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Zingku: Google Makes Another Mobile Social Network Acquisition

September 27th, 2007 by Sam Harrelson

Google has acquired Zingku, a social sharing service aimed at mobile users.
GoogleSystem
reports:

Google bought another mobile social network: Zingku. “We’ve entered into an agreement to have Google acquire our Zingku service,” informs us Zingku.com.

Our service is designed from the mobile phone, outward, allowing you to create and exchange things of interest ranging from invitations to “mobile flyers” with friends in a trusted manner. On the mobile phone, Zingku uses standard text messaging features that come with every phone. On the web, our service uses your standard web browser and instant messenger. There is nothing to install.

With Zingku, things you wish to promote or share, can easily be created and fetched via mobile, instant messenger, and web browser. Our service integrates your mobile phone with a personalized web site so that you can easily move (zing) things back and forth between the web and and your mobile as well as powerfully connect with friends and optionally their friends.

While it is easy to dismiss this as another Dodgeball-esque acquisition (the mobile social network that rivaled Twitter for a while but fell flat after being acquired by Google), there are some interesting ramifications to this buy… especially for marketers. From the Zingku about page:

Zingku services are also being made available to “merchants” who wish to reach an audience. Merchants create “mobile flyers” and then publish/email a “zing-code” to their customers who opt to pull the flyer to their mobile phone. The customer can then zing it to those friends who they think may be interested. Our mobile flyers are interactive, can take a recipient through a mobile text and picture messaging journey. As such, 18 - 28 year olds, who have tuned out of email and are tuned in into their mobile, respond far more actively than traditional marketing media.

While I don’t expect this to be an immediate play, Google is clearly amassing something clever in the mobile space with their acquisition of GrandCentral and the persistent rumors of an imminent “gPhone.”

Online marketers would be wise to watch these developments and acquisitions in the mobile space, since Google has its thumb on the heartbeat of e-commerce at the moment.

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