that over 55% of all feature phone users, 47% of Smartphone users and 38% of iPhone users report using social networks from their phone "often". Additionally, high-end mobile device users are more likely to use Facebook and Twitter while mobile than the reported PC usage patterns.
Jonathan Abraham, Brand Sales Director, Europe, AdMob

6. It’s frequent
Social networking on mobile is encouraging regular usage - when people use social networks, they do so an average of 3.8 times a day for 42 minutes.
Alex Kozloff, Media Research Manager, Unanimis

7. It can make mobile inspirational
Using mobile and social media together can add insight to your campaign at the same time as being inspirational. Nike’s ‘True City’ app created by AKQA is a great example of this. The app utilises social media by encouraging the user to share content from their iPhone to their Facebook page.
Harriet Clarke, Communications Executive, IAB

8. It must be mindful of consumers
If driving users to your online social networking site, be mindful of the user journey. For example, iPhones aren't Flash-enabled, which could result in a deflating user experience and a missed opportunity for advertisers.
Mike Newcombe, Mobile & VOD Controller, BSkyB

9. It must be compatible
A staggering 2.2 billion minutes were spent using Facebook in a single month via UK mobile phones (GSMA Mobile Media Metrics Dec 2009). As more and more people choose to access Facebook via their mobile rather than their PC, it will become increasingly important for branded Facebook apps to be mobile compatible too.
Richard Pentin, Senior Planner, TMW

10. It can be integrated
You can significantly add to your overall communications plan by including a mobile element to make your marketing more social. Setting consumers tasks that are relevant to their mobile usage and then providing a forum for comparison or competition can add dynamism to a campaign. Lean Mean Fighting Machine recently launched an award-winning campaign for Samsung, which made the most of the exceptional quality of their new phone with a ‘silent disco’ with a twist. Contestants danced to the music on their mobile phones and if someone called or texted them during the disco, they were out of the competition. This campaign successfully tapped into the mindset of the mobile consumer, and built on behaviours they were already used to in a very social way.
Amy Kean, Senior PR and Marketing Manager, IAB

Ten Things You Need to Know About Mobile Advertising. Read.

Kirusa Enhances FriendzChat with Voice SMS

The Altruist Group, which specializes in wireless voice services, has announced a joint initiative with Kirusa, which develops mobile value added services. The tie-up will bring together Altruist’s social networking product ‘FriendzChat’, India’s largest social networking product, and Kirusa’s Voice SMS solution.
With this initiative, Kirusa and Altruist will offer an integrated Voice SMS-enhanced FriendzChat service to subscribers of mobile carriers in India. Kirusa and Altruist will also offer the Voice SMS enhanced FriendzChat globally, leveraging Kirusa’s extensive Voice SMS footprint. The integrated service will utilize Kirusa’s existing Voice SMS platform and infrastructure, ensuring quick and seamless rollout of the new service.
FreindzChat is a voice-enabled service through which the subscribers can set off on their dating venture anytime and anywhere using their mobile phones. The users get a Voice Chat ID that allows them to communicate without revealing their real mobile number. The FriendzChat service supports communicating with a voice call as well as by SMS. The new integrated service further enables FriendzChat subscribers to send a voice SMS to another user at any time, even when they are not able to answer the voice chat call.
FriendzChat integrates with Kirusa Voice SMS using an open API available to third party application developers to send and receive Voice SMS messages to subscribers. Kirusa’s Voice SMS delivers the Voice SMS from FriendzChat users with their Chat ID rather than their regular mobile number.
 “We are aiming to enrich the FriendzChat experience for Indian mobile subscribers,” says Altruist Technologies Managing Director, Anuj Agarwal. “Kirusa Voice SMS will be an additional means of communication for FriendzChat subscribers. We chose Kirusa for this integration as Voice SMS is a compelling new mode of communication and Kirusa is the leading provider of Voice SMS globally. We wanted to leverage the superior capabilities of Voice SMS into FriendzChat and offer our subscribers an innovative communication option.”

SEVEN Unveils Ping Messaging and Apps Platform

SEVEN has launched Ping, a set of packaged services for mobile operators and device manufacturers to push enable  messaging, social networking and mobile applications on ´Superphones, Smartphones and mass-market devices.  Ping is powered by System SEVEN, a mobile push platform that is already deployed on hundreds of device models.
SEVEN has taken a mobile cloud computing approach to Ping. This allows the company to efficiently provide push applications such as email, instant messaging, social networking, and any application that needs to be connected to or exchange data with the cloud, to mass market devices, including lower-end feature phones, Smartphones and next-generation Superphones. With Ping, SEVEN says it is opening its platform to partners and customers enabling them to take full advantage of the SEVEN push and synchronization technology. SEVEN says its platform and Ping bring significant efficiencies in wireless data synchronization; savings in battery life; reductions of the cost of service delivery; a superior user experience; and optimization of data traffic on the network, which in some instances represents the majority of an operator’s traffic. 
 “From the get-go, we envisioned a mobile world beyond pure voice and messaging, and hence designed our System SEVEN platform to support all forms of data, not just email,” says SEVEN CTO, Trevor Fiatal. “Doing so has given us the scalability to meet global customer needs – whether for traditional messaging such as email or for newer trends such as today’s high-growth social networking applications.  We believe that this foresight and experience in building a push-enabled network that can easily grow as new mobile markets mature has been and will continue to be a key advantage for SEVEN over our competitors.”

Sendandsee Launches Tweet Monetisation Tool

Sendandsee has implemented a method for content owners to catch the relevant discussions and images on Twitter and integrate them into the content owner’s own mobile service, enabling automated integration of user-generated content and tweet monetization.
Sendandsee’s mobiprint is a patented mobile service creation platform that uses architecture well suited for the mobile ecosystem of low network speeds, unlimited terminal variation, and rapid and radical market evolution.
The company says the Twitter integration fits perfectly with what is known from mobile service usage analysis: mobile media is complementary to other media formats and thus a growth sector for media companies.
It notes also that media on the go is consumed with methods and behavioural patterns that are different to those of other types of media: the consumption of mobile media just happens it is not planned. The ability for a content owner to integrate the discussions on Twitter and possibly even monetize them could therefore be an important feature.
“We see this feature as an important add-on to existing mobile services. It can integrate user-generated content and discussions back to the original story, creating a loop with many opportunities.” says Jorma Kario, VP for Sales at Sendandsee.
Sendandsee also offers weblink building capability, which the company says will help to build the service’s pagerank and increase its visibility on search engines. Advertising in mobiprint can come from pre-defined sources, or Sendandsee can insert it automatically. Sendandsee’s mobiprint is linked with multiple advertising sources, including Smaato’s mobile ad optimization platform, SOMA, which aggregates multiple leading mobile ad networks globally to maximize mobile advertising revenues.

Nimbuzz Launches in Korea

Nimbuzz has announced the launch of Nimbuzz Korea, offering dedicated operations and local language clients into the 50 million-strong Korean mobile market.
Working in partnership with YSK Media, a Seoul-based media and mobile communications company, Nimbuzz Korea will see Nimbuzz’s range of free mobile Instant Messaging (IM) and VoIP services marketed directly to Korea’s rapidly-growing audience of Smartphone users.
According to research firm Gartner, following the iPhone’s introduction to Korea in 2009, Smartphone usage in the country is expected to rise sharply over the next three years, accounting for 25% of the market by 2013.
Nimbuzz says it is well-positioned to take advantage of this growth, with the Nimbuzz for iPhone and PC applications already available in Korean. All additional Nimbuzz clients will now be translated into Korean, with users also enjoying dedicated support and centralized connectivity, plus products and services dedicated to the Korean consumer.
YSK Media will work on Nimbuzz’s behalf to create impetus both inside and outside Korea, as well as pursuing operator partnerships, commercial tie-ups and other avenues for growth worldwide.
“The Korean mobile market and its Social Network Service (SNS) market offers considerable potential which cannot be overlooked,” says YSK Media CEO, Joo-Hee Jung. “This is a significant opportunity to build the Nimbuzz network within the Korean SNS market and expand into other Asian countries. Nimbuzz Korea will work to optimize the user experience by offering customized features to Korean users, as well as securing partnerships with domestic and SNS enterprises.”
Nimbuzz’s free mobile IM and VoIP application, launched in May 2008, enables millions of users worldwide to enjoy free calls and instant messaging with friends across both its own network, and users’ favourite online social communities.

GyPSii and Telmap Partner for Location-based Social Networking

GyPSii, which describes itself as a “mobile digital lifestyle application and geo-mobility social media platform”, and Telmap, the mobile search, mapping and navigation firm, have announced a partnership to develop advanced location-based social networking as part of Telmap’s Mobile Location Companion solution. 
As part of the agreement, Telmap will introduce social networking and user-generated content to the Telmap5 Mobile Location Companion, using GyPSii’s Open API, OpenExperience. Telmap5 will offer users access to all their networks of friends across social networks including Facebook and Twitter. The companies say that the integration with GyPSii’s Open API will empower Telmap5 mobile users to connect the real world with the digital world, accessing and contributing location-aware content; sharing locations; reading and posting recommendations, videos and pictures; finding friends, events, and places; geo-blogging, and more.
They add that the new Telmap5 offers mobile operators an opportunity to introduce a richer location-enabled solution to their subscribers, arguing that a single app combining key social media, navigation, search, and mapping features provides a compelling experience for users. 
GyPSii’s OpenExperience Open API offers Telmap transparent integration of its patented technologies in mobile user-generated content creation, friend-finding and a robust suite of development toolkits that support rapid development, fast-track product enhancements, and easy app localization.  OpenExperience also delivers a contextual advertising solution for ultra-targeted commercial messages, including advertisements and coupons with a high value to the end user.
“The Telmap-GyPSii enabled offering is fully supportive of people’s desire to explore their surroundings and interact with friends around them not only while at home, but also while on-the-go,” says Telmap CEO, Oren Nissim. “GyPSii and Telmap share a vision to offer operators the ultimate location companion they need in order to maintain their subscriber’s loyalty through an excellent solution and a superior user experience, and we are sure that this new cooperation will open up additional opportunities for operators to achieve just that.”

Nimbuzz Strikes Indonesian Deal

Next-generation mobile messaging service Nimbuzz has announced a partnership with Indonesia’s largest mobile operator, Telkomsel, that will sees Nimbuzz delivered to more than 82 million Telkomsel subscribers via a new mobile data subscription plan.
The partnership is Nimbuzz’s first as part of a monetizable program, with Telkomsel using the added value offered by the Nimbuzz application to generate revenue via a Shortcode subscription service. It forms a core part of Telkomsel’s newly-formed Social Networking Portal, which will make Nimbuzz available free to subscribers as part of a flat-rate data package.
With subscribers able to enjoy unlimited use of the Nimbuzz application, the partnership is aimed at a mass market audience, and, says Nimbuzz, can be seen as an example of how Nimbuzz’s always on service supports operators in accelerating the take-up and consumption of mobile data services.
“Nimbuzz is the perfect application for the mobile services that our customers demand, especially our youth customers,” says Jajang Munajat, General Manager, Value Added Services at Telkomsel. “The launch of Nimbuzz services within Telkomsel Social Networking Services allows us to address (the) youth segment better, both for customer loyalty as well as for customer acquisition.”

Friendticker Unveils Check-in-based Mobile Ad Solution

Friendticker, which describes itself as “the first mobile customer loyalty platform to apply virtual check-in technology exclusively for brands and small-scale advertisers”, has announced the impending launch of its iPhone application in public beta mode at Mobile World Congress on 15 February.
The company says the app enables advertisers and marketing managers to identify the most useful data for a specific individual at a specific time and place. The platform provides advertisers with the ability to increase customer retention rates by adding virtual check-ins to a brand or venue.
Friendticker says it transforms the social media check-in concept and applies it as a marketing tool to directly interact with brands, and rewards interaction with the brand instantly. The app adapts the game-based, virtual check-in technology of current social applications to make it specific for a mobile marketing platform that brands can use to target their own customers within their virtual local community.
The company notes that in current social network companies that focus on virtual check-in, a badge has no real-life value. In the Friendticker model, instead of badges, the platform lets advertisers provide items of the advertiser’s choice. With Friendticker, each user receives items for his action and interaction with the brand, and the item becomes a representation of the real-world item. This allows the advertiser or marketer to define what the user receives and which items are exchangeable for real-world goods. There is no limit to the amount of items that a user can receive and the items could represent a free drink n a cafe, for example, or a money-off coupon. Friendticker is sold on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and CPL (cost per lead) model.
“Current virtual check-in applications are only scratching the surface of what's possible for local businesses through mobile,” says Friendticker Co-founder, Florian Resatsch. “Friendticker gives real-life value to a customer's mobile actions beyond the gaming aspect of first generation virtual check-in technology. By combining social networks, geo-placement and real-time search to add value on top of who you are,
what you are doing and where you are, local and small scale advertisers can create and launch mobile campaigns that reach their target audience."

Handmark Launches TweetCaster for Android

Mobile applications and services developer Handmark has released TweetCaster, a feature-rich Twitter application available for Android phones.
TweetCaster is designed to make tweeting from Android-based Smartphones fast, easy, and fun. In addition to standard features, TweetCaster also offers multiple Twitter account support; integrated retweets and Twitter lists; offline tweet caching; push notifications for tweets, mentions and direct messages; URL shortening and previews; photo attachment; and threaded direct messages
“Handmark continues to enhance the mobile experience for customers around the world with the best connected applications,” says Handmark EVP of Marketing, Evan Conway. “TweetCaster delivers a fantastic experience for Twitter users looking to fully extend their experience to their Android Smartphone.”
A free, ad-supported version of TweetCaster is available here in exchange for a tweet about the application. TweetCaster Pro, a premium version of the application without ads, is also available for $4.99 (£3.13) in Android Market. For customers who download the free version of TweetCaster and wish to upgrade to TweetCaster Pro, an Upgrade Key will also be available in Android Market.

BuzzCity Reports Strong Mobile Ad Growth

BuzzCity has released its Global Mobile Advertising Index for 2009. The data shows that mobile advertising grew by 41% in 2009 compared to 2008, with countries including Turkey, Germany, Saudi Arabia and Mexico seeing growth of 300% or more. Indonesia, India, USA and South Africa continue to dominate, with 33 countries now delivering monthly traffic exceeding 10 million impressions.
The top five most active countries in Q4 ’09 were:

1. Indonesia - 2.1 billion impressions
2. India - 644 million impressions
3. S. Africa - 312 million impressions
4. United States - 301 million impressions
5. Saudi Arabia - 192 million impressions

“Q4 showed an accelerated growth with the return of advertisers, not just in the newly established mobile markets, but also in markets where digital marketing is dominated by fixed line Internet pricing, such as the US, Canada, UK, France and Germany,” says BuzzCity CEO, KF Lai. “New markets such as Mexico are showing real advertiser interest with growth of 294%.”
The Global Mobile Advertising Index tracks activity across BuzzCity’s network of more than 2,000 publishers across the globe. The findings represent a measure of advertiser demand for mobile Internet advertising.
BuzzCity believes that the only threat to further growth in 2010 will be the potential increase in price of the mobile Internet, as bandwidth availability becomes prohibitive. The technology developments and consumer buy-in have meant that mobile advertising is generating real returns for advertisers, the company says, adding that it will therefore be interesting to see how the telecoms industry responds to current capacity challenges."

Flirtomatic Reports Virtual Gift Boom

Mobile and online flirting service Flirtomatic says that it witnessed explosive sales of virtual gifts over the Christmas period, selling over 28,000 gifts in the five days between Boxing Day and New Years Eve, which equates to 233 gifts per hour. In the run up towards Christmas Day, Flirtomatic sold over 54,000 virtual gifts, while gift purchases on Boxing Day were double what they were on Christmas Day, and rose a further 50% on 27 December.
One of the most popular gifts over Christmas was the Flirtomatic Christmas Stocking, which was also one of the most expensive. Over 16,000 were sold, a third of them within the first three days of the item going on sale. Other top-selling gifts over Christmas included Candy Canes (just under 9,000), Mistletoe (8,300) and Rednose Reindeer (over 7,000).
Vodafone UK’s promotion offering pay as you go users free data between Christmas and New Year also seemed to help get people into the spirit of things, says Flirtomatic, giving people the chance to explore the web on their phone without fear of huge data charges. The company says it enjoyed six times the usual number of new user signs ups during the promotional period.
“There’s no doubt that when done correctly, virtual gifts encourage more people to make micropayments using their mobile and by doing so, builds up their confidence in using their phone to pay for things,” says Flirtomatic CEO, Mark Curtis. “After selling over a million gifts in 2009, we know that our users love giving gifts to each other, but gifts are just one of our premium service revenue streams, and naturally we see a spike in other streams over the holiday period too. Our New Year, New You service is currently very popular, giving users the chance to pay to delete all their lowest ratings, so they can start the year off with a perfect 10.”
With Valentine’s Day approaching, Flirtomatic is now stocking its virtual shelves with Valentine’s gifts and services, including a Valentine’s Gift Box and a Secret Valentines service, which will allow Flirtomatic users to send gifts to friends who don’t use the service.

SMS GupShup Secures Funds

SMS GupShup, India’s largest social network, has closed a $12 million (£7.4 million) funding round, led by Globespan Capital Partners, with additional financing from existing investors, Charles River Ventures and Helion Venture Partners.
Launched in April 2007, SMS GupShup now serves 26 million users in over 2 million SMS communities. These communities range from religious groups to sports teams to fan clubs of celebrities. Over 100 advertisers currently run on the network, including local insurance provider ICICI Lombard, as well as international brands such as Puma, Microsoft and Cadbury. A few thousand SMEs and several corporations are deploying GupShup’s mobile messaging solutions for their business needs.
The company is growing at a rapid pace and now accounts for 5% of all text messages sent in India. Earlier this year, the company signed a deal with Facebook to enable Indian Facebook users to go mobile.
According to Gartner, the mobile subscriber base is set to exceed 771 million in India and 4 billion globally by 2013. SMS GupShup says the funding will allow it to expand into new territories, and to roll out new features such as Mobile CRM solutions for small businesses and corporate brands.
“Our user base and revenues have grown substantially over the last year and (we) are seeing strong interest from carriers worldwide,” says Beerud Sheth, Co-founder and Chief Executive of SMS GupShup’s parent company, Beerud Sheth. “We expect to use the proceeds from this funding round to accelerate our growth and expand our operations globally.”
To date, SMS GupShup has raised $37million in funding and is aggressively hiring globally. In only the past two months the service has increased its team head count from 100 to 130 and the company says it is looking to fill another 20 positions in marketing, engineering and advertising sales.

Flirtomatic Launches iPhone App

Flirtomatic has announced the launch of its iPhone application. The app is available for free via the Apple App Store. Once downloaded, users can set up a profile and start chatting in around 20 seconds. Users can also search over 1.8 million profiles, find people who live nearby and search by gender, age, interests, and flirting preference. They can chat live, send a virtual gift, kiss, wink or supersnog to start a conversation, or send a ‘flirtbomb’ to hit many flirts simultaneously.
The app also enables users to buy their own user-generated advertising in the ‘Look At Me’ section, where they bid in real-time auctions, 24 hours a day, to get more attention than other users. They can also rate their favorites, find out who’s rated them or checked them out, and more.
Flirtomatic content is screened to have a PG rating, so there’s nothing inappropriate and no adult advertising. The site actively moderates and approves all content.
“Customers have told us they want to flirt everywhere and anywhere,” says Flirtomatic CEO, Mark Curtis. “We already have a web presence and partnerships with major carriers around the world. Now we are taking flirting to the world’s most talked-about Smartphone. We’re excited about the application and hope that customers can go global with their flirting.”

LinkedIn Updates iPhone App

LinkedIn has announced the launch of version 3.0 of its LinkedIn for iPhone application which is available now via the Apple App Store. The app allows iPhone users who are members of LinkedIn to work more effectively from wherever they are, with a host of new features including a function to allow people to connect in real-time.
The app includes a new search interface to easily find one of the 55 million professionals, including over 3 million in the UK, who are members of LinkedIn. An ‘In Person’ feature allows users to find and connect with other people close by running the LinkedIn application in real time, via Bluetooth. The app also features a redesign of LinkedIn’s updates functionality, giving users up to date intelligence about their network and the ability to read and submit comments on updates from the iPhone.
LinkedIn members can also use the iPhone app to send messages and invitations to their connections and can download their connections into their iPhone contacts, with alerts for when a new connection has not yet been downloaded. The new version of the app has revamped profile screens to quickly provide people on the move with a summary of a person’s details, experience, people they both know, and the ability to mark that person a favourite.

Critical Path Buys ShoZu

ShoZu has been bought by Critical Path, which provides messaging software and services, for an undisclosed sum. The company says the acquisition of ShoZu’s mobile social media services significantly advances its delivery of consumer-focused mobile and social networking solutions across the entire range of mobile platforms.
“The acquisition of ShoZu propels us forward in enriching our mobile and social networking solutions for our customers around the world”, says Critical Path CEO Mark Palomba. “Now, we can offer an unparalleled experience for people to connect and stay current on the most popular social networks using virtually any device, as well as extend their use of personal media and messaging activities.”
Critical Path provides white-labeled messaging and consumer applications platforms to service providers, focused primarily on mass-market devices. ShoZu adds award-winning mobile applications for sharing media and personal experiences across the most popular social networks, with native support for the leading Smartphone platforms. The  companies say that the combined set of capabilities provides consumers with a complete social networking and personal communications capability, ranging from the simplest mobile device to the most advanced.
ShoZu Chairman and CEO Chris J. Wade says the company is delighted to have found “the perfect home” for the ShoZu brand and service in Critical Path.
“We couldn’t be more pleased with the seamless fit of our combined technology and approach to serving the market, and the opportunity for our outstanding engineering team to continue to make important technical contributions to Critical Path going forward,” says Wade. “We strongly believe in the roadmap for our future together serving Critical Path’s traditional customers, as well as new users attracted by the power of our combined applications.  The acquisition of ShoZu by Critical Path really is a beneficial matchup for both companies, resulting in a powerful capability for elegantly sharing, communicating and collaborating on information that’s at the core of personal and business relationships.”

MXit Goes Mexican

Mobile social networking firm MXit has launched in Mexico. MXit has a global subscriber base of more than 17 million young adults, and is growing at the rate of Around 27,000 users per day and processing approximately 250 million messages daily.The company’s international user base has doubled in the last year.
“Our growth in specific markets, and around the world, is dependent on user recommendations, and MXit’s ability to innovate accordingly,” says MXit International Marketing Manager, Juan du Toit. “We understand that users need to be excited about a mobile social network in order to recommend it, so we place relevance to market, innovation and creativity as the cornerstone of our business.”
MXit offers its global users cost-effective one-on-one instant messaging, social networking within mobile communities, and the latest interactive mobile content, including virtual games, themed chat rooms, free content and interactive artificial intelligence characters. It adapts these features to suit the demographics, culture and language of each country it expands to.
“We have targeted Mexico in our international expansion plan as we felt the country was ready for an evolved and cost-effective mobile social network,” adds Du Toit. “Around 70% of the Mexican market engage with social networks, so it makes sense to offer these users a mobile application that expands their experience, while lowering the cost of communicating on a mobile phone.” 

Mozat Raises Funds

Mozat, which provides the mobile social media platform of the same name (formerly known as ‘Morange’) has announced that it raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding from JAFCO Asia earlier this year.
Mozat is a social networking platform tailored for the most popular mobile phones in the market. For consumers, Mozat serves as a mobile social community that allows users to connect and interact with each other, as well as providing access to their favourite email, Instant Messaging (IM) and social gaming applications. For operators, Mozat provides an extensible, market-ready mobile social networking platform that drives data usage and builds customer loyalty. It is available for free via the Mozat website, or in a premium version through selected mobile operators in Asia and Latin America, including Saudi Telecom Company (STC) and Orange. The Mozat community currently has around 10 million registered users, predominantly in the emerging markets of Asia and the Middle East.
“The Series A investment gets us ready for prime-time, says Mozat Founder and CEO, Dr. Michael Yin. “2010 will be a deciding year for mobile social network service as we see mobile operators in emerging markets leveraging their GPRS and 3G networks to drive data usage through value added services and applications."

Nimbuzz Updates Symbian Client

Nimbuzz has launched its Symbian 2.2 client, which includes full Twitter functionality, and, in a first for Symbian handsets, pop up notifications. The Twitter client includes Timelines, Direct Messaging, Searches, Trends and Profiles, and according to Nimbuzz, outperforms standalone Twitter applications. The pop-up notifications alert users to incoming chats and events, while the application runs in the background.
Further additions to the Symbian update include kinetic scrolling for 5th edition touchscreen phones, a new chat screen and contact list layout, chat history, and a direct link to the NimbuzzOut rate calculator for international calls. The client is available as a free download from Symbian app stores, such as Nokia’s Ovi Store, and via the Nimbuzz website.
Nimbuzz recently achieved its 13 millionth registration, and is adding new users at the rate of over 1 million each month. The service has an international user footprint of 220 countries.  
“Nimbuzz for Symbian is by far our most sophisticated client and the only product available to offer users such a comprehensive range of features and such a complete communications experience,” says Nimbuzz CEO, Evert-Jaap Lugt.

Qype Radar Offers 10,000 Mobile Coupons

People-powered reviews and recommendations site Qype has unveiled a new version of the site’s mobile application, Qype Radar, featuring integrated vouchers and real-time social tools. The real-time updates enable users to broadcast their location to their friends with one click, via social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as text message and email.
Also new to this latest version are integrated special offers. Qype Radar users can now browse for the nearest discounts and vouchers while they’re on the move, and use their phone to redeem them in the store. Qype currently has over 10,000 vouchers available across Europe.
“Mobile vouchers are a hot topic right now,” says Qype CEO, Stephen Taylor. “But we believe that success relies not just on the technical platform, but more on the ability to talk to the business owners and get them on board. The direct relationship we’ve already established with local businesses allows us to offer more than 10,000 vouchers right from the start, with more being added every day.”
The new version of Qype Radar, which also features integrated photo galleries and a redesigned interface, is available now for Android handhelds, and will be released for the iPhone soon.

Facebook Improves Privacy Controls

Facebook is inviting its 350 million-plus users to review and update their privacy settings. The social network is also launching easy-to-use tools to give users personalised and greater control over the information they share, based on what the content is, why they are sharing it, when, and the audience they are trying to reach.
The tools include a simpler privacy settings page and a tool to control the audience for each post users create. Facebook says it accepts that as the site has evolved and new features have been added, its privacy settings have become increasingly complicated, creating a need for a simplified privacy settings page. 
“Facebook is transforming the world’s ability to control its information online by empowering more than 350 million people to personalize the audience for each piece of content they share,” says Elliot Schrage, Vice President of Communications, Public Policy and Marketing. “We’ve always designed Facebook to enable people to control what information they share with whom - it’s the reason our service continues to attract such a broad and diverse group of users from around the world. We’re proud of the latest evolution we’re announcing today and we will continue to innovate to serve users’ changing needs.”
Facebook says the tools launching today are a response to requests from both users and experts, including a request to have the ability to dynamically control who sees each individual piece of content. Facebook’s new Publisher Privacy Control, which is the main place to add content such as photos and status updates, will provide this function and is rolling out to users today. It will enable users to make some posts visible to all their Facebook friends, and limit access to other to a selected few.
Facebook’s users are being offered a Transition Tool, which the company describes as a transparent process requiring people to review and update their privacy settings.This tool will start with a message that explains the changes and will then let users update their settings. Users will be presented with two options: preserving their old settings or accepting recommendations from Facebook.
Facebook says the recommendations are designed to help people connect and share in a responsible way, by taking into account how users have shared that information previously and recognizing that users may consider some information more sensitive. Potentially sensitive information, like phone numbers, is assigned a more restrictive recommendation. Facebook will suggest that users retain settings they have previously configured, but if users have not changed their settings in the past, Facebook’s recommendations will be pre-selected. Users can change any of the selections and they must confirm all selections before they take effect.
Once users have updated their settings, they will be shown a confirmation page that will let them review their selections again. The confirmation page also provides a link to the full Privacy Settings page where users can modify settings further as they see fit.  

Yasmo Live Makes Christmas Debut

Yasmo Live has revealed that its real-time mobile conferencing platform for events and conferences will make its debut at the TechCrunch ChristmasCrunch in London on 15 December.
Yasmo Live enables event delegates to locate fellow delegates who are physically nearby, through a rotating list of picture-based profiles on their mobile phone. At the TechCrunch event on December 15, a select number of attendees will have the opportunity to use Yasmo Live, allowing them to see and search through the profiles of fellow attendees on their mobile phone.  
The software application runs on delegates’ mobile phones, so they don’t need to familiarise themselves with another hand held device. The platform deploys wi-fi-enabled networks, increasing the speed of data exchange and avoiding mobile data charges, which is especially useful for conferences taking place outside the delegate’s home country.
“We developed Yasmo Live for both the conference-goer and the organiser, so that neither lose any business opportunities,” says Yasmo Live Founder, Areti Kampyli. “Now users can immediately locate and meet sought after business leads, customers, partners or media contacts, or store their details for later use, making every moment at the conference count.”
For the conference and event organiser, Yasmo Live also offers a new advertising platform as well as the means to increase attendance rates and registration. Its white label service gives sponsors exclusive visibility amongst highly targeted audiences by enabling them to ‘dress’ the application with their brands and track the effectiveness of their advertising.
Installing the application on the mobile phone is simple, requiring just a single download. Users can save and take notes on individual profiles on their personal Yasmo Live account, where they can login and pursue contacts made or even missed at the event. Users can filter connections through preferred criteria and search for those business leads they want to network with. The second version of the application, due for release in Q1 2010, will feature embedded microblogging features for extended networking capabilities.

Gofresh Expands

Gofresh has revealed that, due to exponential customer base growth of mobile social games on its itsmy.com and operator portals, it is investing further in building its social gaming developers team and expanding its mobile browser gaming platform with open APIs, more payment possibilities and rich media game features.
One year after launching the Gofresh gaming platform, more than 2 million users worldwide have played social games, and up to 15% of players in Europe and the US also bought premium game items. The game catalogue currently comprises 20 mobile multiplayer browser games and Gofresh says that new games will be published monthly. The Gofresh Games are fully integrated within m.itsmy.com, Gofresh’s mobile social network, as well as in selected international communities and operator portals. The average time a user plays games is 35 minutes a day, over 2.6 sessions a day.  
Gofresh social games work with every operator, every mobile device and any mobile operating platform. The games are free to discover and play, but additional features and special items are available in the store. There’s no in-game advertising and all store purchases are single purchases and subscription-free.
“2010 will be the year of mobile social gaming,” says Gofresh CEO, Antonio Vince Staybl. With growing feature and Smartphone usage and cheaper data flatrates (sic), the number of people who play social games on their mobile phones will continue to grow very fast and better carrier payment solutions will make it easier to monetize mobile games.”

Nimbuzz Rolls Out Blackberry App

Nimbuzz, the multi-community mobile Instant Messaging (IM) application, has announced the launch of its new application for BlackBerry Smartphones.
Nimbuzz for Blackberry runs as a native application, which means that it can run constantly in the background, have alert notifications pushed to the home screen and integrate notifications with sound profiles.
The app is free to download and use, and also supports IM through Skype. Online chat is also  available for other communities, including MSN, GoogleTalk, Yahoo!, Facebook and MySpace.
Nimbuzz, recently won the ‘Connect On Blackberry’ award at the Blackberry Alliance Program’s EMEA Innovation Awards, and is optimised for BlackBerrys running OS v4.6 or higher, including the BlackBerry Storm, Bold, Tour, Pearl Flip and Curve 8900.
The app is free to download now via the Nimbuzz website and BlackBerry App World. 

eBuddy Launches Premium iPhone App

eBuddy, the popular web and mobile Instant Messaging (IM) service, has announced the global launch of eBuddy Pro for iPhone and iPod touch. The ad-free, multi-network mobile IM application is available now via the  Apple App Store for $4.99 (£3.99).
eBuddy Pro for iPhone and iPod Touch enables iPhone and iPod Touch owners with AIM, Facebook Chat, ICQ, Gtalk, MySpace, Windows Live Messenger or Yahoo! Messenger to have multiple chats in one, aggregated interface, and provides a fast, reliable, ‘on-the-go’ chat experience.
The app offers Push notifications for incoming messages when the user exits the app for up to three days. User can also set their display picture from their camera or photo library, send pictures to friends, and easily switch between different chat services by swiping the screen.
“Over 2.5 million unique monthly users currently use our free version of eBuddy for iPhone and iPod Touch, and we believe a significant number of our users will upgrade to eBuddy Pro for iPhone and iPod Touch to take advantage of key features including picture sending, three-day push notification and an advertising-free chat environment,” says eBuddy CEO, Jan-Joost “JJ” Rueb.
According to app store analytics company, Distimo, eBuddy for iPhone and iPod Touch has ranked as a top 10 social networking app in 76 of 77 of Apple App Store countries since launching in July 2009.

AT Launches BuzzWatcher Online Monitoring Tool

Online Intelligence company AT Internet has announced the release of BuzzWatcher, a website monitoring service that can be integrated as part of a web and mobile analytics platform, and enables companies to measure the buzz and online reputation of their products and services.
BuzzWatcher measures activity on social media channels, including social networks, video platforms, RSS feeds and blogs, in real time. The data generated by BuzzWatcher can be filtered by keyword and/or channel, and can also be used to focus on a particular area, such as the online reputation of a brand, product, competitor or a particular business sector.
BuzzWatcher is offered as a Software as a Service (SaaS) application, and does not require any tagging or installation. The user simply states which keywords or expressions are to be monitored so that BuzzWatcher can begin monitoring.
The application has been developed to function independently, or as part of the integrated AnalyzerNX suite, which also includes web, mobile and server monitoring and analytics applications. Using the dashboard-style user interface, marketers can access all the information they need in one place, also giving them the ability to carry out a cross-channel analysis.

Kirusa Launches Call-n-Tweet

Kirusa, which develops mobile value added services, has announced the launch of its Call-n-Tweet service. Call-n-Tweet enables Twitter users in the US to send Voice Tweets (short audio snippets) to update their Twitter status.
According to Kirusa, Call-n-Tweet holds various benefits for the Twitter User community over a text tweet, namely, that it is easier and faster to tweet using voice; users can safely voice tweet hands free, even while driving; audio works better than simple text as your voice can convey your emotions; and sending an audio message is a richer medium. Additionally, users are not restricted to the 140-characters message length.
“Call-n-Tweet is an exciting service that continues the Kirusa tradition of bringing innovative user friendly value added services to the market place,” says Kirusa CEO, Inderpal Singh Mumick. “The popularity of Twitter is tremendous and, until now, there really wasn’t an efficient way to tweet using your voice from the mobile phone. Call-n-Tweet allows any mobile user to just speak and update their status on Twitter, providing a safe and convenient alternative to texting. We plan to leverage our existing Kirusa deployments and operator relationships worldwide to bring the Call-n-Tweet user experience to other countries as well.”
To get started, a user signs up at callntweet.com. During sign up, the user is asked to authorize Call-n-Tweet to connect to their Twitter account, and provide the phone number from which they will Call-n-Tweet. Subsequently, the user can use the Call-n-Tweet service anytime by calling +1 212-796-6975. Once the call is connected, the user can simply speak a tweet and hang up.
The user’s status on twitter.com is then automatically updated with a URL link to the voice tweet and all followers are notified by Twitter. A follower can click on the link to hear the voice tweet and comment on it. Users can also visit callntweet.com to search for interesting audio clips, and to rate and comment on them.

Flirtfinder Sees Traffic Surge

FlirtFinder, the mobile dating brand owned by mobile content firm Isomob, says it has seen traffic on its mobile site rise by 60% since October, thanks partly to changes made by mobile operators, along with the implementation of web Payforit.
According to Isomob, the average paying member now sends 15 PayForIt billed messages a month. Half of the members that have joined the service since it launched in 2008 are still actively using the service today. The average member visits the service 27 times and more than half of those visits result in chargeable message credits being spent. And an average visit to the service will result in 18 pages being viewed, equating to 486 pages viewed per member.
“These numbers are very encouraging, especially for a premium, rather than a free or ad-funded service,” says
Managing Director Justin Battell. ““When we looked at the user trends, we discovered that every member joining the service generated more revenue than the last.  As the database grew, the number of possible connections increased, and that meant more opportunities for chargeable interaction. The next phase of development will result in a faster user experience, with more functionality and options accessed directly off the home page. We are also adding more innovative and fun things to do on the service, focusing on creating those all-important connections between members.”

Frost Predicts Mobile Social Networking Boom

The market for mobilising social networks in Latin America and Africa is set to increase ten-fold to 527 million users by 2015, according to research announced today by Frost & Sullivan and Colibria. Within six years Frost & Sullivan estimates the combined market will be worth almost $2.4 billion (£1.4 billion), with growth being driven by increased availability of the Internet, mainly through mobile phones.
“Social networks are an emerging trend in these regions, and due to the lack of fixed infrastructure, the mobile phone is often the only point of access for Internet-based services such as social networks,” says Frost & Sullivan Senior Consultant, Jon Stephansen. “The availability of affordable mobile data service packages is necessary to drive the growing social networking market to the mobile space.”
In Africa, mobile penetration is such that mobile connections exceed fixed connections ten to one, according to the  United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) 'Information Economy’ Report 2009. Similarly, in South America, 80% of the population have a mobile phone, compared to just 25% with regular fixed Internet access.
“The specific conditions in these markets have led to an increased need for solutions that make mobilised social networking affordable and easy to implement,” says Colibria CEO, Keith Gibson. “This is why we developed the Social Center - to provide operators with a reliable and cost-effective solution that provides all of their subscribers with access to social networks. With the growing consumer interest in social networks, it is important for operators to be able to deliver these services on top of the basic offerings to attract new customers.”
Colibria’s Social Center pushes updates to the user so they immediately know when their friends change information on their social network sites. Users can also post content to multiple sites simultaneously, which significantly reduces data usage and therefore cost for the user. Colibria’s Social Center works on feature phones and basic utility phones that dominate in these regions, with solutions also available where data coverage is incomplete. The Social Center is currently being rolled out by operators in these high-growth regions, with Movistar Peru and MTN South Africa already deployed.

Research Highlights Social Networking Opportunity

European research results released by Critical Path, which provides messaging applications, reveal a startling gap between what consumers want from their interaction with social networks and the services available today.
The research was carried out online by Vanson Bourne during August, 2009 amongst a nationally representative sample of 3,000 European consumers aged 16+. The consumers were from six European countries: UK, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Sweden.
It finds that the average consumer has four separate address books across a number of services, including mobile phones and social networks such as Facebook. 68% of people fail to update their address books with contact changes and 91% are frustrated with their out-of-date contact information.
Of the 3,000 consumers surveyed, 75% found the task of updating their contacts across their social networks frustrating; 82% wanted a solution to synchronise their separate address books; and 78% are looking for a simple, easy-to-use solution.
Clear preferences for services were identified – a large majority wanted automatic updates from their friends using social networks and, also wanted control over the type of updates they receive.
Critical Path says the research highlights the growing relevance of social networks, and the importance consumers place on their online interactions. The company notes that operators have a clear opportunity to provide solutions to address these consumer frustrations and heighten their role and value in mobile social networking.
Critical Path has introduced Social Address Book, a connected, dynamic and consolidated address book experience for operators to offer their customers. The company says the solution offers customers an easy to use, high value service that enhances their access to Facebook, Twitter, MSN, and other popular sites.
“Critical Path’s Social Address Book solution helps give consumers the online and mobile experience they are looking for,” says Critical Path CEO, Mark Palomba. “It propels operators into a much stronger competitive position and enables them to open new revenue streams.”

Italian Job for Movial RCS Client

Movial has been selected to provide its RCS-ready Communicator mobile client for Symbian Series 60 based on the GSMA Rich Communication Suite (RCS) initiative standard, for the multi-operator Italian rich communication services trial. The company has also launched its Communicator PC client for RCS release 2.  
RCS is a new service package that fits the lifestyle communication needs of ‘always-on’ users, designed to make multimedia social networking simpler. Movial was chosen for the multi-Italian operator trial specifically for its Communicator Mobile client’s full integration with devices’ native phonebooks that complies with RCS specifications, from both a service and a user experience perspective. 
“Participation in the Italian trial is another milestone for Movial as well as for RCS,” says Movial CEO and Co-founder, Jari Ala-Ruona. “Not only does this show how RCS is gaining momentum among large carriers like Telecom Italia, but it also underscores the importance of our new products that include full integration with a device’s native phonebook and gallery, taking the user experience and our vision of converged user experiences to the next level.”
Movial has also developed a fully compliant RCS PC client, Communicator PC, following Release 2 of RCS specifications. The client supports the multi-device environment operators are targeting for their next-generation converged services, the company says. Communicator PC for RCS 2 provides an integrated end-user experience, including one-to-one chat, group chat, video calling, instant sharing of images or video during a voice call, and file transfer - all enabled with Presence technology. According to Movial, Communicator PC embodies the first extension of a complete solution for synchronized rich multimedia communication across handsets and computers.

eBuddy and InMobi Strike Mobile Ad Deal

Mobile and web IM (Instant messaging) service eBuddy has formed a mobuile advertising partnership with mobile ad network InMobi, effective in 12 countries, including the UK, Ireland, France, Spain, Italy, South Africa, Australia and India. The newly formed partnership in these geographies already accounts for over 20% of eBuddy’s total mobile ad revenue. eBuddy says it has struck the deal with InMobi based upon the positive results it has seen working with the company over the past four months.
“We anticipate excellent results from our partnership with InMobi,” says eBuddy CEO, Jan-Joost Rueb. “InMobi’s scale and strength in international markets, combined with eBuddy’s 240% year-on-year mobile IM growth and more than 9 million unique monthly mobile users, lays the foundation for a hugely successful partnership for both companies.”

eBuddy Tops GetJar Download List

Cross-platform app store GetJar has named eBuddy, Opera Mini, Nimbuzz, mig33 and Facebook as its five most downloaded apps to date. The five apps have achieved a combined total of more than 100 million downloads and also comprise the top five GetJar downloads for October 2009.
Downloads from the site have rocketed from 15 million in October 2008, to 55 million in October 2009. GetJar has released the figures to coincide with the launch of its new, consumer-facing website.
With the exception of the hugely popular Opera Mini browser, the top five apps are focused on social networking. This, says GetJar, reflects the huge consumer demand to stay connected on the go via their mobile phone, even when there is the option to make a phone call.
Download figures are as follows:

• eBuddy - Instant Messaging: 27.4 million
• Opera Mini - mobile Internet browser: 25.3 million
• Nimbuzz - VoIP calls and Instant Messaging: 21.6 million
• Mig33 – Instant Messaging and community application: 15.4 million
• Facebook – mobile access to the hugely popular social network: 14.4 million

“As these figures show, the popularity of GetJar continues to grow as consumer demand for mobile apps becomes more and more global,” says GetJar CEO and Founder, Ilja Laurs. “The exciting news for developers and brands is that apps are in high demand not only from consumers using Blackberry, Symbian and Android phones (all of which are supported on GetJar) but also on feature phones of all types such as the Sony Ericsson W995 and the LG Viewty.”
Quizzed as to why these particular apps are so successful, Laurs says:
“The social networking phenomenon has changed the way we communicate and users want to continue to stay in touch on the go, via their mobile. In addition, apps on GetJar are free and work on over 1,700 handsets across all major platforms, so whether you are using an Android phone or just a plain Motorola you’re guaranteed to find all the apps you need in just one place.”
GetJar’s new website is now live, offering a new, more intuitive user interface and more apps for more types of handset than ever before. The site can instantly show the right apps for a user’s phone, upon submission of the user’s mobile phone number.

Social Climbing

How can mobile operators capitalise on the social networking phenomenon that is sweeping the globe? Avichai Levy, EVP marketing at mobile multimedia and advertising company Mobixell shares his views

It seems to me that the entire world has gone social networking crazy. With 67% of global Internet users signed up to one or more social networking or blogging sites and Web 2.0 applications like MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, Twitter and You Tube widely acknowledged as  the new media wave of the decade, social networks have not only crossed the chasm, they have positively vaulted over it. 
The next stage of the migration from desktop to mobile is inevitable. Mobile is a natural fit for social networks, since consumers are accustomed to connecting with friends via mobile calls and texts. So using the phone to access social networks is a natural progression to the change of consumers’ habits in how they view and use their mobile phone. 
The latest European statistics from market research firm Comscore for the first quarter of 2009 indicate that 15.2% of teenagers and 19.5% of young adults under 25 are already accessing social networking sites on mobile devices. At the same time, mobile operators are experiencing an increase in data ARPU, but not enough to cover the decrease in voice revenues. All the evidence points to the fact that mobile operators have a great opportunity to capitalise on this wave of interest, beyond just providing the pipe to deliver the service. So how can they achieve this, and what will some of the attractive by-products of embracing this new social networking vogue be?
 
Jumping on the Web 2.0 bandwagon
Katrina Bond, an analyst at Analysys Mason wrote in a report last year on this very subject: “Mobile social networking is stimulating growth in mobile data usage and revenue, which is crucial for mobile operators as their voice revenue comes under increasing pressure.”  
So how can they play a part in the social networking vogue that is sweeping the globe?   
Currently users access social networks on their mobile by three primary means: by browsing over the mobile web; by downloading various client applications; and by SMS. The downsides of these different options are apparent. Mobile web access is generally too slow, and the process too cumbersome, and the user browsing experience un-enticing, especially on widespread feature phones, which will inevitably prevent this approach from gaining mass market adoption quickly  enough to close the declining voice to increasing data revenue gap. 
Downloadable applications, on the other hand provide a good user experience. Their use is limited by device type, however, and typically excludes the use of feature phones, and once again, the ease of use in downloading client applications will deter all but the more technically literate. 
SMS alerts are increasing in popularity (according to Nielsen by the end of 2008 an estimated 3 million US mobile users were texting Facebook on a regular basis). However, SMS degrades the media richness of social media sites to plain grey text. Media rich Internet services deserve no less than rich media bearer services that maximize the user experience. 

Social Media Gateways
More recently, new technology in the shape of Social Media Gateways (SMG) from companies like Mobixell, has emerged to overcome these constraints and offer mobile operators an opportunity to assume a critical position in the value chain. This new technology enables mobile operators to offer their subscribers an easy to use, clientless means of accessing all of the main social networking sites on the move via messaging applications such as MMS. And since MMS is already being used to get social media updates, it offers an easy transition for the subscriber.  Users can register a phone to receive MMS (or SMS) updates for any social media posted by their friends. So how does it work?
Mobile subscribers provision themselves by a one-time process through the operator’s web or WAP portal to register and specify which social networks they would like to connect to; the type of service, frequency or capabilities they want to adopt; and the friends they want to receive messages from. SMG monitors the social networking sites for each user and, once a media update appears, the subscriber receives an MMS or SMS (dependent on the mobile device or subscriber pre-defined preference) to their handset. Once the subscriber receives the MMS/SMS update, they click on the link and initiate a web/WAP access to the media album to send a photo, a video streaming session to view the video clip, or simply reply via MMS. The reply will be posted on the social media site as a comment or a rating. 
This new approach allows mobile operators to provide a network-based solution that enables mobile users to receive social media updates, including multimedia updates, on any phone.  What’s more, it is achieved without requiring the user to download any client software. This breakthrough offers mobile operators a unique opportunity to broaden the user base of mobile social network users beyond the high-end Smartphones, and add significant value to the proposition to act as a key differentiator in the market place and position them as much more than just a dumb pipe.

Improving the user experience
The advantages of this approach are also apparent to subscribers. For those who are already conversant with sending MMS messages, there is no additional learning required or complex client software to be downloaded. The joys of social networking from your mobile will be available to all mobile phone owners – not just the minority of users with Smartphones. But there’s also an additional advantage, because a key component of this SMG entails adapting and transcoding the multimedia content to optimise the quality of the user experience, using built-in intelligence that detects the specific device, network and bandwidth available and automatically optimises it for that individual user. 
Yet there is still more good news for the operator. Pilots of SMGs have demonstrated that there is a direct correlation between the increased usage of social networking sites on mobile devices and a tendency to upgrade to ‘all you can eat’ unlimited messaging and data/Internet packages. If all this fails to convince the operator of the advantages of SMGs to their business, there’s one additional benefit. Social networking sites are an excellent conduit for mobile adverts that take on a viral dimension. An additional option in serving up the MMS to subscribers is to insert targeted adverts into the message which can be delivered in a variety of different formats. This gives rise to additional revenue generating opportunities for brand owners, with the possibility for ad content to be virally communicated to all friends and contacts of the primary subscriber. A ‘win win’ combination for user and operator

Self-evident opportunity
The opportunity for mobile operators to play a key role in the evolution of social networks from the desktop to the mobile is self-evident. SMGs offer attractive advantages for operators in helping to increase revenues by offering a social network monthly subscription package, as well as the possibility of ad-funded revenue. It has the additional advantage of growing premium MMS and SMS data traffic and motivating subscribers to upgrade to advanced or unlimited messaging packages and opening up the social networking phenomenon to non-Smartphone users. And it’s not only the operator who benefits. Feature phone users, previously excluded from accessing social networks on their mobile phones, are now free to join in the fun and the transcoding and adaptation features of the SMG technology mean that they receive a superior user experience for any web, user-generated or multimedia content. In short, the social media opportunity is one that mobile operators can’t afford to ignore. They can now fill a key role in the value chain, enabling them to offer their subscribers innovative social media services, while capitalising on their own existing infrastructure.

Mobango Tops 5m Users

Social mobile application store Mobango has revealed that its global community has reached over five million members - who have collectively downloaded more than 550 million pieces of mobile content.
The Mobango community is primarily made up of the young (18-25) and young adult (26-34) demographic. Around the world, very strong local communities of these age ranges have been built up – the largest of which are currently in the UK, the US, India and Italy, but with Germany and Spain coming up fast. Mobango says its strength lies in the fact that it is not only a mobile from where its members can download apps, but also somewhere that members can share apps and personal content with their friends.
“Reaching over five million members in the Mobango global community is a fantastic achievement for us - and a real endorsement for what we’re doing,” says Mobango CEO, Fabio Pezzotti. “The growth we’re seeing reinforces our ideas about how a social mobile apps store works best.”

Mobile Key to Social Technologies, says Forrester

Forrester Research has released a report titled ‘Why Mobile Could Reinvent Social Computing’, that argues that mobile phones hold the key to unlocking the full potential of social technologies. Forrester notes that the digital social experience is fragmented; people have separate identities in each social network they visit. In the future, however, universal social IDs will enable a portable identity that will empower consumers. And that, says Forrester, is when the mobile phone will become the hub of social computing activities - the glue that holds the social graph together.
 “The ‘always-on’ mobile connected handset is what frees social from the chains of the PC and thrusts it into the real world,” says Forrester analyst Thomas Husson. “Handset makers, mobile operators, and online players are all jumping on the bandwagon and willing to tap into consumers’ social address book.” Thomas adds that Vodafone 360 is a good illustration of this industry evolution,
The report looks at the product innovation strategies that consumer-facing companies must consider with regard to the social mobile experience. Forrester’s data shows that more than 60%  of online Europeans engage in social media on a regular basis; in the UK, this is slightly higher at 64%. 40% of 16 - 25 years old in the UK are already accessing or interested in accessing mobile social networks from their mobile phones. Facebook recently announced that 65 million people are actively using Facebook Mobile  - more than tripling its audience in eight months. 
The report is free to Forrester clients, and available to purchase for everyone else for $499 (£310).
There’s more information about the report here.

Vodafone Plays Mum

Vodafone has launched what it says is the first comprehensive website to support parents who are trying to understand their children’s online activities and support them  in their digital world. The Vodafone Parents’ Guide website has been developed with parenting website Mumsnet, and tested extensively, to ensure that it builds parents’ confidence. The aim of the website is to help parents play an active and essential role in their children’s digital world and to get to grips with their use of mobiles, Twitter and other online social media destinations and applications.
Vodafone says that Vodafone.com/parents is the first resource to bring such a wide range of topics together in one place. Divided into two sections, ‘Get to grips with technology’ and ‘Get involved and stay in control’, it offers up-to-date guidance on challenging issues, such as children’s excessive use of technology; managing their presence in social media; access to location-based technology; cyber-bullying; and the risks of meeting strangers online.
“With technology developing at such an incredible pace, it’s great that Vodafone has produced an online resource to help us understand it,” says Mumsnet Co-founder, Carrie Longton. “The feedback from the parents on Mumsnet was very positive and many felt they learned a huge amount while they were testing the site.”
Professor Tanya Byron, highlighted the generational divide between parents and their children in her 2008 Review ‘Safer Internet in a Digital Age’, and noted  that  parents do not feel equipped to help their children in the digital world. She commented that they “…either underestimate or do not realise how often children come across potentially harmful and inappropriate material on the Internet and are often unsure what they would do about it” and said that this generational divide can lead to fear and a sense of helplessness.
Annie Mullins OBE, Global Head of Content Standards at Vodafone, who led the development of the website, says:
“Many parents tell us that they are baffled by what their children are doing, be it on their on their mobile, on Facebook or via their iPhones. They say it’s hard to keep up with the pace of change. Their desire is to get simple, clear information on everyday matters, such as knowing what age a child should be given a mobile, or setting the rules for using Facebook, and very practical advice about what to do. Our new Parents’ Guide empowers parents as they face the challenges of the Twitter generation.”