TribalGlu eyes Spanish links

Auckland company TribalGlu has inked a deal that could see millions of Spanish speakers connect through its social networking platform for mobiles.

Silicon Valley digital media consortium Comunidad M will distribute Tu Yo Ahora, TribalGlu's hosted mobile social community for Spanish speakers, in a deal that TribalGlu chief executive Roger Grice says will be quite substantial.

Members of Tu Yo Ahora will pay a monthly subscription using a premium text messaging service, and will then be able to chat with each other, create and view user profiles, and access music, videos and images.

TribalGlu parent company Lateral Profiles has about 40 staff split between its offices in Auckland and the Philippines. TribalGlu, which develops software for companies in the communications sector, has three staff and offices in Auckland and Los Angeles. Mr Grice says Lateral Profiles first delivered the platform to Vodafone New Zealand in 2000, which then offered TXTChat services to its customers.

He says the platform offers a range of social networking features such as chat services, photo-sharing and games, and clients can choose which services they wish to offer their customers.

Comunidad M, which specialises in gaming and video sharing applications, will market Tu Yo Ahora - which means "You Me Now" - to its two million subscribers in Puerto Rico, and then look to the Latin American and US Hispanic markets. TribalGlu is expanding into the maturing United States market and expects to announce deals there within the next few months.

"There's been considerable investment into network speed, and user adoption is good. The price of data on mobile is getting very competitive - all these things augur very well for us."

TribalGlu will also raise capital through private investors, but how much "depends on the evolution of the market, and our success at generating revenue".

Mr Grice says there will be more opportunities for TribalGlu in New Zealand as mobile operators follow the lead of the US and reduce charges for sending and receiving data on mobiles. Once this happens, companies will be more likely to offer "off-deck" content to mobile users, which is content that is branded and delivered by third-party providers as opposed to "on-deck" content distributed exclusively by mobile carriers.

"Currently it's not fair to deliver content-rich services to users off-deck because of the high browsing charges."

Lateral Profiles is an IT consultancy which specialises in mobile applications.