Mobile social network Buddymob in Facebook deal

Buddymob is a popular mobile social network application for Android devices. Kiboo, the Belgian company who created Buddymob, has announced a new deal with Facebook. Buddymob has a pronounced habit of integration with the most popular on-line messagers, including MSN, AIM, GTalk, Jabber and Twitter.

The Facebook deal will allow Buddymob users to post to and read from their Facebook accounts, right from their Buddymob app. Along with the Facebook announcement, Buddymob releases a number of new functions based on user requests. “Buddies” can now locate other Buddymob users on Google Maps even if they’re not friends. There’s also a new “public timelines”, which allows you to share your posts with everyone - much like Twitter or Facebook.

From the release:

Christophe  Chatillon,  co‐founder  of  Kiboo: “We  all  have  a  lot  of  friends  who  post messages  daily  on Facebook.  So it was essential for us to integrate Facebook messagesinto our mobile application Buddymob, as we did previously with Twitter, MSN and GoogleTalk. In the  same  way,  users  can  send  and  receive  at  the  same  time  as  sharing  their  posts  ‐  whether they  are  text  messages,  pictures  or  video  messages  ‐  with  other  Buddies  (Buddymob  users), as well as with MSN, Twitter and Facebook users.”

What we think?

Kiboo claims there are over 100,000 Buddymob users worldwide - with 10,000 of those being in Manhattan. Integrating other social networks is a good way to keep them happy, but what’s this about Google Maps? Surely most people would want to NOT be locatable by people who aren’t their friends. Most mobile mapping services are highly concerned with keeping user-location hidden. It’s interesting to see someone moving the opposite direction.