mig33 won’t be the only mobile social network in town

Look out world here comes mig33. Or that what we’re supposed to believe. The mobile social network has won $13.5 million in a second round of funding led by Menlo Park-based VC firm DCM. First round investors Accel, Redpoint and TVP also pumped in more money. Originally from Australia and now based in California, the two-year old company, will use the cash to expand internationally, and that must surely means us over here in Europe. Its Java client lets users chat and send IM, email, make VoIP calls, and share photos across networks. It has 9 million users in over 200 countries, creating 2 million sessions and 45 million messages per day and sharing one million photos a month.

But hold on just one minute. There are other players in this game with equally interesting products. The question is, will the better-funded startups in mobile social networking win out or will the application itself be the game changer?

For ideas on this start with UK startup Trutap. In September last year it raised another £3.23m ($6.5 million) from The Tudor Group and angel investors. That brought its total funding to date to - guess what? - £6.45m or $13m, almost the same as mig33’s latest round. Trutap also offers software blog posting, IM, group SMS, web photo-sharing and access to existing social networks. Then there is Next2Friends, another UK firm working on social apps for the mobile, not to mention Rummble, Buddyping etc. This game is not over yet.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 at 1:31 pm and is filed under TCUK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.