Fox Interactive Media has hired a mobile VP for Europe and will take its flagship MySpace brand into the mobile arena in 2007.
The company has recruited former Vodafone exec Jean-Paul Sanchez to drive the daddy of all social networking sites, with 130 million members, into mobile.Sanchez is currently in talks with networks across the continent, though speculation surrounds the form MySpace mobile will take. Options include a handset portal, presence on an operator site and the integration of text and MMS with the online site.
Previously, MySpace’s only mobile activity has been in the US, allowing people to sign up for SMS alerts with Cingular and a direct connection to the MySpace network, pre-loaded on Helio handsets.
Sanchez said: “My ambition is to get MySpace as wide as possible, which means exploring all options. Our customers are demanding a mobile version, so we’d be foolish not to do this.”
However, MySpace is merely one player in a scramble to secure a position in mobile social networking and user gen content. New players include Sweden’s Tocmag, whose free service allows users to create mini-magazines with up to six pages of text, photos, audio and video.
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Meanwhile, ad-supported content specialist Pitch is to offer user-generated mobisodes from the cult TV programme My TV: Homegrown. The show, which airs on cable channel Trouble, rounds up the best user gen content from the web.
Finally Germany’s GOFRESH has launched a white-label social networking platform for operators. The service supports content sharing and selling, uploads and downloads and billing. It’s the platform that underpins GOFRESH’s own itsmy.com web-based social networking community.
