O2 Ireland has partnered with a social networking site Bebo in launching a new mobile service. Under the deal, O2 Ireland subscribers who are also Bebo users can access to the mobile version of Bebo site and perform some activities such as view their profiles, upload photos, receive alerts or post comments by text message from their O2 phones. It seems that now the mobile network operators not only know to invest capital in next-generation networks, technologies and systems, but also know the importance of achieving exclusive partnership with the leading social networking sites in order to remain competitive in the market. Recent example is the partnership of Vodafone and MySpace.

This partnership definitely provides a sufficient critical mass to get the attention of O2 Ireland and Bebo users, since the service will be offered free of charge until November 30 this year, after which time O2 users will be charged a weekly subscription fee of EUR1.50. Additionally, O2 Ireland has an agreement with Bebo to provide the service exclusively to its customers until March 2008.

Blyk, a UK free mobile service provider is set to launch now. As stated on their landing page, those who text the ‘JOIN’ to 82595 will get the invite code to be sent by Blyk. Basically, the services Blyk offered to the UK people are the free calls and text messages. They aimed to become the UK’s first free mobile network and currently targeting at the 16-24 year old demographic. In penetrating this market, they give their users that are in this group of age 217 free text messages and 43 minutes of free call each per month, as the research showed that this amount is the average monthly usage of a 16-24 year old. If the free minutes and texts have been consumed for the month, users have the options to top up the services. Since the first 217 texts and 43 minutes are free, what Blyk asked in return every month is the maximum of six advertisements per day to their phone from Blyk brand partners, including Xbox, Adidas and Coca-Cola, and many more.

Blyk’s notion was to hep the younger generation save money instead of pay for their phone bills. Why pay for calls and texts when you can get them free is the biggest appeal to this 16-24 group of people. The UK CEO of Blyk, Shaun Gregory3 said, “We believe in free communications and Blyk is bringing this to young people in the UK. If you apply these savings across the whole of Britain’s 7 million plus 16-24 year old population, and specifically 7,056,0004 mobile phone owners, that’s a colossal saving of over £1.98 Billion per year. That’s a lot of cash that can go right back into the pockets of the UK’s young people.”

Blyk was co-founded by Pekka Ala-Pietilä and Antti Öhrling in 2006. It has offices in Helsinki, Finland and London. First target market is in UK, with other European markets to be expanded in the future.

eSpew, the world’s largest online free audio mp3 search engine has launched a new service last week. Now eSpew’s existing users are allowed to send the mp3 music via sms for free without any charge and the service is powered by HooQs. According to HooQs, sending mp3 music via their Web to mobile service is as simple as selecting a song, and users are not required to provide any personal information to use this service, thus encourage the end-users to test it. In many instances, end-users would very much be pleased to try a new thing when there are no personal information being required to reveal, or any third-party software required to download on their computers. Apparently, this new service now added to the array of existing services offered by eSpew such as search and play music for free, chat with friends, share music, create multiple online mp3 music playlists, and save favorite mp3 music.

Currently, eSpew business model are the advertisements, ringtone sales, and WhiteLabel affiliated contracts.

India is one of the fastest growing mobile phone markets in the world and the mobile concentration is extremely high especially in the middle and low-end market segments. It seems that Google India is trying to tap into this market by launching the Google SMS service. Google SMS service is the first text message-like service that offered by Google in the Asian countries. Users can now get their search queries to be returned in the SMS text messages by Google India through a shortcode 54664 [5GOOG] sent from their mobile phones. This service is currently available in four cities that include Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai and the mobile operator networks that support this service are Aircel, Airtel, BPL, BSNL, and Reliance. Though this service is available as a beta service, users need to pay for this SMS service as prescribed by the aforesaid operator networks, minimum cost is 3 rupees per SMS.

In emerging markets such as India and China where poor Internet network infrastructure can be found in certain areas, mobile phone has became the number one choice that people use it to communicate and stay connected. The introduction of Google India SMS service is a move that marked how clever Google in react to this particular market, this product strategy is similar to the launched of voice search services that offered by Baidu in China this August.

Comcast has relaunched its Web portal with a bunch of new features built-in. It was in the development of the new mass medium that encompassed new look, email in the home page, better users’ account management, and a slick new style of The Fan, i.e. its video player and other interactive technologies. As shown in the above picture, if you look closely, you’ll see that Comcast.net is as much about a personal portal as it is about a public Web portal. Though I did not like the slow loading of some pages that found on the site, but I definitely like the portal that bring up the quintessential Web 2.0 effect and reflection.

Comcast.net currently still in beta, the broad range of features was designed to meet the varied needs of its loyal users, one of the example is the Comcast mobile menu that allowed user to navigate the portal with a mobile device.

A new startup that called Wakerupper that offered free Web-based wake-up call service has launched recently. The service that they rendered enables an user to reliably receive a call for the important task reminder or appointment that scheduled. To use the service, an user just simply need to input the date and time, email address as well as the cell phone number. However, Wakerupper restricts the maximum 140-character per message for the users. What set them apart is the service offered is free, works almost with any phone, and they have the technology, a kind of text-to-speech that read the message to an user when receive the telephone reminder.

I believed that Wakerupper sure this type of business model couldn’t afford to wait since the technology they offered was not that technically difficult to develop. Still, there are many startups on the Web which their business models unnervingly similar to Wakerupper. Currently, the service only available in the U.S. and Canada, and being in the private beta phase. In other word, potential users need to request a beta account in order to use their service. My sense is that when Wakerupper open to public in the near future, there will be two different version of accounts offered, one is the free one and the other will be a paid premium version.

Mosh, Nokia’s social networking site has moved into public beta in September. It was initially being served as a private beta version of cross-platform social network, but somewhat a public version since a password “ALLACCESS” has been leaked on the Web and potential users can use it to login and create an account on this MOSH.

It was developed as a site for dual mobile phone and desktop PCs access and when an user create her own profile on MOSH, she can upload contents, such as audio, images, applications, games, videos, and documents, or vice versa, browse and collect items from other users. For every item an user upload or collect, MOSH will provide a numbering statistics on the user’s profile page. Instead of what items an user can collect, she can also tag, as you can see the tag cloud located in the MOSH’s sidebar in addition to comment on the item, “Love” or “Hate” it. Most of the tags given by the users are all funny words, such as happy, free, cool, superb, wallpaper, etc. For every user’s own profile page, the overall ranking is shown. An user can find out who is collecting her content, what items she uploads, and what “username” collects, by manner of percentage as well as the graphical representation, i.e. pie chart.

Nokia’s emergence as the leading mobile phone brand was regarded as one of the great success stories of the past decades. However, the building of this site was considered a brand repositioning and also was seen as a vital move to the Nokia’s future success. MOSH will definitely bring Nokia’s brand to a further image upscale, as social networking is hot among the high-growth segment, i.e. young generation. While it is a trendy product, and Nokia has taken the necessary steps to build it, but sometimes trendy products can’t guarantee a company impressive sales volumes. It will only enhancing a company’s brand awareness.

Bluepulse, dubbing itself as “my place on mobile” has raised $6 million in a round A financing from venture capitalist VantagePoint Venture Partners. Since its establishment in year 2002 in Sydney, Australia, Bluepulse had been focused on developing a unique platform that enabled friends, co-workers, acquaintances and family members to create personal profile, stay connected, share pictures and videos, chat, one-to-one and broadcast messaging as well as access widgets with the mobile phone.

Bluepulse’s stated corporate objective was to “built on an open platform that gives its global users multiple means of communication, content sharing, widgets, and so much more - all under one roof.” This product strategy, built around different types of mobile phones, had led to its software utility downloaded more than two million times across 150 countries since its beta launched in December last year. From then on, Bluepulse has experienced significant growth, with approximately 100 million page views per month and potentially the fastest growing mobile social network in the world.

In addition, they have relocated from Sydney to Silicon Valley, with headquarters in the former YouTube Inc. offices in San Mateo, California. This also marked another major milestone for the company.