Zyb, The Mobile Social Network

Michael Arrington

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The idea of taking an address book application and turning it into a social network isn’t new - Plaxo just did it two weeks ago.

Now ZYB, a Danish startup, is using the mobile phone contact list as the center of the network, and the company doesn’t have the emotional baggage that still lingers with Plaxo and makes many users hesitant to trust them (I, for one, forgave them long ago).

Zyb first launched in mid 2006 as a service to back up your mobile phone. Through a relatively painless process, users can auto-sync their contacts and calendar to ZYB’s servers. It’s useful in the event of a lost phone, but the web interface is actually much easier to use to enter new contact and calendar information, too. The service, which is free, has about 200,000 active users (mostly in Europe).

ZYB, realizing that people add most or all of their close friends, co-workers and family as mobile phone contacts, has now built a social network to leverage those connections. You can add anyone on your contact list as a friend, which sends a request to them to add you as well. Users have standard profile pages to add photos, comments, etc. And they can also text/sms in status updates which appear on their profile, and friends can choose to subscribe to those status updates via text as well (very Twitter-like).

ZYB is free to users, although the company says they will eventually add premium services like Outlook-sync for an additional fee.

The basic ZYB service is difficult to use on U.S. mobile phones, although the setup takes only a minute on European phones. U.S. residents can still sign up and use the service, though (as I have done) and simply add contacts manually.

The company is headquartered in Copenhagen, and has a development office with most of its 20 employees in Cambridge. They raised €3 million in funding from Nordic Venture Partners in late 2006.

Could The GPhone Be Nigh?

Todays completely unsubstantiated rumor comes from Rediff News, a usually well respected source of news based in India. Rediff is reporting that the Google Phone is set to be launched in 2 weeks time! The GPhone is said to simultaneously launch in both Europe and the United States, with the only thing standing in Google’s way being US regulatory approval.

The report goes on to claim that Google is believed to be in talks with a number of Indian telcos.

If speculation is any guidance, the certainty of there being some sort of Google mobile device in development is a given. The Register reported in March that a European Google executive confirmed the existence of the GPhone and other reports go back to 2006; Om Malik reporting in December that a Google phone was being developed for release in 2008. Engadget posted alleged pictures of the GPhone in January 07 (see pic) with notes claiming that the device was a button-less touchscreen phone that came with GPS built-in for pinpoint navigation around Google Maps. ZDNet wrote that the phone was said to be 3G with built in Wifi and was designed by Samsung. The Register again reported in early August that the GPhone would include 3G, Wifi and GPS, and that UK mobile operator Orange was in talks with Google to carry the device.

Google has continued to deny rumors of the phones existence, but has taken a more public interest lately in the mobile phone sector, confirming that it was likely to bid for a slice of the soon to be released 700mhz spectrum in the United States. Google as a mobile phone operator would make a lot more sense if Google were also preparing a GPhone that was automatically fine tuned to work with Google’s variety of applicable services, including Gmail, Maps and Google Docs.

Any Google phone will also be immediately compared to Apple’s iPhone. Whilst the iPhone provides an attractive package, it has so far only taken a small marketshare in the US cellular market, and is yet to have been released anywhere else in the world. A 3G (and therefore quicker) internet focused GPhone with a broad release worldwide could well present a strong competitor to Apple.

Thank You Sponsors: Featuring Real Time Matrix, DOmedia and Profile Builder

It’s time to say a quick “thank you” to the sponsors of our party at August capital last month:

Tune in to learn more about Real Time Matrix’s Vortex, DOmedia’s platform for alternative media buying and Profile Builder’s profile mangement platform. Michael Arrington and Steve Gillmor from Podtech.net and Bad Sinatra interview Jeff Whitehead, Todd Cameron and Boyan Josic. Watch closely for a quick guest appearance from another famous blogger… or was that really Yahoo’s Salim Ismail? Interviews were shot live at the TechCrunch 9 Meet Up at August Capital. Thank you again to all the sponsors who helped make the Meet Up a success.

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Google, Microsoft Storage News Falls Flat

Lots of storage news today from the big guys. Microsoft launched its Live.com online storage solution, called SkyDrive (predicted earlier this week after a Japanese press conference). And Google announced for-pay overflow storage on Gmail and Picasa. Both fell flat.

Microsoft Live SkyDrive

SkyDrive, which is demo’d in the video above, has a ho-hum interface and gives a measly 500 MB of storage. Files can be private, shared or public (although the public folders in my account crash every time I open them).

It will likely get a lot of non-early-adopters to try out online storage for the first time, but as Richard MacManus points out, there is a lot of competition in this space. Microsoft enters the market late with a product that is not as good as the competition. Still, kudos for launching before Google’s storage product. And not a peep from Yahoo, which is still offering a 90’s era product that weighs in at 25 MB of storage capacity.

Google Overflow Storage

Google’s news is purely about money. Users can purchase up to 250 GB of extra storage for email and photos. Prices start at $20/year for 6 GB, up to $500/year for 250 GB. Presumably Google will continue to increase the free storage offered at Gmail over time (currently 2.8 GB), and charge only for usage over that free baseline.

Now certainly Gmail users are better off today that yesterday - they can now choose to exceed the storage limits by simply paying a fee. But something about the news falls a little flat. Perhaps it is because Yahoo recently began offering free unlimited email storage to all users. We’re a fickle bunch in silicon valley, and like to see the big Internet companies continually one-up each other. Today Google said they were not going to play that game any more. They effectively took their toys and went home. I never thought I’d see that.

GigaOm Gets A COO

Om Malik’s one-year-old media empire continues to grow: it now includes five blogs, a weekly video show and a job listing site. I imagine things are getting a little crazy around the office. Which is why I’m not at all surprised that he’s brought on a seasoned executive, Paul Walborsky, to help him manage and grow the company as its Chief Operating Officer.

Walborsky, who has both operational and deal experience, was most recently a managing director at Hercules Technology Growth Capital. He’s also held senior positions at Lehman Brothers, ING Barings and Swiss Bank Corp.

Walborsky says he will manage the non-editorial aspects of the business - sales, operations, events, etc., and Malik will oversee all editorial for the various properties (in addition to writing full time). The non-writing staff includes just two others at this point - Joanne Wan in business development and Mike Sly, the VP of Sales. The company will be hiring more people in sales and marketing in the near future, he says.

I’m not surprised at all by this move, since I went through it myself. When Om wrote about our hire of Heather Harde as CEO he mentioned how difficult it was to balance what he called “editorial tasks with chief janitorial duties.” It looks like he’s found the right guy to take over those “janitorial duties” for his business, too. Congratulations to the whole team.

In a phone call with Walborsky today, he said the company was planning on raising a new round of financing in the next 3-4 months to add to few hundred thousand they raised a year ago. Walborsky says they may do an internal round just with True Ventures, or bring in a new outside investor. No word on how much they’re going to raise, though.

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