Mobile social networking company gains $6M in funding
December 18, 2007
JuiceCaster runs loose
It was third time lucky for Juice Wireless Inc., a mobile social networking company that won $6 million in new venture capital to fuel growth plans that include investments in people, product and marketing.
The Los Angeles company will use the funding to build the marketing and engineering teams and generate users for its JuiceCaster mobile social networking community. Investors in this third round of financing are 21Ventures, Qualcomm and Citizen’s Communications.
“We recently launched JuiceCaster on Alltell and will soon be announcing two other operators, so the first thing we will use the funding for is to make sure that these launches mean a boost in our number of users,” said Nick Desai, CEO of Juice Wireless.
“In addition, we are planning to use this funding to move into Western Europe and India,” he said. “We will also be rolling out new products in mobile social networking.”
The Juice Wireless news comes days after mobile advertising firm Mobile Posse announced it had gained $10 million in new venture capital funding from Softbank Capital. Mobile Posse, McLean, VA, will use the investment to boost its targeted advertising and idle-screen interactive content delivery offerings.
JuiceCaster is a mobile social networking community that lets mobile phone users connect with friends and meet new people via their handset. It allows users to publish content from their phone to any person, group, Web site or desktop. People can view content on their phone to enroll new friends and communicate with the old.
The JuiceCaster product is available as a subscription download on wireless carriers such as Alltel, Cricket Wireless, Centennial Puerto Rico and Claro Puerto Rico. It has more than 50,000 registered users, a number that should increase with availability for download via other carriers.
“The core philosophy in social networking is meeting and keeping in touch with people,” Mr. Desai said. “These things are done better with immediacy.
“These days you go to a party and take pictures,” he said. “The next day you post them on your MySpace [page]. Imagine taking pictures with your phone and posting the pictures to MySpace right away."