Two mobile social networks announced that they are combining forces today. Limbo and Brightkite will be merging into a larger service, keeping the Brightkite name. Both are location-based MoSo’s, with a focus on getting users to actually meet up in the real world. Both are also quite large services, and they claim that the new Brightkite will be the largest LBS mobile social network in existence.
I interviewed Rob Lawson, one of the founders of Limbo in February – and at that time Limbo was boasting 2 million monthly users. I’ve also seen many enthusiastic reviews of the Brightkite network from a design point of view. It seems that the two companies have decided to combine Brightkites swanky user-interface with the Limbo subscriber base.
From the release:
“The Brightkite team has proven themselves to be masters of building a passionate and loyal community around their sleek mobile products. We are convinced that together we can build the new features our members want, more quickly, on more platforms and in more markets,” said Jonathon Linner, CEO of Brightkite and former CEO of Limbo.
“The two teams shared a common goal of using location-aware mobile services to enhance all of our social lives and Limbo has demonstrated unparalleled success in attracting consumers and advertisers to its services. Together we can execute faster against our combined vision and build a fantastic service for our community of millions of consumers,” added Martin May, co-founder of Brightkite, who will now serve as EVP Products of Brightkite.
What we think?
Something Jonathan MacDonald said comes back to me – “don’t worry about integration. The services that work will merge and get stronger. Integration takes care of itself”. And here we see that in motion! Two location-based mobile social networks, each with different strengths, combine to make a stronger service. Not necessarily better, but certainly stronger.
It’s practically a cliche at this point, but we’re going to see a lot more of this. Services simply have to band together to survive now.
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