Mobile social network Mig33 has pulled in a $13.5 million Series B round led by DCM with participation from existing Series A investors Accel, Redpoint and TVP. Mig33 will put the money toward expanding the company in the U.S. and internationally. The company was founded in Perth, Australia, but moved to the valley after their Series A. They currently have over 9 million users (up from 7.5 million last October) in their global user base across more than 200 countries. You can see an earlier roundup of mobile social networks here.
Mig33 is a downloadable mobile social networking application with a bunch of utilities mixed in. Users can not only do the usual profiles and friending, but also includes VoIP calls, instant messaging, e-mail, text messaging, picture sharing. Long distance calls can be made by using pre-paid Mig33 minutes. They have an affiliate program for selling minutes and have even launched a calling card business in South Africa. Users have been signing on for more than a total of 2 million sessions per day, sending more than 45 million messages each day, and share more than a million pictures a month.
While many of us with “valley blinders” on would look to out ultra-portable laptop or iPhone to carry out most of these tasks, the rest of the world’s 2.6 billion subscribers turn first to a basic cellphone that runs one program at a time. Mig33 wants to be that one program.
Their application will work on most phones, including a long list of Nokias, Sony Ericssons, Motorolas, Samsungs, and others. With their eyes on the U.S. market, Mig33 plans on making smartphones fun and “dumb” phones smart by adding features like email and chat. I’ll be interested to see what they come up with, considering I’ve owned both a Blackberry and iPhone which already deliver on a lot of the features Mig33 has to offer. [Update: TechCrunch UK has a UK/European perspective on this].
Geesh, there are so many new startups coming out of Perth, Australia. Sounds like a boring place to start an exciting tech startup!
As for the idea and site itself, that’s the last thing any of us care about. For now.
The idea is the next next big thing, can ignore it for now, cannot ignore it by 2009/2010…
a
Agree its a great effort for a co. from perth
Its been an interesting rise
Check out http://www.yupnup.com
What’s with the name? Named after a Russian fighter jet?
Let me be the first to say, “who?”
That’s a nice size series B. Way to go, but SF is still the place to be.
Wow this is really good news for mobile people, especially iphone users. Now we can do socializing through our mobile phones. What a great news!
Mars M.
http://www.iphone-codes.com
Best of luck!
http://www.whatshottoday.com
Now that is some smart marketing ploy, say what.
http://tekno-world.blogspot.com
This is another business by Steven Goh:
http://www.belldirect.com.au
Quite an entrepreneur.
Only we must unload it, create our account and can enjoy its advantages: cheaper calls, cheaper messages and to have contacts around the world.. but through the cellphone.
Never used their software, don’t know anyone who ever has. My Treo has all those features and a million more… don’t understand why I would need it.
As for the idea and site itself, that’s the last thing any of us care about. For now
The VOIP feature only makes sense for someone who has unlimited mobile internet services. Otherwise you are saving on call rates but paying through the nose for mobile data.
Since none of the two carriers in China offers unlimited wireless data packages, the 2.6 Billion potential user pool just shrunk considerably.
I think these plans come from the moon
This US company is doing some cool thing too… check them out and download their java client for nokia and sony ericsson phones. they mobilized quite a few sites such as youtube, facebook, flickr, spike, mtv. Heard they are looking to implement many of these sharing and chatting services in the future.
Free….Credit
very amazing to chatting
by the way staff mig any planning visit to indonesia because member mig we hope come to indonesia ,xory my english not good thanks before
hey…i don;t know what exactly social network mean but now i understood….really amazing…as told by janry.