Thirty days after its limited release, mig33 -- one of the world’s largest mobile communities – is set to launch a new mig33 miniblog as the centerpiece of mig33.
Over the next few months, the miniblog service (http://b.mig33.com) will transition from beta, where it has already garnered over 300,000 daily active users, and will be integrated with mig33’s third-party games, chat, profiles and avatars, making mig33 a unique proposition compared with other social internet services such as Facebook, Twitter, Sina's Weibo, and Tumblr and their offerings in emerging markets.
Unlike the others, mig33 is focused on delivering a fun, fast and social service and includes features such as levels, badges, labels, virtual gifts, avatars, emoticons, games and other experiences directly within the miniblog itself.
“We believe that the proposition posed by Sina’s Weibo is applicable to other emerging markets,” said Steven Goh, mig33 co-founder and CEO. “Users want to escape the restrictions of the ‘real world identity’ orientation of Facebook and want a far more flexible identity model, and frankly, a more fun and playful service.”
mig33’s miniblog service comes along with a broadening of mig33’s client range. Traditionally offered on a more narrow J2ME client, mig33 is now widely available on Android, Blackberry, WAP, and web clients. The company intends to offer more and updated clients in coming months.
Based in Singapore, mig33 is now one of the largest social entertainment services in emerging markets, with over 55 million registered users. mig33 is extremely popular South and South East Asia, and has a substantial and growing presence across the Middle East and parts of Eastern Europe.
In 2011, mig33 delivered over 300 billion messages and over 185 million virtual gifts. The company began launching a stream of third-party games in August, and has since been able to deliver over 300,000 daily active users to developers.
“We have taken our inspiration from a number of East Asian social entertainment services, made it uniquely our own, and applied it to emerging markets that we believe offer more than 500 million new customers,” said Goh. “We also have a unique monetisation engine in our community of merchants, or party hosts, and believe that the mig33 miniblog will drastically broaden our monetisation options.”
Goh began discussing mig33’s new vision while at at the prestigious PTC’12, an annual conference hosted by the Pacific Telecommunications Council in Honolulu.
About mig33
mig33 is the world’s largest mobile-first social entertainment service, connecting over 50 million registered members around the world with chat and entertainment everyday, and hosting a fast-growing virtual economy. Launched in late 2005, mig33 is backed by Silicon Valley venture firms Accel Partners, Redpoint Ventures and DCM, GREE Inc and many others.
