Telefónica Movistar launches Myriad social network services

First phase of a five-year plan to take mobile social media to 140m customers in LATAM.

Myriad signed an exclusive partnership with Telefónica last year. The deal gives the operator the ability to build social networking apps into even the most basic feature phones.

It means Telefónica Movistar customers can access their existing social networks, view friends’ messages and update their own status via one mobile screen.

This is something Myriad is pretty good at. The UK/Swiss firm may not be a household name, but it's shipped over 3.8bn software applications – browsers, Java virtual machines etc – across more than 2.2bn phones.

The Telefónica deal is being rolled out in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela

Simon Wilkinson, CEO of Myriad Group, said: “This launch marks a key milestone in our partnership with Telefónica.