Myriad Mobile Social Networking for 1 Billion Users
Myriad Group, a company offering mobile social and web apps for connected devices, says Myriad Updates is being deployed with leading carriers Vodafone, Orange and Mobinil.
Gaining significant commercial momentum, it says, Myriad Updates has been selected by Orange to deliver Facebook to Africa. With only one in every 32 phones being a smartphone in the region, Myriad is opening up new markets and creating huge revenue opportunities for carriers, says the company.
For instance, it says, in the first week of launch one carrier signed over 50,000 paying subscribers to their social networking service. Being one of the few companies to successfully monetize social experiences on the mobile devices, Myriad has attracted very strong interest from carriers in both developed and emerging markets. With such a strong pipeline, Myriad is on track to deliver social networking services to over 1 billion mobile users by end of 2012, the company claims.
[ Also Read: Can a Mobile Device Double as Phone and TV? ]Available on nearly any mobile phone, subscribers who have limited or no access to data can connect to their favorite social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr via Myriad Updates.
Powered by Myriad’s mobile social networking platform, Xumii, Myriad Updates presents a person’s social network activity on the screen as text using the USSD bearer, thus enabling users to stay connected without having to install an app or requiring a data plan.
Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) is a protocol that allows mobiles to communicate with the service provider’s computers.
[ Also Read: Nokia’s New Plans to Impact 4,000 Employees ]Myriad’s experience in the integration of social networking into mass-market phones, enables carriers to rapidly deliver services while creating new revenue opportunities, even in emerging markets where many consumers own lower-end mobile devices, says the company.
“Myriad Updates is bringing Facebook and Twitter to the millions of users in emerging markets without data plans, driving monetization of mobile social experiences and putting carriers back into the social networking game,” said Simon Wilkinson, CEO of Myriad Group.
“Myriad is opening up new markets and creating huge revenue opportunities. Signing up over 50,000 subscribers in just one week indicates the powerful demand for these services and clearly positions Myriad as the leading provider and innovator of social networking solutions for mobile carriers.”
Headquartered in Zurich Switzerland, Myriad is listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange (SIX Symbol: MYRN).
Photo courtesy: Myriad
USSD is one way to deliver Internet-based services to basic handsets.
The other alternative is a SIM-based solution such as “Facebook for SIM” developed by Gemalto: this solution offers an easy access to a mobile interactive text version of Facebook, working on any GSM phone even without data subscription.
Among other things, the main benefit is the possibility to stay connected to Facebook all the time; as a matter of fact, thanks to interactive notifications that automatically pop-up on the user’s handset screen, the user can be continuously be informed about the actions generated by his/her friends (for example a notification is sent to the user when somebody posts a comment on his/her status, sends him/her a request to be friend or posts a new feed on his/her wall).
It increases users’ stickiness to the service and encourage them to buy again daily/weekly/monthly passes.
For example, Personal in Argentina has already launched commercially this service last October 2011.
Sébastien Violette (working on it at Gemalto)