Kyte raises $15M to grow social communications platform

By Giselle Abramovich

December 21, 2007

Kyte allows partners to broadcast users’ information to Web sites, blogs, social networks and other mobile phones

Kyte, a provider of software to share pictures and video from mobile phone or Web, has raised $15 million in funding from leading telecoms and venture capital firms to develop and distribute its social communications platform.

Spain’s Telefonica, the world’s No. 4 telecoms firm, led this round, along with Finland’s Nokia Growth Partners and Japan’s DoCoMo Capital Inc. Other investors include Swisscom, Germany’s Holtzbrinck Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurveston from the United States.

“Kyte is not a destination,” said Gannon Hall, media representative at Kyte, San Francisco. “We are about offering users an easy way to share pictures and video from their mobile phone. We are enabling social communication.”

News of the additional investment in Kyte comes in the same week that Juice Wireless said it had received $6 million in funding (see story). The Juice news itself followed an announcement that mobile advertising firm Mobile Posse received $10 million in funding.

The Kyte platform allows partners, through a Kyte-powered service, to instantly broadcast users’ shared information to multiple destinations, including Web sites, blogs, social networks and other mobile phones.

Sample of the Kyte video application

Hip-hop artist 50 Cent uses Kyte to broadcast exclusive behind-the-scenes footage captured with a Nokia N95 mobile phone from his latest world tour to multiple official and fan-run sites and other mobile phones.

Fans also can interact with 50 Cent on the Web and via their mobile phones through multimedia chat. They can share their own videos and photos with him and each other.

“We aren’t trying to make another YouTube,” Mr. Hall said. “We are just creating a network through this.

“These partnerships give us a huge potential to reach millions of users,” Mr. Hall said. “Our investors are very forward-thinking and they see the value of offering users a communications experience that is very rich with audio and video. They also see the value of converging the online world with the mobile world."