Mobile social network GyPSii gets operator deal with China Unicom

GyPSii has announced that is has been selected as the “premier” mobile social network for China Unicom. As part of the Chinese mobile operators new consumer social networking service, UniSpace, GyPSii will be immediately available for download 5 million Unicom customers.

GyPSii is a location-based social network, focused on geo-location. It allows users to find friends, geo-tag points of interest, and find local user-generated content on a map. GyPSii mostly uses GPS and a-GPS for location, but it can also use cell triangulation. So it’s available for a lot of UniSpace customers, regardless of how advanced their mobile device is - which is probably why it was chosen as a premier network for UniSpace.

From the release:

“After GyPSii and Shanghai Unicom’s success working together during the Olympics in 2008, we are delighted to deepen this important relationship and open up GyPSii to the wider community of Unicom’s millions of subscribers,” said Dan Harple, Executive Chairman of GyPSii. “Our goal is to have GyPSii on the world’s most popular networks and devices, for mobile consumers worldwide to use and enjoy in all the world’s most popular regions. Shanghai Unicom is an important and valued partner. Their 3G leadership in China, coupled with GyPSii’s seamless “create, share, connect” model, provides a valuable new mode of communicating for Shanghai Unicom users. Our partnership truly enables Shanghai Unicom customers to create a new “people powered index” using GyPSii on their powerful 3G network. We look forward to welcoming UniSpace customers as new GyPSii users, who will use the application to connect and share their mobile lives with others. This, in turn, will help Shanghai Unicom to acquire new 3G customers, retain existing subscribers and importantly boost revenues.”

“GyPSii’s ability to deliver an all-in-one, location-aware mobile social networking experience is proving extremely popular in China, with people using the application to create and share content, as well as connect with each other across a range of networks and devices,” said Mr. Lu Dongliang, Deputy General Manager of Shanghai Unicom. “With its fast-growing community and unique, intuitive user experience, GyPSii was the natural choice as a mobile social networking partner. We expect the new UniSpace offering to play an important role in driving the success of our 3G Value Added Service.”

What we think?

I’ve quite liked how the Chinese operators have been handling things so far when it comes to apps and social networking. They’re not putting all their eggs in one basket. GyPSii won’t be the only social network available on UniSpace, it just gets a “premier” spot. Looking at services like UniSpace, and the recently announced Mobile Market from China Mobile, it looks like the Chinese operators are getting as many different services out there as possible, and letting the market decide which ones will succeed.