Yahoo Inc. became the latest-and perhaps the largest-player in the nascent but rapidly growing mobile social networking playground with a new service that allows users to set up group events through text messaging.
The service, dubbed Mixd, acts as a sort of go-between for cell phone users to set up meetings and other events. The site, mixd.yahoo.com, can also serve as a “day after” meet-up spot, creating Web pages to which users can send picture messages and view them later.
To set up a “mixer,” users can send a message, “new drinks2nite” for example, to Yahoo’s Mixd short code: 445566. Users can invite others to attend the event by sending their phone number to the short code: “add 4155551212,” for example.
Users can manipulate the service with a variety of short keywords: “whisper” sends a private message to another user; “leave” removes you from a mixer; “kick” kicks someone out of a mixer; and “who” lists the members of a mixer.
Interestingly, the service does not rely on Yahoo’s Internet site; users can monitor and control their “mixers” through text messages alone.
A cursory test of the service showed that it is in fact up and running, at least for the phone and service used for the test. The message “try” sent to Yahoo’s Mixd short code returned: “Get mixd! Rply w nick 2start. By rplying u agree 2 Terms & Privacy Policy (mixd.com/t). Mixd stores all content. Rates apply. Cmds: ‘stop’ ‘help.'”
Replying to the message with the word “nick,” as the message instructs, delivers further instructions: “Hey nick! To start your first Mixer, rply w/ the Mixer’s name, or a #: 1.meetup 2.drinks 3. letseat 4.movienight. Txt ‘stop’ 2 stop, ‘help’ 4 info.”
Yahoo joins a crowded marketplace for mobile social networking applications. MySpace has dipped its toe in the water, as have several wireless carriers. A variety of pure-play companies, including SMS.ac and InterCasting Corp.’s Rabble, are also active on the scene.
Indeed, the potential for mobile social networking services is growing rapidly, especially among younger wireless users. Community-based mobile Web services are showing remarkable uptake among users between the ages of 13 and 17, according to figures from M:Metrics. The Seattle-based market research firm found that youth users are nearly twice as likely to upload both photos and videos to the Internet from their handsets, with nearly 9 million kids posting a cell-phone picture in the last month.
