Sink or swim in social networking pool: Two more companies dive into space

Maybe it’s fitting that the two newest players in mobile social networking are named after sea creatures. Because they’re diving into a very crowded pool.
Cellfish Media L.L.C. is hoping to be a one-stop shop for on-the-go consumers with a new ad-supported portal, Cellfish.com, designed to allow users to upload and share photos and videos from their phones. The effort builds on the company’s traditional content business and offers a variety of free and premium images, video clips and ringtones.
The New York-based firm, which is partly owned by the French media giant Lagardere SCA, has built a considerable following in the United States and a few European markets with sites including BlingTones, Barrio Mobile and Wicked Betty. Cellfish raised more than $50 million late last year and completed the round with an additional $10 million in April.
The company will likely need much of that cash to build brand recognition. While Cellfish boasts that it generated roughly 20 million transactions last year, it must raise its profile-and its traffic-substantially if it is to generate meaningful ad revenue.
“If you think about the mobile generation, they do not have mobile brands,” said CEO Fabrice Sergent. “The real brands that exist in consumers’ minds (in mobile) are just the carriers’ brands. They’re very strong, based on the strength of advertising power, but they’re not very cool. They’re identified as networks, as enabling transmission, but not really capturing imagination like a media brand would do. We think there’s a tremendous opportunity to create mobile brands.”
Cellfish.com features a content locker where users can store their downloads in case they lose their handsets or upgrade phones. Lockers have become popular as a premium offering from carriers and application distributors, but are quickly gaining favor as a free feature. The site targets teens and twenty-somethings with free content as well as premium goodies sold a la carte.
“We believe there will be more access to the Web from the phone than from the PC in the next few years,” Sergent predicted. “The site will feature user-generated content, licensed content from the big names, and also our own original content.”
3Guppies Inc., meanwhile, is targeting the same demographic with a slightly less ambitious tack. The Seattle-based startup once known as Mixxer has centered its business on a single widget that allows users to disseminate pictures, videos and other content from MySpace pages to mobile phones. The company is hoping to build on its existing audience of 750,000 unique visitors a month and will try to monetize the service by delivering ads along with the content early next year. “We’re trying to allow the kids to extend the media of their social networking out to a device,” said CEO John Dearborn. “MySpace is their portal; this allows them to get that media to a mobile device very quickly.”
While the widget currently is a one-way channel, distributing content from PCs to mobile phones, Dearborn said the company plans to “make it more of a round trip,” integrating the platforms more tightly. 3Guppies, which also offers a content locker, raised $20 million last year and is looking to hit the VC circuit again this fall.
But both Cellfish and 3Guppies are swimming in overpopulated waters, as the number of contestants vying to become the mobile version of MySpace has exploded over the last year. New entrants like Tapatap Inc., Frengo Corp., IceBreaker Inc. and others are squaring off against more established players like Jumbuck, AirG, Funmobility and Intercasting Corp. Meanwhile, Internet behemoths such as MySpace, Facebook and Bebo are making waves.
“I think next year is a sort-out year. I think you’ll see a decent number of folks float to the top,” said Dearborn. “None of these bets have paid off yet, but somebody’s will.”