So far we’ve covered mobile 2.0 apps from all over the world from Mig33 in Australia, Itsmy in Germany, Mocospace in the US to ebuddy and Nimbuzz in Holland and this week we’re going East with Mobamingle - the international version of THE SMASH HIT Japanese mobile service Mobile Game Town.

What is it?

Mobamingle or Mbmgl was launched in Q4 last year by the Japanese mobile internet giant Dena as an attempt to repeat the success of Mobile Game Town in the US and Europe.

For those who don’t know Mobile GameTown is one of the world’s most successful mobile internet services.  The site is based around a mobile avatar community with the usual chat and social features.  However, Mobile Gametown (or Mobage Town for short) also provides a range of flash games and other services like mobile story telling – a new kind of mobile user-generated content format.  The site has:

- 10m plus users

- 15 bn monthly page views

- $200m in annual revenues from a mix of advertising/ affiliate deals and sales of its internal currency

Mobamingle provides a very similar service aimed at the US and other countries including the UK, and Europe.  All the main features are there including all the community elements (groups, forums) as well as the mobile story-writing feature.

The main big difference is that Mobamingle doesn’t yet offer the huge range of flash-based free mobile games that have been key to growing traction for the service in Japan.  Even today, support for, and awareness of flash in mobile handsets is pretty low in the West.  However, Mobamingle DOES feature the full-on cutesy Japanese style avatars!

Why is it interesting?

Mobamingle heralds a new wave of Japanese mobile businesses expanding internationally.  The first wave was all about big acquisitions, such as the service provider itouch being acquired by For-side in 2005, or the string of acquisitions that Index made between 2004-5 (123 Multimedia, Mobliss).  The second wave is going to be different – sites and services which have worked in Japan are going to create international versions and use the learnings and technologies they’ve developed to succeed.

Having Japanese players enter the market is going to mean local players have to really RAISE THEIR GAME.  Dena is reportedly investing $3m in the international launch of mbmgl and the site is amazing usability-wise with some great design touches and a BEAUTIFUL mobile UI.

These new services could also help to spread new mobile business models in the US and Europe.  For example, Mobile Game Town’s use of virtual currency is already being adopted by US and European mobile startups like Heysan, Itsmy and Flirtomatic.  If sites like Mobamingle can help get consumers used to the idea of paying for mobile services beyond ringtones and other personalisation content then the whole industry could see a huge boom in revenue.

The launch of Mobamingle can only be good news for the mobile web – it’s a massive bet that mobile internet is taking off in the US and Europe and that consumers are ready for mobile-only social services like this.  We have been waiting nearly a decade for the success of Japanese mobile internet to be replicated over here and it looks like it might finally be happening.

You can find Mbmgl on mjelly, which is a directory of the top mobile sites and other stuff at mjelly.com (PC) and m.mjelly.com (mobile)

Here’s the lowdown…

What is it?

itsmy.com is a social network and community site with the typical features such as profiles, forums, media-sharing and chat.   However, from the start, itsmy has focused on entertainment elements such as video (personal TV channels) and providing content downloads (e.g. games, animations).  Itsmy are a bit like the “MTV of Mobile” in this respect, rather than just a mobile chatting and social networking site.  This is their way of differentiating the service from competitors we have previously covered on Mobile Industry Review such as Mocospace and the big mobile IM and chat aggregators like Nimbuzz, Heysan and ebuddy.

The site is ONLY available on mobile, there is no version of the site designed for PC use and users cannot access the mobile site except through their phone browser.   The CEO Vince explained that this is because they want to really link itsmy with mobile and make it something special that you can only access through a particular device.  Building just for mobile browsers also allows them to optimize the service for the mobile platform and identify users to create a safe and clean social environment.

Unlike a lot of mobile social services, itsmy is focused on the big Western markets and the majority of its users are from the US, UK and Europe.  The service is localised for each country and uses additional location information to show people other users from their local area.

What itsmy have proven over the last two years is that there is a role for MOBILE-ONLY social services even as the likes of facebook, myspace and bebo roll out their own mobile extensions.  They have over 2 million registered mobile users and 4.5 million user pages containing 10 million user-generated content items.  The stats from a recent survey they did of their users are pretty interesting:

• 39% never used a PC-based online social network
• average of  25-35 messages a day sent
• most active users logging in 10 times per day to the mobile internet
• some users spending up to 2.5 hours per day browsing the internet on their mobile

The service was launched in 2006 by GoFresh, which is a privately held German company.

Why is it interesting?

I could wax lyrical about the stuff itsmy is doing all day, here’s a couple of things that make them a really interesting mobile 2.0 startup:

Itsmy data shows that we are entering a boom in mobile internet

Itsmy.com makes a lot of use of data and analytics which gives them some really useful information.  For example they track page views and logins by customer and by operator which has shown that when an operator launches a flat-rate data package or data promotion there is an immediate uplift in usage from their customers. Itsmy have even noticed individual users using the service a lot initially then stopping (bill-shock!) then returning 6 months later and using the service more than before (once they have a cheap data package).

What this suggests is that there is a massive opportunity ahead on the mobile internet as more and more people get access to lower cost or flat rate data plans – we are only really at the beginning of the growth in mobile internet take-up and usage.  Already itsmy.com are reporting really strong growth in 2009, which is really positive for the mobile industry.

Itsmy is pioneering new types of mobile advertising and marketing

Over the last couple of years there has been a big boom in mobile advertising as networks like admob have rolled out.  Right from the start, itsmy have taken a really different approach to mobile advertising.  Firstly, they have avoided using ad networks on a large scale across their site as they feel that the quality of advertisers (e.g. ringtone companies, gambling) is too low.  In addition, CPC-based mobile advertising means that users leave the site whenever they click on an ad, which detracts from the stickiness of the service.

Instead of relying on third party ad networks, itsmy invested in building their own ad platform “itsmy.biz” which allows them to provide highly targeted advertising across their community, focusing on rich media ad formats (video, in-game advertising), virals, branded content and integrated sponsorship campaigns.  As a result, itsmy.com can go direct to big brands like Reebok, Vodafone, Ford and Universal and offer them a really unique mobile advertising proposition.   They have left a lot of money on the table over the last two years, by following this approach, particularly as there is a total ban on ringtone ads on the site, however, the benefits are now starting to come through as more advertisers sign up to work with them.

So good to see mobile startups like itsmy thinking of the long-term and having a lot of integrity – a real contrast to some of the big names of the mobile 1.0 world!  That’s it for now.  See you next week when we’ll be covering South Africa’s hottest mobile startup. ..

What is it

eBuddy lets you log into your IM networks like AIM, Googletalk, MSN Messenger and ICQ as well as the Facebook and Myspace social network chat systems from a single account.  The service also integrates with mobile photo-sharing.

Initially the service was based on a PC web messenger but was extended to mobile with the launch of the Mobile Messenger Java app and a mobile web site Lite Messenger which is optimized for XHTML mobile browsers as well as the iphone, ipod Touch and Sony PSP.

eBuddy is truly international with support for 37 languages and offices in Amsterdam, London and San Fransisco.  The company has raised two rounds of funding, Series A (5m euro) from Lowland Capital Partners, and Series B (6.5m euro) from Prime Technology Ventures.

The mobile IM space is really hotting up and eBuddy faces a range of international competitors which we have previously covered here at Mobile Industry Review like Nimbuzz, Mig33 and Heysan as well as some strong local players such as Mxit in South Africa.  However, as the CEO Jan-Joost points out, ebuddy is the one to beat in this space with really massive traction – here are the latest numbers:

- 11m downloads of the ebuddy mobile application, growing at the rate of 1m downloads per month
- average user logs in 30 times per month
- 3m monthly uniques on mobile, growing at CAGR 195% (2004 to 2008)
- processed 45bn messages in 2008

eBuddy was founded in 2003, in the depths of the dot com nuclear winter, at a time when people were writing off mobile internet as a failure – so its a great success story for these difficult times!

Why is it interesting?

As a converged service working across online and mobile eBuddy offers an interesting case study of the relationship between the two platforms as mobile gets stronger and stronger.

In some markets, such as Indonesia, eBuddy’s mobile traffic is 2-3 times its web traffic, providing more evidence to support the view that mobile is going to be the primary online access channel on a global basis. eBuddy is also finding that they are able to build a web brand and web traffic as a result of their presence in mobile – this is the inverse of the way things normally work e.g. facebook mobile building off the strength of the PC site.

Whilst eBuddy haven’t started monetising their mobile traffic yet there is clearly a massive opportunity both from mobile advertising and from user-payments – Jan-Joost mentioned a Chinese IM player called QQ which is already generating $700m p.a. in mobile payments revenue in addition to $300m in advertising.  There are other examples such as Mobile Gametown in Japan which have also successfully proved this model.  With many online web 2.0 sites struggling to build revenue streams it could be services with a big presence in mobile like ebuddy that prove to be more commercially attractive.

The other thing to note about eBuddy is that they are one of the first mobile services to really get viral effects working on a massive scale in mobile.  Historically, mobile services have had to invest in high cost customer acquisition through carriage on operator portal decks or off-net advertising.  With eBuddy, every time someone logs into an IM network using the system their status is changed to show that they are using the service – which has amplified the word of mouth effects of a great service.  As a result, the huge traction that ebuddy enjoys has been achieved with fairly limited marketing spend.

What this all adds up to is a European start-up in the mobile space that could well achieve a major exit in the near future.  ebuddy would be a great fit for an international telecoms company, handset vendor or one of the major online players so watch this space…

You can download ebuddy and ebuddy Lite on mjelly, which is a directory of mobile applications and other stuff.

To start the year with a bang this week’s featured mobile 2.0 service is dabr.co.uk.

What is it?

Dabr is a mobile web interface to
twitter – the micro-blogging and social networking service of the moment, and is built on the twitter API.  It provides a range of features that the standard
m.twitter.com mobile site does not for example:

- the ability to “retweet” (i.e. quote other people’s twitter messages)
- support for in-line twitpics
- profile pictures
- search
- follow and unfollow (believe it or not m.twitter.com doesn’t let you do this!)
- view followers

Unlike other similar services like m.slandr.net the dabr is completely free of advertising.  Dabr is based on open source code developed as a personal project by David Carrington, a Maidenhead-based web developer.  David built the first version of the site in just over a week and has been continuing to develop it since then.

Why is it interesting?

Dabr has built up a large and passionate following with people like Mobile Industry Review’s own Whatleydude
championing it and bigging it up on twitter.  As a result, the traffic is growing at a pretty hefty rate with a 150% increase in page views between October and December 2008.

Dabr is also an example of the power that APIs can bring to the world of mobile.  To date, APIs and developer networks have mainly been largely confined to the world of PC’s and web 2.0.  Until now, mobile hasn’t really begun to exploit the advantages of this kind of open approach to data and services.

One of the issues for web players moving onto mobile is that mobile extensions require extra resource, particularly if multiple versions are need e.g. a mobile web site and Symbian/ Android/ iphone/applications to cover all the different device types.

What dabr shows it that by offering an API, web players can push the development effort required to build mobile versions to external developers and third parties.  Twitter has really benefited in this area with developers creating a whole raft of different mobile twitter services including 
iphone twitter apps, Blackberry twitter apps and more.

This is also happening in the case of Friendfeed (the creator of gmail’s latest startup) where an external developer used their API to build FFtogo.com, a 
href=”http://mjelly.com/site/3454-Friendfeed”>Friendfeed mobile site – before even Friendfeed had managed to build their own in-house mobile version!

Another point worth making is that the mobile network operators have been very slow to develop API’s that could allow services to be built more easily, for example, to pass information on subscribers to allow more targeted advertising, or providing easy access to location feeds.  What dabr shows is that APIs can really bring a lot to the table in terms of developing the mobile web ecosystem and need to be rolled out much more rapidly and widely.

You can find dabr on mjelly, which is a directory of the
best mobile sites and other stuff

Hi its James from mjelly.com here at Mobile Industry Review with another “Mobile 2.0 Service of the Week”. This week we’re going to take a look at Cellufun – one of the emerging mobile games 2.0 superstars. As usual we’ve managed to get hold of some exclusive stats direct from the management especially for Mobile Industry Review readers.

What is it?

Cellufun is a mobile games company that provides free downloadable and mobile web-based games over a mobile internet portal. The typical games they provide are either mobile versions of popular classics (with no licensing fees!) like Chess or Blackgammon, or their own multi-player original games like “Call of the Pharaoh” which won Best Game in the 2008 Global Mobile Awards. All of the games are funded with advertising/ are free to the end user. They also have a big focus on community at Cellufun, a lot of the games are multi-player and they also make a big deal of high score tables, forums, player profiles and so on.

Most of the action on Cellufun has been carried out off-portal on their own mobile site, but they are now beginning to get some big distribution deals. For example they recently got carriage on the Metro PCS portal, and are also providing AOL with a white label mobile games site.

The company is based in New York, they were founded in 2005 and raised a $3m series A round from Longworth Venture partners in mid 2007.

Why is it interesting?

Cellufun are really kicking up a storm in terms of traffic and usage – here are the latest stats for November – hot off the press:

- 5 million uniques a month
- one million registered users
- 160 million pageviews per month, up from 100 million the previous quarter

Pretty amazing reach for a mobile web service and clearly its a really sticky service with users, judging by the volume of page views.

Cellufun are similar to Myxer, which we profiled a couple of weeks ago here on mobile industry review, in that they are taking a mobile 1.0 service (games) and completely re-engineering the consumer proposition and business model. The 1.0 mobile games value chain is based on premium games, usually created using high cost franchises from console platforms or movies, which are sold via operator content stores. Cellufun is completely different; it typically creates its own game brands which it offers for free and funds with advertising and focuses on building a strong community around the games. This enables them to push mobile games into completely new segments – its very similar to what casual games companies like Miniclip have done on the PC web.

Despite the recession, Cellufun is the type of startup that you could really see being acquired in the next year or two for big $$. They could be a target for a big games company like Electronic Arts, a large mobile games publisher, an aggregator and service provider like Jamba or Buongiorno or even one of the major online companies. Watch this space.

We are taking two weeks off for Christmas and New Year but see you in 2009 – we already have some really exciting mobile 2.0 services lined up to tell you about. Meeeaaary Christmas!

You can find Cellufun and other mobile games sites at mjelly.com (PC) and m.mjelly.com (mobile)

What is it

Trutap is a mobile application that does four main things. Firstly, it aggregates all the major IM networks, similar to other services like Nimbuzz, ebuddy, heysan, mig33 and so on. However, that’s only 25% of what Trutap does. Trutap also provides a mobile gateway into all the major social networking, blogging and photo services, a community platform with profiles and other social features as well as a content platform which pushes out news and links on a daily basis.

Overall Trutap currently supports at least 8 IM networks, 10 blogging and photo sites, 8 social and digital lifestyle services and 8+ content channels which means it provides a gateway to well over 30 different digital communications, social and content platforms.

So – Trutap is a lot more than the simple IM aggregator that some people think it is.

Trutap have also shared a few facts about the service so far:

- 250K users with a good industry activity rate
- 80% of users are in Indian, Asian and African continents
- 70% of new users have updated their status, location and even home town within Trutap
- Facebook messenger is growing at a huge rate, now bigger than Google Talk on their network

Why is it interesting?

Trutap has been in the news recently because all staff have been put on notice. They were unfortunate that their current investor got hit hard in the Credit Crunch and is no longer investing anywhere… so the company has been effectively orphaned. Not a good time as we all know, and therefore raising more cash at short notice has been a difficult task with VCs focusing on trying to support their existing portfolio.

Trutap has taken a fair bit of stick from some quarters, but it’s got to be said that the new version of the service, which they built with the mobile development agency Future Platforms is really rather good. There are some fantastic user interface elements such as the scrolling navigation bar at the bottom of the screen which allows you to easily cycle through the different functions. A lot of people have critised Trutap for not going for a mobile web model from the start but if you look at the software they’ve built it really would be very difficult to deliver the same features and user experience over that platform.

Trutap spent the last year rolling out the first version of the product (aggregator of IM and Blogs) and building the second version (social network) which launched a few weeks ago. The first version launched in November 2007 so they’ve actually built a fair bit in a short space of time and comparing their take-up to competitors like ebuddy (10m downloads) is a bit unfair as Trutap have been going a much shorter time. The app has also been ported for a massive amount of handsets to provide a really wide potential user-base. Basically Trutap are positioned really well to begin really ramping up users and usage with the v2 app – its just unfortunate that the cut-off in funding has happened at this point.

Trutap has also begun to develop a couple of very interesting new ideas – the community system is planned to evolve into a virtual gifting and currency system, similar to the very successful model developed by the Japanese site Mobile Game Town. Secondly, Trutap has begun to create a platform for content brands with a number of partnerships underway including with a large mobile media business. These sorts of developments could seriously boost Trutap’s revenues and user-base if they get the chance to fully develop them!

Trutap is also one of the most popular apps in the mjelly directory so it seems there are quite a few fans of the service out there. Let’s hope Trutap manage to keep going and finish the job – all the best of luck to them.

You can find Trutap and other mobile software on the mjelly at mjelly.com (PC) and m.mjelly.com (mobile)

What is it?

Myxer is a community for sharing ringtones and other content.  Bands and individuals can upload music which myxer converts into the right formats for downloading to mobile – think youtube for ringtones and you’ve got the idea.  The service is mainly driven by a PC website but it is also available over the mobile web at m.myxer.com.

Whilst there are quite a few similar sites Myxer has really taken things to the next level in terms of its technology platform.  It’s created myxer tags and myxer codes to let users embed their content on social networks like myspace and on blogs and so on using HTML and flash-based widgets and badges.  They have also managed to get SMS triggers working across all the major US networks to let you push content to your phone from the web.   In fact, Myxer is now the fourth largest source of SMS in the US after American Idol, Google and American Greetings.

The company is based in Florida and they’ve raised a serious amount of money – $6.5 million in September 07, following an earlier $3m round.

Why is it interesting

Whilst there are lots of mobile content sharing communities out there, myxer is the one that has the largest usage and traffic.  They have – 15m users, 1.7m content items on the site, 100,000 content providers and a massive 32 million mobile downloads a month.  One million downloads a day is pretty impressive in a content area (ringtones) that a lot of people consider to be “dead”.

What myxer demonstrates is that there is still plenty of life left in the ringtones market – it is just the business model and user experience that is changing.  Whereas the likes of Jamba developed a ringtone value chain based on subscriptions, promoted by heavy marketing investment, myxer is using a different approach based on user-generated content and viral distribution via widgets and social networks.

There may be other areas of the mobile market that could do with a similar change of approach, for example, java games have never managed to really hit the mainstream user and broadcast Mobile TV appears to be almost completely still-born.  It may be that new startups like Myxer appear with a different way of engineering the value chain and start to take these services into new areas.

You can find myxer at mjelly which is a directory of mobile sites and other stuff at mjelly.com (PC) and m.mjelly.com (mobile)

This week it’s the turn of what might well be the UK’s no1 mobile 2.0 startup –

What is it?
Mippin is a mobile aggregator for blogs, news feeds, video and other content from the web, which it “mobilizes” by optimizing for mobile and putting it in a single portal for users.  The portal has around 42,000 sites indexed across over 80 different content channels such as “mobile news”, “celebrities”, “sports” and so on.  There are also mini widgets you can insert onto your mippin home-page to customise it such as weather, flickr and twitter feeds, horoscopes etc.

Publishers and bloggers can use mippin to create a mobile feed of their site, for example, at mjelly we use mippin to mobilize our http://mippin.com/mjelly.

Mippin make it really easy to do this – you can effectively create a mobile site out of your RSS feed in a few minutes.

Mippin also recently launched some nice social features including user profiles and social filters such as recommendations.  You can follow specific users and see what they are reading and enjoying.  Right from the start mippin has built in sharing functionality to let you email or SMS stories to your friends or blast
them over twitter.

Mippin is doing something pretty unique in the world of mobile – whilst there are loads of messaging apps for example, there are very few mobile sites that are really trying to aggregate and mobilize content in this way.  

Mippin is also interesting as a case study of how moving from a downloadable application to a mobile-web based platform can pay dividends.  Mippin started life as “Refresh Mobile” or “Mobizines” which was an early attempt to help brands put their content onto mobile through developing mobile magazines which could be downloaded as a java app. Since moving to a mobile web platform the site has really taken off and is now getting some serious traffic, which we can’t disclose, but suffice to say they are one of the biggest mobile news and information sites in the world.

The stats we can let you know about are pretty impressive – Mippin has active users in over 200 countries worldwide, on over 2,000 different types of device and the average UK user visits the site once a week with a growing number of users visiting once or more a day.  The record was 750 page views in one single
session on a Motorola V3!!

Another interesting point, Mippin find that iPhone users are “prolific” in their consumption on the site, another bit of evidence that shows that just because you have a mobile browser that can handle full webpages, it doesnt mean there’s no need for mobile optimized sites.

Mippin is a fantastic service that really stands out from the crowd – defo one to watch – it will be an ideal acquisition target in a year or so’s time for a newspaper or web portal looking to build scale on the mobile web.
See you next
week!

You can find mippin on mjelly, which is directory of the best mobile websites and other stuff at mjelly.com (PC) and m.mjelly.com (mobile)

Unfortunately we’re the bringer of bad tidings, no new intel or info was really obtained on the night. Apart from besides Nokia being a former wood pulp miller, they also used to make Wellington boots.

Despite our feverish attempts at cajoling information out of various astute well training and affluent members of the Nokia team, we came away with nothing new I’m afraid to say .

We did try our very best attempts at Jedi mind control tricks, with conversations going along the lines of:

“How’s things?”
“How have you been?”
“Nice venue for an event”
“How close in the leaked product line we saw of late to the actual product line up?”
“Have you been to this venue before; did I mention it’s a nice place”

To …

“Thanks for inviting me, it’s greatly appreciated”
“Hope the evening was a success”
“Was the leaked images of the E75 today, the handset that’s a successor to the E90 close to the final model”
“It’s a really great venue, have I mentioned it’s a nice place?”

We tried to be as subtle as would could, basing our tactical approach of questioning along the lines of the following. “The best way to open a letter is to throw a brick at it, from a very large height.”

Next week is their Nokia World event, in which we are of attendance and hope to bring you better news.

What is it?

Heysan is a mobile web interface to all the major instant messaging services including MSN, AIM, Yahoo!, Google Talk, Myspace IM and soon the new facebook messaging system.  Heysan means “Hello” in Swedish and funnily enough it was founded by some Swedes, plus one Brit.  Heysan was originally seed funded by Paul Graham’s YCombinator which provides small amounts of investment (around $20k) to help a group of founders build a product.  HeySan is one of the few mobile companies funded by YCombinator (the other big one being the LBS service Loopt) and they’ve been going since 2007.

Why is it interesting?

Heysan is probably the first mobile web service to develop a really effective viral distribution mechanism.  When you first sign in to your IM account they give the option to ping your friends/ contacts to let them know you are using heysan and in return you get credits for their virtual store.  The virtual store lets you buy stuff like special emoticons and the like – a bit like the one run by Flirtomatic.  It is really worth spending a lot of time digging behind Heysan as it has a lot more features than meets the eye such as SMS notifications and community/ profile elements.  Every single mobile web service should be looking at these guys to see how they are doing things. The site is also beautifully designed with a really clean UI.

The proof that Heysan is onto something interesting is in the stats which are absolutely jaw dropping – and remind me of the kind of figures facebook used to pump out after they started which made everyone sit up and take notice.  The average user spends over 5 hours a month on heysan, they are doing 100 million page views a month and have 600,000 users.  What is also amazing is that the largest markets for Heysan are not Indonesia or India like a lot of other mobile IM aggregators, but the UK and the US.

We are really seeing the beginnings of something big happening in mobile and this is the kind of case study that proves it.  Shouts to Krystal and Ewan at Mobile Industry Review for giving us the chance to tell you about all these great mobile services!

You can find Heysan on mjelly, which is a directory of the best mobile web sites and other stuff

What is it?

Nimbuzz is a messaging, community, VoIP service and social network aggregator that uses both a downloadable mobile app and mobile web interface as well as a PC web service and client app. They were founded in 2006 and launched earlier this year in May 2008.  Nimbuzz integrates IM (MSN, ICQ etc), VoIP (Skype) as well as social services like Twitter, Facebook and Myspace. They are also rolling out widgets and apps which you can paste into your online profiles to let people contact you via the service, bridging the world of social networks and the mobile.

Nimbuzz are going for an ad-funded business model rather than looking for a share of calling revenue like some of its competitors so everything on the service is free for the end-user.   The aim seems to be to offer a free communications service across voice, messaging and social services.

Why is it interesting?

There are a lot of competitors offering similar services, like Mig33 for example, which we previously covered here at Mobile Industry Review.  What makes Nimbuzz different is that it is offering a multi-platform service (PC + mobile) but FOCUSING on mobile as the core platform.  This is different from the way that things usually work e.g. a PC-focused player might offer a mobile app or site as an additional platform but not as the core, OR a mobile player just focuses on that platform with no PC presence.

The other thing worth noting about Nimbuzz is the way in which they are
going about promoting the service and building their user base by partnering with major social networks.  They are due to announce a lot of new partnerships over the next few months which will provide them with distribution for Nimbuzz to the millions of users on the various Soc Nets.  No other mobile services provider has done anything like this so far and it will be interesting to see how successful it is as a way of marketing mobile applications.

Nimbuzz is yet another mobile 2.0 service that is getting real traction – it has built up a user base of 2 million users and is currently getting 10k sign-ups every day.  The service has users in 190 countries, which is driven by support for 11 languages (I remember Saul Klein (former Skype director) mentioning in 2005 that a big part of Skype’s success was early support for multiple language so Nimbuzz looks like it’s doing the right things).

In an environment where a lot of web 2.0 startups are making cut backs and struggling to raise new rounds of funding Nimbuzz has a massive war chest as a result of two major funding rounds of $10m (2007) and $15m (2008).  They also have some interesting investors – Mangrove Capital Partners for example were the original investors in Skype whilst Naspers is the South African media company that also funded the mobile service Mxit.

Nimbuzz is definitely one to watch in the world of Mobile 2.0 and it’s great to see something so ambitious in the market.

Right that’s it for this week – see you again next Friday

You can download Nimbuzz and find the Nimbuzz mobile site at mjelly, which is a directory of free mobile software and other stuff

What is it?

Mocospace is a mobile social network with all the usual features – profile pages, forums, chat, buddylists, photosharing, blogging and so on – everything runs off a mobile-optimized website and they also have a basic PC front-end.   Like the name, Mocospace is quite similar to myspace in a lot of ways, including the fact that they have a lot of features around music, for example, users can download new tracks which are now being released on the site.  The seminal hip-hop label Def Jam has a partnership agreement with Mocospace for its artists including LL Cool J, Nas and Ne Yo.  The site has built up a really nice community – users refer to it as “moco” and I’m constantly hearing about how “friendly” a place it is.

Why is it interesting?

The site was founded in the USA in 2005, before mobile was “trendy” in Silicon Valley and over the last three years they have managed to build something really exciting.  Mocospace is another mobile 2.0 startup that has been able to raise a lot of funding ($7m in total), and it has a heavy weight team including Jim Scheinman who was one of the core people behind the social network Bebo’s success.  What really sets Mocospace apart is that is really has managed to gain a lot of usage and is also making real money.

The numbers are pretty impressive – Mocospace just passed 4m members and is getting 2 bn page views a month with 70% of its traffic coming from the mobile web.  According to Hitwise, Mocospace is the most popular mobile entertainment site in the US and its also the third highest used site by Opera Mini browser users in the United States.  Mocospace is also reporting that it is making “millions” in annual revenues from mobile advertising.

Mocospace has done all this at the same time as the big online social networks (myspace, facebook et al) have rolled out their own mobile sites so there’s pretty clear evidence that mobile-focused services can beat the PC websites at their own game on mobile. The question is, if it can work for social networks what other categories of online services could have their own mobile-focused success stories?

See you next week

You can find mocospace on mjelly, which is a directory of the best mobile sites and other stuff at mjelly.com (PC) and m.mjelly.com (mobile)

Hello hello it’s James from mjelly again … last Friday we kicked off a new feature for Mobile Industry Review – highlighting a different Mobile 2.0 site or app each week, to give a taste of some of the great next generation mobile stuff out there.

The first mobile 2.0 service we looked at was the mobile site builder and community site Peperonity.  This week we are going to give a quick run-down of the very excellent mobile search service Taptu.

What is it?

Taptu is a search engine designed specifically for mobile devices and mobile users.  The service focuses on entertainment and content searches (video, images, music), but also covers the web, news, blogs and mobile-optimized sites.  There’s a strong social element to Taptu – you can share the searches via SMS, email or twitter and you can save a list of your friends on the site to make it easy to ping them with stuff.  The site also remembers the searches you have done and recommends things to you to cut down on clicks and browsing around.  Another interesting feature of Taptu is the “I’m bored” button that will serve up something to amuse you from some of the most recent popular searches.  The company is based out of Cambridge UK, was founded in 2005, launched in 2007, and has already won a number of awards.

Why is it interesting?

Taptu seems to be a very well funded operation and they are investing a lot of this money in really pushing back the boundaries of mobile user experience.  If you browse their mobile site you will see that an incredible amount of care and attention has gone into the navigation, design, layout and copy.  Taptu is perhaps the first mobile web site to really succeed in bringing the clean, functional but beautiful web 2.0 aesthetic to the small screen.  If you are building a mobile web site these guys are the benchmark for design and usability.

The other reason Taptu are worth watching is that they are taking on an absolutely massive opportunity in mobile search – with all guns blazing.   Sooner or later we’ll see the first billion dollar mobile 2.0 acquisition and Taptu could be it.

See you next week for another example of mobile 2.0 goodness.

You can find Taptu on on mjelly, which is a directory of mobile things at mjelly.com on your PC and m.mjelly.com on mobile

Each week we’ll be showcasing a different site or application for you to check out, either because its innovative in some way, has been very successful or it’s the sort of thing you might want to download or bookmark on your mobile.

To kick off, our mobile 2.0 service this week is Peperonity.

What is it?

Peperonity is a mobile site builder and community that lets the user create a mobile web site with text, images, files and interactive elements like a guestbook, voting and messaging.  The site is a bit like a hybrid of livejournal and myspace on mobile that makes it really easy to create a website through your phone as a personal page or in an area of interest.  There are also some central community services including a super-busy forum, live chat rooms, a media gallery and so on.  Whilst Peperonity is most definitely “mobile 2.0″ it was actually founded way back in 2001 and survived the mobile internet nuclear winter of 2001-7 without taking any VC funding.

Why is it interesting?

To be fair, most Mobile Industry Review readers are probably not the target users for Peperonity, which  mainly attracts a younger audience, particularly in the hyper-growth mobile markets like South Africa and India.  However, the site is worth getting to know if you’re in the mobile biz, based on the huge traction that it has achieved.

Pepperonity has the kind of mobile traffic that a lot of big media companies can only dream of, and is claiming over 400m page views a month, over 5 million personal pages have been created on the site and there are now over a million registered users.  (Source: Wap Review).  As a result it is one of the biggest, if not THE biggest driver of inventory on the admob mobile ad network and is rumoured to have a minimum guarantee deal on ad space for over a million US dollars a year.

Despite all this Peperonity has a fairly low profile, even within the mobile industry, and deserves to be more widely known, given that it’s a real benchmark for anyone looking to build a successful mobile internet site.

That’s all for now – see you next week for another mobile 2.0 service

You can find Peperonity on on mjelly, which is a directory of mobile things at mjelly.com on your PC and m.mjelly.com on mobile