Frengo debuts social network interoperability via mobile

By Giselle Tsirulnik

May 7, 2008

Getting catty on social networks

Social mobile service provider Frengo introduced a suite of applications that run on top of and across Facebook, MySpace, hi5, Orkut and Bebo.

Frengo focuses on social applications available from a Web-enabled PC or mobile phone. These applications not only allow users to interact with friends and friends-of-friends, but help establish new connections by discovering others across social networks who share common interests.

"The overall strategy of the company is to be a new-media studio," said Mahi De Silva, CEO of Frengo, San Mateo, CA. "We build content and services that ride on top of existing social networks.

"The specific strategy of this announcement is we are the first to demonstrate interoperability of different social networks," he said. "MySpace users can use Flirtable and have a broader reach of users social networkers with common interests and is not limited to just his or her social network."

The Flirtable application allows participants to surf profile pictures, send and receive private messages and virtual gifts, and make introductions to friends.

This is one of the first applications to interoperate amongst leading social networks.

In addition to Facebook, Flirtable is now available on MySpace, hi5, Orkut and Bebo. Flirtable users can now interact with other users distributed across those networks.

For example, a MySpace user can interact with other MySpace users as well as users of Facebook, hi5 and Bebo. Furthermore, Flirtable Mobile offers access to all of the above features from any Web-enabled mobile phone.

"Applications like Flirtable have already found great traction within individual social networks but we are really jazzed about leading the charge to get users across these networks to connect with one another," Mr. De Silva said.

"We think it adds a whole new layer of vitality to social networks and raises the bar for other developers in this space," he said.