Mig33 Moves To The U.S.
Nick Gonzalez
8 comments »
We’ve been keeping an eye on the mobile social networking world covering companies such as Zyb, Mocospace, Aka-aki, imity, meetmoi, mobiluck. See our roundup post here. Most of the innovation is occurring outside of the U.S., particularly in Europe. That’s why it’s no surprise to see yet another success story, Mig33, originate outside of the U.S. (the company was founded in Australia). The company has over seven million registered users, nearly all outside of the U.S. Today, however, the company is launching their service in the U.S. They’ve also moved the company here - it’s now based in San Francisco.
Migg33 is a mobile application that lets you chat (AIM, MSN, Yahoo) and send instant messages and emails, make cheaper international phone calls, share photos, connect with friends. The key selling point is that they now offer all of this functionality through the WAP browser (wap.mig33.com) currently available on most mobile phones, which has the added advantage of being accessible on your computer too. However, the WAP interface is rather spartan and chatting on a webpage is time consuming. The downloaded J2ME version makes for a richer experience.
The U.S. launch also includes a new free hosted email feature, allowing U.S. subscribers to send and receive e-mail on their mobile phones. This adds to the photo sharing, chat integration, and cheap calling rates by connecting over VOIP lines of the original application.
It will be interesting to how popular the service in the U.S. considering the differences between European and American cell phone use. Europeans have been more likely than Americans to use cellphones for the internet. Cellphones have continually been more a part of people’s lifestyles outside of the U.S.





Another fine Western Australian company
I am not exactly sure about the mobile social network stuff. I would still assume that internet on mobile is used by the professionals and executives more than the chat-group. It is surprising to see a crowded marketplace for this segment. Anyway, I might be wrong here!
I agree with Anand but mobile internet user is turning out to be a large population. Also social networking sites have become so popular that mobile social networking doesnt seems out of question either
I don’t understand why the introduction of a mobile WAP version is news for Techcrunch. Last year eBuddy announced (http://www.centernetworks.com/ebuddy-hits-5-millionth-mobile-user) their 5th million user on their mobile WAP, even before the introduction of eBuddy’s mobile J2ME client. Today I tried th WAP version of Mig33, but I strongly prefer the version of eBuddy.
From reading the comments it seems as though a couple people may not see the need or reason for mobile social networks.
One main reason is that in underdeveloped countries mobiles are the way people connect to the internet and outside world, they just don’t have the broadband etc that the rest of the world has.
In regards to eBuddy… isnt it just a messenger client for your mobile?
Disclosure: I am an angel investor in Mig33.
Hoping for them to launch service in US.
http://vidsonly.blogspot.com
I wood like to start a mobile social networks in Gua dalajara Mexico ,
I think there is a big market in that city for that type of services , is there any one who cant help my get it started.
I am currently in Boston but my permanent residents is Guadalajara Mexico
martin_oro2@hotmail.com