Foonz Launches First Mobile Voice Social Networking Service
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Talking to groups of people on your mobile phone has never been easier.  Today Foonz introduces the first service that lets anyone call a group  of people instantly, for free, from any phone regardless of the carrier  or service provider.
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The online application vendor has ported its productivity tools to the social networking site.
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The Internet radio-cum-smart phone music streaming service reinvents self with social-media-friendly moniker.
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These five mobile social networks are all vying to be the next hot thing. See how they stack up.
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Google has launched a beta test of a new service that allows mobile users to access its database from their handsets using short message service.
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VoIP service will be available using traditional handsets.
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Facebook took a new step into the mobile realm on Thursday, launching a platform for operators designed to make its social networking application work better on portable devices.
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Facebook took a new step into the mobile realm on Thursday, launching a platform for operators designed to make its social networking application work better on portable devices.Vodafone is the first operator to use the Facebook for Mobile Operators platform and has started services in the U.K. and Germany, said Jed Stremel, Facebook&#39;s director of mobile division. Vodafone will soon expand the program to Greece, Italy, Spain, Ireland, and Portugal.The platform involves giving operators a set of technical specifications intended to resolve some of frustrating hang-ups when using Facebook on a mobile phone rather than a PC, such as smoothing out login problems and opening up other features, Stremel said.The move by Facebook, which ranks next to MySpace as one of the most popular social networking sites, is intended to grow its user base, which the company estimates at 64 million users. So far, the company says it has 6 million users of Facebook Mobile, an unsupported mobile version of the Web site that will now get full support, Stremel said.At the moment the mobile site does not have any advertising. Stremel would not reveal the financial details of Facebook&#39;s deal with Vodafone, although he said operators will be able to generate revenue from data services as their subscribers access Facebook.The long-term hope for social networking sites is&#160;rich online advertising revenue. Facebook, which has an&#160;exclusive deal with Microsoft to place ads on the site, also did not say when it would put advertising on the mobile site.The company is hoping to lure more operators by the simplicity with which they can enable Facebook, Stremel said.Facebook has created special Web pages with instructions on how operators can set up their systems, he said. The instructions, for example, let operators add system settings that will let their subscribers send MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) with photos or video to their Facebook profiles, Stremel said.The platform also includes other specifications designed to stop abuse of Facebook, such as spamming, Stremel said. When someone sends their first MMS with a photo to their profile, the user is sent back a confirmation message with a code or a link. That confirmation then links that person&#39;s phone with their Facebook account, Stremel said.&#160;
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British mobile telecom operator mm02 will launch a high-speed mobile broadband service in 2005. Users will be able to download videos and music, and send large e-mail attachments at speeds
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Facebook launched a platform for operators designed to make its social networking application work better on portable devices.
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Call me Mr 30 per cent Kiwi-based Voeveo will flick the switch tonight on a portal where anyone can upload mobile content and charge people to download it, in return for 30 per cent of the sale price.â¦
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Teenage angst on Vodafone Live! Social networking site MySpace will be exclusively available through Vodafone Live!, the companies announced today.â¦
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Users will be able to update social networks Facebook, Jaiku and Twitter by a phone call.
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(InfoWorld) - Nearly one year after Skype stole the headlines at the 3GSM World Congress with itsÂ plans to offer a mobile versionÂ of its Internet phone, a couple of nimble startups -- and not the Net telephony pioneer itself -- appear to have found a way to make this type of service work, both technically and commercially. Earlier this week, JajahÂ announced aÂ new mobile VOIPÂ serviceÂ that allows smart-phone users to make low-cost and, in some cases, free international calls. Customers simply enter Jajah's mobile Web portal through their handset's browser, enter their user name and password and then make a either a free or low-cost call. The launch of Jajah Mobile Web comes on the heals of a mobile VOIP (voice over IP) offering by Fring, which, unlike Jajah, requires users to download software and install it in their Internet-enabled handsets. The Fring service gives mobile users access to P-to-P (peer-to-peer) VOIP offerings such as Skype and Google Talk. Microsoft appears to have its finger on the pulse of mobile VOIP, too. Next week in Barcelona, the U.S. software giant will unwrap aÂ new version of its Windows Mobile OSÂ that will supposedly enable carriers and device maker to add VOIP functionality to Windows Mobile devices. All these announcements -- and the many more expected at this year's 3GSM World Congress -- come as Skype, which essentially stunned the mobile phone industry last year with its VOIP plans, acknowledges technical and commercial hurdles. In a recent interview in Finnish newspaper, Skype co-founder and CEO Niklas ZennstrÃ¶m spoke of "technical obstacles" and conceded that efforts to make Skype work had been taking "much longer than expected." At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month, Eric Lagier, Skype director of business development for hardware and mobile, called the lack of attractive flat-rate fees for most mobile phone services a key commercial hurdle to mobile VOIP usage. He said the company didn't want to be in a position of claiming that its service is free, but facing users who at the end of the month are docked with a huge broadband usage fee. At last year's 3GSM World Congress, Skype and the Hutchison 3 Group (Hutchison 3G)Â announced a partnershipÂ to provide what they had hoped to become the world's first commercial VOIP service for mobile phones. Hutchison 3G, which operates IP-based mobile broadband networks in several European markets, was one of the first mobile phone operators to embrace VOIP, a technology many in the industry view as a major threat to their cash-cow voice business. But industry experts admit that challenges remain.Â One hurdle in providing quality VOIP serviceÂ over mobile handsets is the uplink, which is currently too slow to support quality voice calls, John Giere, chief marketing officer at Alcatel-Lucent, said in an earlier interview. To increase uplink speeds, operators of GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) networks, which dominate Europe and many parts of Asia and Latin America, will need to upgrade their networks with HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access) technology, which will give operators "the bidirectional capability they need to run real VOIP," he said. The high-speed technology is not expected to become commercially available in volume until the latter part of 2007 or early 2008. Operators are presently busy rolling out the downlink counterpart HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access).
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Startup launches service that merges e-mail with VoIP calls and instant messaging.
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The social networking site will supply APIs and test apps to support integrated widgets.
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The push is on to get Instant Messenger software on more and more mobile phones.