Mobile social networks have tremendous potential to flourish in developing countries where mobile phone usage trumps internet connectivity. SMS based social networks like SMSGupshup have gained considerable traction in Asia because of this. For example, in India, there is currently a 10 to 1 mobile-to-PC ratio. Mig33, a mobile social network that involves VoIP calls, instant messaging, e-mail, text messaging, and picture sharing, has accumulated 35 million registered users of its service and is growing fast in South Asian markets such as Indonesia and India. Assuming 3 to 10 percent are active on a monthly basis, that would be 1 million to 3.5 million active users.
Mig33′s users are now sending over 1 million virtual gifts a month, and posting approximately 100 million messages a day on its network, or 1,000 messages every second. Twitter, in comparison, just passed 50 million a day. Mig33 is eying the virtual gift economy as a revenue maker because of the model’s success for China’s similar application, Tencent QQ. According to Mig33, the Chinese mobile social application has nearly 8% of its over 500 million users in China paying about $2 per month in virtual gifts and goods. Mig33 is hoping to emulate that model in markets like Indonesia, India, South Africa, Bangladesh, Kenya, and Bosnia.
Mig33 is available worldwide and optimized for more than 2,000 different mobile devices. The startup has steadily added to its app by integrating social games, user-owned groups, virtual gifting and, most recently, avatars. Avatars are actually a source of revenue for mig33, by charging users to customize and enhance their avatars. Mig33 is looking to expand the virtual economy. In fact, the startup says that its revenue stream has grown to over $1 per user per month in countries such as Indonesia and India.
Founded in 2005, mig33 is backed by Accel Partners, Redpoint Ventures and DCM and has raised a total of $23.5 million.
The “follow us on twitter” graphic on their homepage is great – I can’t tell whether or not the twitter bird is pertrified.
Indonesia is not in South Asia. Its in South East Asia. Go check an Atlas.
And yeah Mig33 is huge over here. :)
@Tajim – hate to break it to you but South East Asia is in South Asia. It is just a more specific description.
Not Quite True.
Indonesia, Malaysia, Phillipines are never considered part of South Asia.
Well, @Matt
Corrrect Your Facts Mate. If you are going for specific description then you should learn a bit more.
South Asia and South East Asia and specifically different locations.
You better say all of them are in Asia if you do not know anything about Asia.
Interesting.
Now can anyone tell, or are there statistics available about how many of these messages on Mig33 are NOT in English language? The statistics for Twitter in this regard is 50% (worldwide). Since almost no one in South Asia has English as their mother tongue, theoretically, this percentage should be much higher in Mig33. However, the reality might be different, owing to the low level of development of mobile local language computing in the region (unlike the Far East).
OMG. I had no idea. But mighty interesting to know. So how do we get on this mig33 bandwagon and how come no one has mentioned them until now?
“how come no one has mentioned them until now?”
Because it’s not the West, who gives a shmit!
Because it’s not fucking Foursquare with their half a million registered users. Can’t be important!
This is one of those pretty good stories that reminds us, being mentioned most often doesn’t always means most usage. Brightkite doesn’t get mentioned nearly as much as FourSquare and Gowalla yet it has more users and usage. I don’t see language as an issue though. If usage is what we’re judging by then it has to be the goal post, so can we not move it then!
I agree, language is not an issue in messaging.
‘Missed call’ is widely used in India for exchanging messages!
good for them
http://www.confessionhub.com
Asia is the future of the world Internet industry.
Every day, Asia’s shadow grows longer and longer over The West.
We are just living in their world.
Are you sure about Bosnia? It is actually Bosnia & Herzegovina and it is in Europe.
Where did you get those statistics from? Can you cite a source please. They look like cooked up.
what a news
Jep guys thats cause you are mostly so silicon valley fixed. And cause there are plenty of spaces around the world and especialy in Asia where big things are going on which arnt featured on TC. Greetings from Sout East Asia we still there since 18 month
interesting information…….
It’s true that Mig33 has it’s highest potential of earnings from Virtual gifts. Till last year mig33 earned a lot from multi-kicking(a feature to kick an abusive id from chat rooms, but later it become popular as a game). If you check the analytic provided by compete of last month February [ http://siteanalytics.compete.com/mig33.com?metric=uv ], you can see rapid increase on mig33′s unique visitors .
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