Bebo users will soon be able to upload their photos and text, as well as check their friends’ pages and receive text alerts, all from their mobile phone.
NewBay, a mobile multimedia and social networking provider with offices in Dublin, has partnered with Bebo to provide this new platform.
NewBay’s User-Generated Content (UGC) Gateway provides other social networking services such as foneblog.ie, a mobile photo blogging service hosted by O2.
“NewBay’s UGC Gateway expands the range of blogs, albums and online sites mobile subscribers can interact with, making mobile social networking mainstream today,” said Dr Nagappan Arunachalam, chief marketing officer at NewBay Software.
The UGC Gateway makes available to mobile operators a way to connect to multiple third-party sites like Bebo. Their customers can then send multimedia files and access WAP pages.
NewBay’s Gateway technology works by integrating with these third-party sites and routing the multimedia content to the blogging service.
“Bebo users live their lives online and want to be able to take that experience with them wherever they go. The addition of Bebo to NewBay’s UGC Gateway makes access to Bebo simple and seamless for our users worldwide,” said Joanna Shields, president of international at Bebo.
So far mobile operator Orange UK has announced a partnership with Bebo to make this service available to their customers. With a special package deal developed exclusively for Bebo-ers, this will be rolled out in early summer.
As of yet there is no date on the horizon for Bebo and NewBay collaborating with Irish mobile operators like O2 and Meteor. In the meantime Irish Bebo users will have to access the site the old-fashioned way.
By Marie Boran
