Myriad targets 1bn mobile social networkers this year

Working with Vodafone, Orange and Mobinil to bring its products to emerging markets.

Mobile software giant Myriad has products on over 2.5 billion phones, but in recent years it's been particularly keen to align itself with social media products pitched at developing regions such as LatAm, Africa, India and China.

Its flagship product family is Myriad Updates, which targets subscribers who have limited or no access to data and uses messaging to connect these consumers to Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.

It does this thanks to the Myriad platform, Xumii, which presents a person’s social network activity on the screen as text using the USSD bearer. No need for an app or data plan.

Now, Myriad Updates has been selected by Orange to deliver Facebook to Africa, and has also been adopted by Vodafone and Mobinil.

“Myriad Updates is bringing Facebook and Twitter to the millions of users in emerging markets without data plans, driving monetization of mobile social experiences and putting carriers back into the social networking game,” said Simon Wilkinson, CEO of Myriad Group.