Financiers smile on mobile social networking firms

Investment capital continued to flow into the mobile social networking space as two new startups closed their first rounds of funding.
Project Goth, which operates the “global mobile Internet community” mig33, said it pocketed $10 million in a first round of funding led by Accel Partners and Redpoint Ventures. The Australian outfit-which is being relocated to Burlingame, Calif.-claims its community generates 15 million messages a day from its 4 million users in the form of Internet voice calls, photo-sharing and instant and text messaging.
Mig33, which is supported by most mass-market phones, is designed to allow users to communicate easily in a variety of ways. The application is in beta in more than 200 countries and is expected to launch in the United States later this year.
“There is a race on around the world to establish a mobile platform that can be the gateway to the Internet for literally billions of consumers,” said Kevin Efrusy of Accel Partners. “We believe mig33 is well down the path of becoming a leader in this global race to bring the Internet to most of the world.”
Meanwhile, Redwood City, Calif.-based Frengo said it snared $5.7 million in a round led by The Trilogy Partnership. The investment follows a $2.3 million seed round closed last August that was led by Khosla Ventures and Index Ventures.
Frengo-which stems from the phrase “friends on the go”-offers mobile messaging tools as well as SMS- and MMS-based games. The service includes a “one-to-many” feature and is available through all tier-one carriers in the United States as well as Virgin Mobile USA L.L.C., Boost Mobile and Cellular One.
“Millions of wireless users are sending billions of messages for peer-to-peer communication and the opportunity to engage them in group messaging is immense,” said Cregg Baumbaugh of Trilogy, who joined Frengo’s board under terms of the deal.
The newcomers on the field will take on established pure-plays including Jumbuck, AirG and FunMobility as well as Internet players moving into wireless such as MySpace.