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Mad Money for mig33

Source: gigaom.com

Mobile messaging company mig33 has raised $13.5 million to push its mobile social networking platform into the U.S. After receiving a $10 million round of funding last year, the company moved its operations from Australia to Burlingame, Calif. Now, with an eye on what CEO and Co-founder Steve Goh calls the “different dynamics” of the mobile environment in North America, mig33 is developing a web-based platform that will augment its existing mobile platform.

The company has a beta site that features numerous web-enabled aspects of mig33’s services under development, but Goh declined to offer additional specifics. He was, however, quick to point out that the U.S. market may have one social network too many, so it doesn’t sound like mig33 plans to compete directly as a social network (mig33 already has a WAP site).

At 9 million, mig33’s users total less than a fifth of Facebook’s, but the company’s services are available primarily via mobile download, which imposes a higher barrier to joining than simply typing in an email at a web site. That makes the current user base for mobile IM, email and VoIP pretty impressive. Goh didn’t disclose how many of mig33’s users are in the U.S., but said the company has 2 million users in South Africa and a large following in Southeast Asia.

Goh anticipates that the coming year will be a pivotal one in the U.S. mobile market, with sleek new handsets influenced by the iPhone as well as a realization by handset makers that getting developers and cool applications on a phone needs to be easier. Moves such as Google’s launch of Android as well as yesterday’s announcement that Nokia is buying Trolltech, underscore for Goh the rapid changes that should bring more apps to mobile phones in the U.S.

As for the current challenges of developing for several mobile platforms, Goh shrugs it off. “I grew up writing in Fortran so it’s reminiscent of developing in the early days of computing,” he says. Today’s developers may not agree, but one can’t expect Goh to bite the hand that he hopes will feed him.

Published on January 29th, 2008 under , , , , , , , , ,

Mig33 Raises More Money

Source: andyabramson.blogs.com

Congrats to the folks at Mig33. They just raised another boatload of cash, this time something north of 13million dollars or so.

12 Million or so seems to be the new number that VC’s are giving to second round companies, with 5-6 million being the usual A round from what I’ve seen of late.

Published on January 29th, 2008 under , ,

A Mobile VoIP Forecast & What’s Up With Jajah, Raketu & mig33

Source: gigaom.com

Mobile VoIP is going to become a major force over the next five years, rapidly outpacing voice over Wi-Fi, according to a recently released report by research firm Disruptive Analysis. The report predicts that the number of VoIP over 3G users will top 250 million by the end of 2012 — from virtually zero in 2007. The caveat, of course, is if carriers allow it. If T-Mobile’s recent fracas with Truphone is any indication, the carriers are worried about VoIP over 3G.

  • mig33, a mobile communications service provider, is adding over 20,000 users a day and now has eight million subscribers. The company is adding new features and slowly becoming a mobile social network. And as they get their makeover, Jajah is adding a new service that reminds me of the old mig33, Rebtel and Talkplus.

  • Jajah’s new service, called Jajah Direct, will allow you to make international calls for free or at local rates. Go to the their Local Access Number web site, enter the international number you want to call and get connected. After your first call, you will receive a unique local number for each of your contacts that you can store in your phone or address book for future dialing.

Jajah’s Frederik Hermann just emailed and said that “you never have to be online to sign up for JAJAH Direct, you can sign up over the phone and manage your account from there. We will give out the local access number to our premier target groups, immigrants and expats on a flyer and they can go from there, no Internet access needed.”

  • Jajah’s service needs at least one-time access to a PC. Raketu, by comparison, recently introduced an SMS-based VoIP callback service. You send an SMS message to a local number and include in the message the number you want to dial; N.Y.-based Raketu then calls you and connects you to the number you are trying to reach.

The funny thing is that despite all these service, the calling-card business isn’t taking a nosedive. I guess the people that most need to shave pennies off their phone bills — primarily immigrants — find it’s easier to just buy their minutes in $10 increments from the corner store.

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Published on November 18th, 2007 under , , , , ,

mig33: Google Talk for Its 7 Million Members

Source: gigaom.com

In countries where international long-distance rates are high, mobile services like mig33’s mobile instant messenger and VoIP calls are starting to gain a sizable user base. The Burlingame, Calif. startup, which was an eTel/GigaOM Launch Pad startup, says it has signed up more than 7 million users to date and has added several new features, including Google Talk (GOOG).

The startup’s 7 million members and growing user base actually surprised me a bit — the company said it had 6 million members in July — given that its main approach is to use downloadable mobile software. Mobile clients can often be a barrier to entry when attempting to build a sizable amount of users, particularly for services that are supposed to save users money. For those that don’t want to download, the company also recently added a WAP site. Other mobile callback/calling type services that offer lower-cost minutes include Jajah and Cellity.

Published on October 16th, 2007 under , , ,

Whole world on your phone with Mig33

Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

When you hear the word MIG and when you are as old as me, the only thing comes to mind is the Cold war era Russian fighter Jets. But Russell Shaw pointed me to a another form of MIG. MIG33 is heading our way to make a jolt in the mobile communication sphere!
After listening to Russell’s advise I also started playing with MIG33 and I think it is a formidable application. According to the website, mig33 is an operator-agnostic global community that makes the most popular Internet applications accessible on any mobile phone. That means consumers can take advantage of low-cost VoIP calls, SMS and IM communications tools, and participate in mobile chat rooms, profiles, and photo sharing, all directly from their mobile phone. I have not tested all the features. The other thing is I use phone for what is originally meant to be, to make calls. (That might change now that Apple has made iPhone affordable and hacks are public!). I have to warn you though, about pricing! MIG33 might still need to polish their pricing. I mostly call Japan and Germany and I already get better rates mobile to mobile. But what matters here is the modus operandi.
But most of the features are available even from a pc. The first thing I tried out was make a call following the instruction on site!;

To make a call back using SMS:

  1. Send an SMS to "+447717989963" with **
  • Needs to be sent from your mig33 registered mobile number

mig33 will connect both numbers together using mig33’s call back technology.MIG33

Published on September 6th, 2007 under , , ,

Mig33 Raises Ten Million

Source: andyabramson.blogs.com

One of the companies at Om Malik and Surj Patel’s Launchpad event that I liked was Mig33. It seems they have finally gotten around to announcing their funding from Accel and Redpoint.

This tells me a major push is about to happen. Expect new hires, some new deals and lots of buzz around this blended social networking meets presence and communications company.

Published on May 8th, 2007 under

Etel - Launch Pad - MIG33

Source: www.voip-news.com

Company is called Project Goth Inc. Moving to Bay Area from Australia.

Problem is that not only are mobile calls expensive but also people want more than just voice. Opportunity to deliver VoIP to the mobile - and that means more than just cheap calls. We are about bringing it all together - VoIP, messaging, data and social networks on mobile phones.

The product can set up voip, video, sms, IM between any two phones of any kind worldwide. Delivered on a single J2ME client as well as voip desktop. Supported on global voip/sms backbone.

Published on February 27th, 2007 under

mig33 gets one million subscribers in less than a year

Source: voipcentral.org

Project Goths subsidiary mig33 has emerged as one of the key VoIP players in the world with registering more one million subscribers for its call-back VoIP service in less than a year.

Developed by Mei Lin Ng and Steven Goh, the mig33 VoIP service allows subscribers to make cheap international calls, send inexpensive SMS messages and online chatting with their friends and relative using their mobile phones. For such services, the users require to open an account in the companys web site and down load a java application for their mobile phones.

Mei Lin Ng quotes,

Every day, mig33 users are sending several million messages over our mobile Chat and SMS services, and placing tens of thousands of phone calls through our global VOIP network with calls being connected through our infrastructure in Australia, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong and the USA.

The registered users can send free IMs to MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, send standard SMS at A$0.10 and make cheap phone calls. For instance, the mig33 users make mobile-to-mobile calls for A$0.203 from Australia to USA. The same rate is charged for the customers of USA.

The mobile VoIP service mig33, which has been launched in December last year, is now operating in more than 200 countries.

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Published on September 1st, 2006 under ,

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