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

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)

What is it?

Mig33 is like a mobile hybrid of the messaging platform Meebo and the VoIP service Skype, provided as a downloadable Java application for your phone.  The service lets you sign into the various IM services (AIM, MSN, Gtalk, ICQ etc) from your phone.  You can also chat and message in a range of internal chat rooms and use social networking features and photo sharing. Mig33 also enables users to make VoIP calls and send cheap SMS using an internal prepaid credit system.  The company was founded in December 2005 in Australia is now based in the US.

Why is it interesting?

Mig33 have raised a massive amount of funding for a mobile startup – $23.5m over two rounds from some big hitters including Accel. When you think about it this is a massive vote of confidence in the future of downloadable mobile applications – an investment of this size suggests they are gunning for a huge exit of hundreds of millions of dollars – all from a mobile java app!

The service already has massive traction with over 9m members generating 2m sessions, 45 million messages and 1m pictures shared per day.  Again, the sort of usage mig33 is generating suggests that there really is a big potential market out there for mobile software and apps if you have the right proposition.

Currently most of the mig33 user base is in Asia and developing markets like South Africa and the funding appears to be designed to grow the user-base in the US and Europe and create a service with global scale.  If mig33 can successfully execute it on this plan it will be great news for the mobile apps industry and mobile 2.0 in general.

See you next week

You can download mig33 from mjelly, which is a directory of mobile software and other stuff

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

They’ve got a pretty packed conference with some great speakers and some interesting panels. You can see the full finalised agenda here, but it includes all the names you’d expect and some that might be new to you.

As part of the finalised agenda a new Mobile Social Media Panel has been added which will be moderated by Peggy Anne Salz of MSearchGroove and will include panelists from M:Metrics, Zyb, Nokia Conversations, Itsmy.com, Yahoo! and Doug Richards from Trutap who used to be in Dragon’s Den.

He’s second from the left and to be fair probably hates it still being brought up. Oh well.

If all of that has whet your appetite, then as a Media Partner we here at SMS Text News Towers can offer you free tickets. The first two people to email me at patrick@smstextnews.com will get the tickets, so get emailing.

If you miss out, you can also buy tickets here.

*UPDATE: My bad, I should have mentioned that the conference is in Barcelona. We’re offering free tickets to get you through the door, but not to fly you to Barcelona!