Cellufun, the mobile virtual community known as "The World's Mobile Playground," announced the appointment of Neil Edwards, 43, as chief executive officer.

Mr. Edwards' charge is to launch new revenue-generating services around virtual goods and messaging within the Cellufun social gaming community and to expand the company's mobile audience internationally.

"Cellufun is a company with built-in technology that covers 8,000 phone models and with a built-in audience that was generated from off-deck sources -- until recently we had no carrier relationships," said Neil Edwards, CEO of Cellufun, New York.

"Cellufun's technology platform has an audience that stuck and stayed, because the company created a place where they wanted to develop a personality online, meet friends, play games and hang out online," he said.

Cellufun's core audience is 18-34-years-olds, 55 percent of whom are women.

With more than 220 million monthly page views and 5 million unique visitors a month, Cellufun is a mobile community where people socialize, play games and buy virtual goods for self expression, gifting and competitive advantage.

People worldwide can access the Cellufun platform on any mobile network, on any phone and in more than ten languages to create personal avatars, compete, collaborate, chat and celebrate special occasions.

Cellufun has its own mobile game publishing platform, and the company releases one or two new games per month.

Cellufun partners with global brands and media companies such as AOL and Gannet's USA Today to deliver branded entertainment and custom-designed mobile marketing services.

Its carrier partners include Verizon Wirless, MetroPCS and CellularSouth, and the company also has a deal in place with BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion.

Its ad network partners include Google, Mojiva, AdMob, Millennial Media, Quattro Wireless and AOL's Third Screen Media.

Mr. Edwards brings to Cellufun more than 20 years of interactive experience and a track record of having run several brands for companies in the mobile, Internet and content spaces.

Most recently he served as the founding CEO of dotMobi, a mobile Web services company, where he grew the company from a start-up to a multi-million dollar organization.

At dotMobi he built a global customer base with multiple channel platforms and content partners that generated significant recurring revenue streams, according to Cellufun.

Additionally, Mr. Edwards was instrumental in building a consortium of leading mobile brands including Nokia, Vodafone, Google, Telefonica, Telecom Italia, T-Mobile, Orascom, Microsoft, Visa and others.
Prior to dotMobi, he served in senior leadership positions for VeriSign and infoUSA.

Mr. Edwards brings a unique global perspective to Cellufun stemming from his years living and working in Europe and from having launched two companies into China since 2002.

Mr. Edwards earned a bachelor's degree in Mathematics from The Citadel and completed graduate work at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. He has also been a featured guest and mobile Web commentator for CNBC, BBC, CNN and The Wall Street Journal.

Cellufun expects its audience to consume virtual goods and messaging services and eventually to see its revenue from those services outpace its advertising revenues.

"Cellufun has features to engage users over and over again and a sophisticated ad engine layered around the different types of user experiences," Mr. Edwards said. "We have both advertising-based and fee-based services, and we're launching self-expression tools and other virtual goods.

"If you want the fancy glasses for your avatar, you can buy those, if you want to buy a hot dress or a virtual dragon pet or send a greeting card, it will show up in your email and you didn't have to leave the community," he said. "We think virtual goods revenues will far outpace advertising revenues."

Cellufun is building integrated content into its user experience such as product placement.

"We're allowing advertisers and brands to place their product into our games that target specific demographics," Mr. Edwards said. "If brands want to have specific virtual goods, they can sell them on our site, and we also offer normal run-of-site mobile advertising targeting men or women by location.

"A brand can sponsor the community or create games that are branded or sponsor an item in a game that helps people win more," he said. "For all the same reasons that people use social networks on PCs, they'll use them even more on mobile."