Vodafone acquires mobile social networking company ZYB

A not-so-popular Danish company called ZYB has been in the news for the past few days and a lot of websites are talking about this company fervently. Just what is this ZYB and what has it done to garner such an attention? Simple. It got acquired by Vodafone for approximately $50 million.

Here’s a little something on ZYB. It stated off as a backup service for mobile phones in 2006. The service, which is still available free of cost, allows you to save your mobile phone contacts and other information in ZYB’s servers. In the event of losing your mobile phone or losing the data in your mobile phone, this can be really helpful.

Now, back in 2008, the company has made an important change in the service and has turned it into a mobile social network. Now, you can have a separate profile page in this social network, just like you have one in Facebook, MySpace, and Orkut. You can add photos, add friends, send comments, and build your network easily.

Vodafone, by acquiring ZYB, has shown everyone which way the market is going and I’m sure we can see plenty of big players go the same way soon.

The concept of social networking on mobile phones, or mobile social networking, has been catching up with people big time and a lot of companies have realized its imminent potential. The result – you have plenty of strategic partnerships. I’ve already blogged about mobile social networking and how it can become the next big thing and incidents like this just reaffirm my faith time and again.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones, Mobile Social Networking.

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Google releases mobile version of Orkut

In an attempt to make Orkut go places, Google has quietly released the mobile version of Orkut. From now on, you can access Orkut mobile any time you want, any where, right in your mobile phone. You can check out your Orkut profile, read scraps, write scraps, you can search for profiles, you can get updates from your pals, you can set reminders, and you can do a whole lot of things. However, there are a few things that I think will not go too well with the users.

First of all, you cannot access videos or communities. This, I think, is a major minus as far as the users are concerned. Second of all, you cannot create a new profile and you can’t even edit your current profile, which I think is another major minus.

Apart from these two downsides, Orkut mobile is really cool and you can check it out any time you want. But what surprises me most is that Google has not publicized it the way I thought it would. I mean, it’s such a famous social networking site and going mobile is such a big step forward and yet it doesn’t get that big a hype before the launch??? Beats me.

Categories: Google, All things mobile phones.

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Japan based social networking site to pay its users

Already a member in Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, and other social networking sites? You can as well add one more site to that list. This time, unexpectedly, it’s from Japan. Mobikade is a mobile based social networking site which lets you have fun, free of cost.

Now here’s the most important part. You can earn money by referring your friends to this site. You’ll be paid ₤1 every time you invite a friend to the site. This is a promotional offer and they’re planning to do this till they reach 10,000 subscribers. So, if you’ve not signed up with Mobikade, DO IT NOW.

Mobikade also has a range of offers to entice mobile phone users to use its services. Whatever you do, you’ll be provided with certain credit points, which you can redeem later. To begin with, Mobikade lets you send and receive free SMS or text messages. In order to use this free SMS service, you need to have a certain amount of points accumulated though. Mobikade has an option called “What’s up now?” which is similar to the “What are you doing now?” field in Facebook which lets your friends know what you are doing by the hour. You can type whatever you want in the “What’s up now?” and even upload images to let your friends know what you’re doing. In your spare time, you can also download some cool mobile games from the site, free of cost. You earn points for each and everything you do with Mobikade, and you can redeem the points later to win goodies like shopping vouchers, discount coupons, gift items, and so on.

A market expert recently stated that going at this rate, mobile phone will soon become a haven for anyone who wants to promote a product/service effectively. And isn’t that what I’ve been telling you guys for quite some time now?

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, Mobile Social Networking.

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