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Posts Tagged ‘philippines’

India is a huge market for social networks, with Facebook, Orkut and even Twitter vying for a share of the growing number of web users who are increasingly flocking to social networks in their day-to-day routines. One Indian social network is seeing considerable success on a different platform: mobile. SMS GupShup, a Twitter-like service in India that is primarily accessed via SMS, has grown to 26 million users and now accounts for 5 percent of all text messages sent within India. We previously wrote about the network here.

Part of SMS GupShup’s success has been due to the immense popularity of mobile devices in India. Currently there are 550 million mobile phone users in the country and only 50 million web users, says SMS GupShup’s CEO and co-founder Beerud Sheth. With a 10 to 1 mobile-to-PC ratio and SMS serving as the most popular communications platform, the market is ripe for SMS GupShup to take off. SMS GupShup is currently processing over 480 million messages a month and accounts for an astounding 5 percent of all texts sent within India. Sheth told me that other countries are on the horizon for SMS GupShup, with a focus on entering Southeast Asian markets, including Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines.

And the microblogging platform has evolved into a social network of sorts, with the ability for members to create and join groups. Sheth says that over 2 million groups exist on the community with the average SMS GupShup member belonging to 2.75 groups. SMS GupShup also has an advertising model in place, with high profile brands such as Microsoft, Cadbury, Nokia, Ford, Puma, Maybelline, Dell, and Sun Microsystems all participating in serving ads on the social network. Brands run SMS ads and can also create branded groups, similar to a Facebook fan page. There are also opportunities for branded content on the network; SMS GupShup recently partnered with an Indian car insurance provider and the Mumbai Traffic Police to deliver branded traffic alerts.

SMS GupShup’s variable costs are fees for text messages, and the service has had to implement caps to keep costs under control. Twitter also encountered this cost issue in it’s SMS ventures in India, with carriers were insisting Twitter pay them high fees to make up for all the tweets being received over SMS for free by users. But Twitter recently struck a deal with Indian carrier Bharti Airtel to expand its SMS service in India.

And its not just social platforms that see the opportunity in mobile communication in India. Nokia recently launched WeMeet, a social texting service. Google even ventured into the mobile space in India, with Google Labs India launching an SMS Channel, similar in theory to an RSS feed.

Backed by Charles River Ventures, Helion Venture Partners and others, SMS GupShup (spawned from Webaroo) has raised close to $23 million and has seen tremendous growth over the past year. It should be interesting to see how SMS GupShup will fare in other countries. It seems that in developing countries where mobile phone usage is much highers than web-usage the service is sure to take off. But its questionable if the site will be able to far against a popular web-based microblogging network like Twitter in the U.S.

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You like music, right? How about CDs? Do you still have CDs? Don’t have any cash this week? Did you spend a lot of money on presents for the kids already? Do you want one of these Olive No 4 Hi-Fi? Am I asking too many questions? Yes? No?

We heard reports that Friendster was going to shopping itself to an Asian technology company but tonight, the news was released that MOL Global, a Malaysian payments company, has purchased social network Friendster. The full press release is below. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed but we’ve heard that the purchase price is around $100 million.

Friendster, which was founded in 2001, has raised over $45 million in venture capital to date, and is sitting on some potentially lucrative IP. The acquisition makes sense because while Friendster is no longer hot in the U.S., it’s most definitely still has members in the Asia/Pacific region.

The social network, which just rolled out a much-needed redesign, appointed Richard Kimber as its new CEO, who used to head Sales and Operations in South East Asia for Google.

MOL Global and Friendster already had a partnership power the payments ecosystem of the Friendster Wallet and its payments platform.

MOL Retail and Payment Channels and Leading Online Social Network Combine to Form Massive Content Distribution and E-commerce Platform in Asia for Over 100 Million Users

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Dec. 9 /PRNewswire/ — MOL Global Pte. Ltd. (”MOL Global”), an affiliate of leading online payment solutions provider MOL AccessPortal Berhad (”MOL”), and Friendster, Inc. (”Friendster”), the operator of a top global web site based on traffic and a leading social network in Asia, announced today they have entered into a definitive agreement under which MOL Global will acquire 100% of Friendster. The principal shareholder of MOL is Tan Sri Vincent Tan, the Chairman and CEO of Berjaya Corporation Berhad, a leading, diversified Malaysian conglomerate that has annual revenues in excess of US$1.8 billion. Following the acquisition, the operations of MOL and Friendster will be combined to create Asia’s largest end-to-end content, distribution and commerce network, pairing MOL’s offline retail channel partners and payment platform with Friendster’s large online footprint, social network and user community in Asia.

“The merger with Friendster will continue to transform the social networking industry, combining a highly intuitive and successful social media site and online marketing channel with an integrated payment platform and content network which includes games, goods, gifts, music and video. We are creating a unique company that will be well positioned to provide content to a huge, regional user base, here in Southeast Asia,” said Ganesh Kumar Bangah, president and chief executive officer of MOL.

MOL uses the leverage of a network of over 500,000 physical and virtual payment channels across 75 countries worldwide to collect payments for content and services. Its core markets are Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and India. MOL has relationships with over 70 online game publishers that have a suite of over 200 online game titles. It also has partnerships with music, movie and video content owners and distributors across the region.

“Friendster and MOL are both industry pioneers and are close partners. This combination is a natural progression of our relationship and will be an industry-changing event,” said Richard Kimber, chief executive officer at Friendster. “The new combined entity gives Friendster the kind of financial backing, retail distribution, and e-commerce infrastructure that will enable us to accelerate our strategy and create a locally relevant, fun experience for our users in Asia, both on and offline.”

In 2003, Friendster pioneered social networking, and today is a leading web site in Asia, with over 75 million registered users and over 90 percent of daily traffic coming from the region. Asian youths have embraced Friendster and use it as their primary means of connecting to and keeping in touch with friends, self-expression, sharing content and news with friends, and as a source of entertainment. Friendster users also enjoy local music, gifting, photo sharing, online games, and using Friendster on their mobile devices. All of these are incorporated in Friendster’s product suite and will be further developed over time with MOL, specifically with Asian youths in mind.

Friendster and MOL entered a global partnership in October of this year where MOL was appointed to provide an integrated payments platform, as a foundation for The Friendster Wallet and The Friendster Gift Shop, for Friendster’s users. The new combined entity will now build upon that initial set of products to deliver a content distribution network and e-commerce platform, enabling a wide array of content to be distributed to Friendster’s community and monetize via micro-transactions using MOL’s payment platform. MOL will use the leverage of its physical distribution networks to localize and extend the online reach of social networking in Southeast Asia to the physical world through Tan Sri Vincent Tan’s substantial assets across Malaysia and the region, including retail franchises in Malaysia and across Southeast Asia such as Starbucks, 7-Eleven, Borders, Krispy Kreme, Wendy’s and Papa John’s Pizza, just to name a few.

Friendster recently launched a new brand and web site packed with new features representing a significant milestone in the company’s history and further signifying the company’s evolution to focus on the Asian youth market. The notable changes include a new fun-centric brand, and a redesigned web site with a focus on local relevance, fun and simplicity.

The combined entity will maintain offices in various locations, around the world, including Mountain View, CA (USA), the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore. Ganesh Kumar Bangah will become the Group Chief Executive Officer of the combined entity while Richard Kimber will become the Non-Executive Chairman.

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One of the fastest growing segments of travel are so-called eco-adventures—treks through rain forests, biking in the Himalayas, diving in the Philippines. They sound so exotic (and earth-friendly!) but how do you book one of those trips? There are a variety of sites out there that cater to the Eco-traveler, but most of them look like they were slapped together by hippies instead of Web designers. A new site quietly launched earlier this month called ekoVenture takes a different approach.

On ekoVenture you can search more than 10,000 eco-tours, culinary explorations, and other active adventures from 450 travel operators around the world. The site’s goal, says CEO TJ Sassani, is “getting people active and helping them break the theme park habit.” You can search by activity (biking, hiking, spelunking) or destination. Results show up as flags on a map with vacation packages listed underneath. There are details about each travel experience, and you can inquire about booking a tour right through the site.

Every tour operator is vetted by checking how long they’ve been in business, certifications, standings with local travel and business bureaus, awards, and positive press mentions. Once the site gets going, user reviews will play an important role in the vetting process as well. In addition to connecting travelers to tour operators,

ekoVenture also offers tour operators a free booking engine on the back-end, much like OpenTable does for restaurants. This gives ekoVenture direct visibility into their availability and pricing, although it doesn’t always book travel through the site if its a complicated package that requires more handling. The company was founded two years ago, and raised $1.3 million in seed capital in August, 2008 from angel investors including Dave Dolby, Nanosys founder Larry Bock, and Gerson Lehman CEO Alexander Saint-Amand, hedge fund manager Jonathan Auerbach, and Zig Capital.

ekoVenture does a really good job of organizing this particular type of travel all in one place. It gets either a 10 percent commission for simple bookings or a lead-generation fee for each inquiry it passes along. So the more that people find adventure travel that Interests them, the more money it makes. But in keeping with the whole earth-friendly theme, the company will donate 10 percent of its profits to eco-charities.

The site also features travel notes from real travel adventurers (world-class mountain cilmbers, kayakers, divers, skiers, and sailors) to help inspire those of us who are more desk-bound to get out and see the world. Travelers can share their own adventures by blogging on the site, uploading photos and videos, and adding reviews.

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Today TechCrunch Europe has officially ported to its new domain name EU.TechCrunch.com. That doesn’t mean we have anything to do with the European Union by the way – it’s just the easiest and most memorable way to denote our continuing focus on tech companies on the European continent and its nearby regions. We’re also formally telling you that we now have a lot more contributors than perhaps you previously realized.

I’ve always maintained that media is a marathon not a race. Others have wielded phrases like ‘go big or go home’. Well that might work for technology companies. But when you are creating media in conjunction with your community, you need to earn peoples’ trust first and foremost.

So we’ve been slowly building up our network of contributing voices over the last few weeks and months, not making a fuss, just getting on with the business of breaking news and stories about tech startups in Europe. But we may as well make this strategy more overt now.

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There’s no way of knowing whether this shady video taken in the Philippines is of the real PS3 Slim, but GameTrailers is claiming it to be legit. The PS3 logo looks pretty bad, too. I call BS.

See the original post here:
Video: Is this the PS3 Slim? Is it really already on sale?

OLX, the Craigslist for the rest of the world, has raised $5 million in Series C funding from General Catalyst Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Founders Fund and DN Capital, bringing the total funding raised to $28.5 million. OLX raised $13.5 million in Series B funding in April 2008 from the same investors as above, and raised an undisclosed Series A round of $10 million in September 2006 with the same VCs and various angels participating.

While the free classifieds site has trouble competing with Craigslist in the U.S., OLX has a strong user base internationally. With a presence in more than 87 countries in 39 languages, OLX’s popularity lies mainly in Spain, India, Portugal, Mexico, South America, China, and the Philippines.

Fabrice Grinda, founder and CEO of OLX says the new investment will be used to make new acquisitions, implement site improvements, expand globally, and pursue aggressive marketing initiatives. In 2007 OLX has made an investment in Edeng.cn, a Chinese free classifieds site and acquired Mundoanuncio.com, a Craigslist-like classifieds site targeting the Hispanic market, in 2006. Much of its success in the Philippines can be attributed to its white label partnership with Friendster. Its offices are also spread over the globe with 125 employees (OLX has added almost 35 employees since last year) working in New York, Buenos Aires, Beijing, and Moscow.

While OLX may play second fiddle to Craigslist in the U.S., the site prides itself on being a second-generation free classifieds site, complete with Web 2.0 features such as social network widgets, better search capabilities, interactive maps, and mobile functionality. Craigslist has recently been under scrutiny by Attorney Generals over prostitution and the “Craigslist Murder” that have taken place in conjunction with the site. eBay’s Kijiji is also a competitor in the space, but Kijiji has set its sights on catching up to Craigslist in the U.S., even considering a name change.

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