The Canadian company AirG, which develops the technology for creating mobile communities and wireless social networking, is setting up operations in the UK. AirG already has licensing deals with 85 mobile operators in 37 countries and more than seven million registered users worldwide. Fred Ghahramani, AirGs director, explained to Mobile Marketing Magazine, his companys plans and why mobile communities are taking off in such a big way. We all know about online communities, where users generate their own content, share interests and create social networks look at the success of something like MySpace. Well, we can create similar communities on a mobile phone, but the big difference that you now have mobility you dont have to be sitting at your PC to connect to your community, you do it almost anytime and anywhere.
Mobile communities can offer functions such as games, public and private chat, instant messaging, blogging, flirting, dating and photo sharing. Users download a small community application file onto their handset. The technology can be used with any type of handset technology (such as WAP or Java), with users able to migrate to more sophisticated features as they upgrade their mobile phone The biggest mobile community users are in the 18-25 age range and there is almost a 50/50 split between male and female. AirG says one million new users are signing up each month.
AirGs customers include Sprint, Verizon, Orange, O2, T-Mobile, Vodafone and MTV. Mobile communities offer increased revenues to operators and remember, users are creating their own content, notes Ghahramani. He now thinks the UK market is ripe for the mobile community experience and so AirG has been busily recruiting new staff and will set-up operations in Cambridge. Were talking to a number of players and well have some new announcements in the next few months, promises Ghahramani.