Social mobile app wins $13m financing
The end game is to market a mobile and web client which is operating system and operator agnostic – or perhaps white-labelled with an operator.
GeoSentric is headed up by CEO Dan Harple a vetern in Internet space who, aside from several startups in recent years, was once Senior Vice President at Netscape. He says the “original target was to raise $5.5 million” but interest meant they had to increase the size of the round. The firms also counts Dr. Andries van Dam, a renowned computer scientist with fifteen years experience as a member of the Microsoft Research Technical Advisory Board.
This convergence of social networking, content and location is a big trend. Last year Nokia acquired Gate5 to start exploring just this, and is including social networking as part if its recently launched Go Play / Ovi strategy. Here in the UK social mobile firm Playtxt is poised to re-launch as Rummble and one-man startup BuddyPing has also been trying to crack the ‘social location’ issue with triangulation. It’s a hot sector.
GeoSentric – the new name for Geoconnections, which was acquired by Finland-based Benefon – is also developing consumer and business applications that integrate a mobile user’s world with their desktop, digital television and media players.