Mobile community developer Kiboo has revealed that its geo-localised social network and micro-blogging mobile application Buddymob has reached the top 5 on the Android Market in the social category.
Within hours of the launch of BuddyMob as a private beta test on 1 December 2008, says Kiboo,. BuddyMob had exceeded its 1,000 download target and after three days, the application had to be removed from the Android Market due to over-subscription. To date, the BuddyMob beta trial has experienced over 10,000 download requests and currently has more than 5,118 active community members. The average session time users have been spending on BuddyMob is high at 3 hours.
BuddyMob is the latest in a series of applications for mobile devices made by Kiboo. Acting as a social network and instant messenger (IM) integrator, BuddyMob allows users to post a range of text and geo-tagged multimedia content to their live feed; simultaneously cross-post to all their favourite social sites; keep up to date with friends live feeds from other social networks such as Twitter; chat to friends using the complete integration with IM applications such as MSN and GoogleTalk; find out where friends are and what they are doing using GoogleMaps; and receive location alerts when friends are close.
Available on Android enabled phones, BuddyMob currently integrates with Twitter, MSN, GoogleTalk and Jabber. In response to the more than 700 member feedback comments Kiboo has received from users, the company is currently working on integrating other IM services and many more social networks such as AIM, ahead of commercial deployment.
Free to use, BuddyMob will be ad-funded, using a combination of location-based advertising and ads served according to a users profile, ensuring relevancy, higher clickthrough and therefore better revenue generation. BuddyMob buddies can choose whether to can be located or contacted via the application, protecting them from unwanted tracking and respecting privacy issues.
Our research has shown that around 60% of consumers are members of more than one social network, says Kiboo CEO, Christophe Hocquet. The service that BuddyMob provides, integrating all social network feeds and creating a new way to be constantly connected to friends, meets this trend head on.
Androids open system has opened up a wealth of opportunities for developers, allowing us to create a completely new offering that enables constant connection between friends, Hocquet continued. The combination of positioning with content sharing and chat on a single mobile application creates a whole new communication medium. Add to this the ability to stay up to date with friends updates whichever network theyre using and BuddyMob is able to deliver friends at your fingertips.
You can sign up for the beta test of BuddyMob and see an online demo here