Bluepulse, mig33, MXit and Rummble Use SMS to Improve Mobile Social Experience

Redwood City, US: July 15, 2008 – Clickatell, global mobile messaging leader, today announced that mig33, Bluepulse , MXit and Rummble have selected Clickatell’s award winning SMS gateway to increase customer acquisition, improve the effectiveness of social communities, and increase the overall “stickiness” of mobile communities. In today’s mobile society, people want to communicate and stay in touch while on the go, and the addition of text messaging to mobile social networks greatly improves the ability to stay connected with friends, family and business associates anywhere, anytime. People of all ages “get” text messaging, and it’s inherent on 99% of the 3 billion mobile phones in existence today.

The global social networking market will grow to a massive $28.9 billion for revenues generated from all business models in this industry by 2012, according to Informa Telecoms. Within that massive market, the mobile social networking market is getting the attention of many people across the globe.

“With industry giants such as Google, Yahoo, Facebook and others now investing millions into mobile messaging strategies,” commented Pieter de Villiers, CEO of Clickatell, “we are seeing an up-surge in customer growth in this sector as social networking companies of all size realize the importance of selecting the right enterprise-class messaging partner.  Clickatell provides social networking companies something that they have never had before – proven reliable global text messaging delivery that is rapidly and easily deployable across every type of mobile social messaging situation,” commented Pieter de Villiers, CEO of Clickatell. “Our customers understand that mobile is the place to start when delivering social networking.”

SMS is a game-changing medium and can be used for things such as authentication, message alerts, and text reminders to log in to the active mobile social network. The addition of SMS provides a way for these social communities to receive a “tickle” or an alert to log in when they have been inactive, or when they have messages that haven’t been read.

“PCs and mobile phones are becoming virtually interchangeable and people want the freedom of being connected and active within their social communities anytime, anywhere,” commented Vikrant Gandhi, mobile analyst for leading analyst firm, Frost & Sullivan. “Leading social networking companies must bring a solid mobile strategy to their customers, giving them the liberty of staying linked all the time. SMS provides an excellent addition because people already know how to use SMS. It provides an easy way to expand on core offerings, drive personalization and build loyalty to ultimately access more ‘eyeballs’ which results in higher advertising dollars.”

“SMS is the most logical way to attract new members. Receiving an inviting SMS from a friend, with the mobile site address conveniently available makes it much easier to log on and become part of the community,” de Villiers continued. “SMS is inherent and easy to use and therefore, is naturally attractive to mobile user experience. This text invitation can mean the difference between a potential user downloading or deleting. SMS exceeds the mere enhancement of the current social networking business model; it significantly alters and improves the paradigm.”

Clickatell’s easy-to-use APIs and developer tools provide one central point to quickly integrate new SMS capabilities into existing or new offerings. And, Clickatell has years of experience and deep relationships with mobile carriers and can reach over 700 networks in more than 200 countries around the world.

Social networking providers, powered by Clickatell’s mobile messaging, use SMS to further enhance the mobile social networking experience for their users:

• Bluepulse is a mobile messaging platform that allows users to send group and peer-to-peer messages, update their status, capture what they are doing with a picture or video and share it with their network immediately – from any Internet-enabled mobile phone, wherever they are and whenever they want. Bluepulse is one of the fastest growing mobile communities in the world, delivering more than 150 million messages per month to users in more than 190 countries. Bluepulse users can choose to receive SMS messages when they have unread direct messages or want a daily summary of their Bluepulse activity.

"SMS provides us with the ability to send invitations from Bluepulse users to their friends to use Bluepulse and to send alerts to Bluepulse users when they have new messages,” said Ben Keighran, Founder and CEO of Bluepulse. “Clickatell provides us with a proven messaging solution with the widest global reach and quality of service ensuring timely delivery regardless of location or device. We wanted a global messaging provider because our community is worldwide and our users don’t deserve any limitations." For more information please visit www.bluepulse.com

• Mig33 is a mobile social networking service launched in late 2005. With more than 13 million users in over 200 countries sending more than 50 million messages a day, mig33 offers mobile phone users the power of the Internet and cost savings on VoIP calls, email, instant messaging, chat rooms, text messaging, profiles and photo sharing.

“Clickatell helps us deliver our SMS traffic to the global market,” says Mei Lin Ng, mig33 co-founder and VP of marketing. “Clickatell is a very valuable and supportive partner to mig33. We found their evolving product and increasing coverage to be a big asset and look forward to a continued relationship with them.” For more information please visit www.mig33.com

• MXit, a mobile instant messaging company founded in South Africa in 2005, recorded an amazing 2.5 million downloads within 18 months of its launch date by offering users a text chat application that only costs a few cents per message. It now has over 8 million registered users exchanging more than a hundred million text messages per day. In addition to basic chat services, users can exchange greeting cards, pictures and compressed sound clips. MXit also interacts with other online chat platforms such as GTalk, MSN messenger, and Jabber.

“Our users use premium rated SMSs to get credits into their accounts, which are then used to purchase music, skinz, wallpapers and other services on our platforms. We have been using Clickatell from day one and they are our largest SMS provider”, says Herman Heunis, Founder and CEO of MXit. For more information please visit www.mxit.co.za

• Rummble, a location based social search and discovery tool, enables users to find recommended content for a location more easily, without a traditional keyword search. Instead, Rummble’s award winning mobile algorithm provides personalized results based upon a trust profile it builds for the individual user and the content within their social network. Since integrating with Clickatell, Rummble’s service has been able to enjoy increased reach to worldwide market.

“SMS allows users to interact with Rummble on their mobiles, despite not being able to utilize a Java application or access the mobile web.” Says Andrew J Scott, founder and CEO of Rummble. “Clickatell offered Rummble the functionality which has enabled us to launch globally, regardless of our member’s handset capabilities.” For more information please visit www.rummble.com

To download Clickatell’s social networking and SMS case study please go to http://www.clickatell.com/central/campaigns/redir.php?cid=31592