Within hours of the launch, 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 three hours.
BuddyMob is the latest in a series of applications for mobile devices made by mobile community developer Kiboo. Acting as a social network and instant messenger integrator, BuddyMob allows users to: post a range of text and geotagged 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 instant messenger 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, they are 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 adverts served according to a user’s profile, ensuring relevancy, higher click through 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.
Christophe Hocquet, CEO and co-founder at Kiboo, explained: Our research has shown that around 60% of consumers are members of more than one social network. 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.”
“Android’s 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 they’re using and BuddyMob is able to deliver friends at your fingertips.”