It’s one of the simple facts of working in the mobile industry – if you really want mass pick up of a service, it’s mostly the operators that need to do it. Location-based social network Gypsii has taken this to heart, and is getting in on the ground level with massive Latin American operator Telefonica for an international social networking deal.
Who is Gypsii?
It’s a mobile social network that is focused on geo-location. It allows users to find friends, geo-tag points of interest, and find local user-generated content on a map. However, Gypsii has another big interest – making operator deals! It made big moves in China last year, and has concentrated on making sure that the service is as operator-friendly as possible. The Gypsii OpenExperience API is designed to allow carriers and other mobile institutions to create own-branded mobile social networks powered by Gypsii.
What has happened?
Genasys is a Latin American mobile location company. It tries to apply location to as many things as possible – and it has chosen Gypsii as its exclusive partner for mobile social networks. It’s through Genasys that Gypsii has gotten the lucrative Telefonica deal. Gypsii will be launched on-portal to subscribers all across Latin America, for Blackberry, Android, Java, S60, WinMo and WAP-enabled devices. The Java and feature phone capabilities of Gypsii are one of its big selling points for the Latin American market.
What we think?
The operator-centric approach seems to be working for Gypsii. It claims to gave acquired 1 million users in China alone. With a potential market of 130 million subscribers in Latin America, we can probably expect to see some good growth for the service there.
This deal is a positive step for extending the mass market reach of Location Based Social Networks.
It would be interesting to understand exactly how ‘lucrative’ the deal is:what is the monetisation model for Gypsii in Latin America?
As customers are very resistent to paying for using mobile social networks (whether on a subscription basis or one-off payments), we can assume mobile advertising is at the core of Gypsii’s monetisation strategy.
With CTR’s and CPC’s in downward spiral, the market entry by Gypsii represents a (very) long term bet on the future growth opportunities of the Latin American market.