Mobile media company SendMe Inc. has secured $12 million in Series D growth capital financing to expand its subscription-based and ad-supported mobile entertainment platforms.

Led by new investor Triangle Peak Partners, the financing includes full participation by existing investors True Ventures, Amicus Capital, Spark Capital and GrandBanks Capital.

"SendMe Mobile is 100 percent dedicated to the direct-to-consumer sector of the wireless entertainment ecosystem," said Russell Klein, co-founder and CEO of SendMe Mobile, San Francisco. "At the company core, SendMe runs a series of our own brands, all built off our core proprietary platform.

"It's all geared towards creating engaging experiences for the target demo of first-time cell phone owners to recent college grads and oftentimes leverages premium SMS as the billing model of choice," he said.

"At our heart, we consider ourselves to be building the ?Viacom of the Web to mobile industry' by focusing on creating a series of owned-and-operated brands that are built off the SendMe core technology platform, that cater to a tightly-defined demographic."

SendMe's first three brands are SendMeMobile.com, SoLow.com and mBuzzy.

SendMeMobile.com was the company's first flagship brand to be exclusively built and launched off of its core technology.

Over the last year, SendMe has added new premium and community-generated content, services and applications across its connected portfolio and has entered into partnerships with entertainment companies such as Universal Music Group, Warner Music, EMI, Sony Pictures and Corbis. The company has also struck more than two dozen distribution partnerships.

SendMe Mobile claims it has grown rapidly to include one of the largest fully licensed catalogs of mobile-ready content in the U.S., offered on a subscription basis to subscribers off-deck thru premium SMS billing.

"With content partners ranging from film studios like Sony Pictures to nearly all of the top music labels, including Universal, Warner Music, EMI, The Orchard and IODA, to niche branded game and wallpaper providers, SendMe's aim is to continue building the leading destination site for mobile personalization that leverages the benefits and security of premium SMS," Mr. Klein said.

SoLow.com was the next site to be launched from SendMe's core platform.

"SoLow focuses on a similar demographic to its sister site SendMeMobile.com, but offers subscribers the opportunity to win unique, experiential prizes while playing engaging, addictive games both online as well as on mobile via SMS," Mr. Klein said.

Similar to SendMeMobile.com, SoLow is a subscription club that leverages premium SMS billing, and also like SendMeMobile.com, the site has experienced dramatic growth over the last two years, according to Mr. Klein.

SendMe's ad-supported mobile community mBuzzy.com surpassed the one million registered user mark and generates in excess of one hundred million monthly page views.

Through mBuzzy, subscribers can create their own mobile wallpapers and videos and share them with other users.

Users can also meet and communicate with other users through WAP-based chat rooms and instant-messaging services.

"MBuzzy was the newest addition to the SendMe Mobile family through an acquisition which we completed at the end of 2007," Mr. Klein said. "mBuzzy is a completely free destination site with a highly engaged, loyal user base.

"It has become a leading destination site for self-expression and user-to-user communication on mobile," he said.

SendMe claims that it has achieved year-over-year revenue growth, a fivefold increase in the size of its content catalog and strong user adoption, engagement and retention throughout 2008.

SendMe's branded partners include imeem, Project Playlist and Eventful.

"SendMe has dozens upon dozens of partners across our various channels," Mr. Klein said. "SendMe adds new sites weekly, and in fact will be announcing one of our new high-profile exclusive partners in the next 1-2 weeks."

SendMe's goal is to enable major media brands to integrate into consumers' mobile entertainment experiences and connect with their target audiences to generate incremental revenue.

SendMe acquires subscribers through a wide variety of channels, including online, offline and mobile.

"Partners typically choose SendMe for a variety of reasons, since we bring exceptional monetization opportunities that enable partners to create new revenue streams," Mr. Klein said. "This is done through seamlessly integrating SendMe's services into the fabric of partner sites without requiring them to dedicate precious ad inventory to promote SendMe products.

"SendMe typically also receive kudos from our partners because our technology is largely plug-and-play, meaning that our partners' tech teams can often be up and running with our services in as little as an hour or two," he said. "This has proven very cost-effective, since there's no lag in turnaround.

"Partners don't have to wait weeks or even months for custom work to be completed on one or both sides."

SendMe is bullish about its prospects for growth, despite the recession.

"SendMe's ability to customize implementations on the fly, perform rigorous A/B testing to optimize the results for partners and our overall commitment to superior product quality offered to end users, all have worked together to enable us to emerge as an uber-fast growing leader in this nascent industry," Mr. Klein said.