Vodafone gets a Pocket Life

By Azam on December 24, 2008


 pocketlife


Pocket Life a geo-aware social network backed by mobile network giant Vodafone has launched the service to the public. The service allows users to update their friends on their current locations automatically, and also allows them to syndicate status updates and their recent activities to popular social networks like Facebook and MySpace. You can also use GPS to create a route (say, for mountain biking or hiking) and share that with friends over the network.

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At launch Pocket Life is compatible with over 30 phones, including a number of Blackberries, Nokias, and Samsungs, with the iPhone listed as “Coming Soon” (you can see the full compatibility list here. If you have a compatible phone, you can download the software by visiting www.mob.pocketlife.com from your phone’s browser. You can also use the site from your computer at Pocketlife.com, though this doesn’t feature automatic location updates. To get a feel for more of the site’s features, check out the walkthrough video demo.

Vodafone is the largest mobile telecommunications network company in the world, with huge mobile market shares in many markets in developed and emerging markets (it also owns minority stakes in some large mobile companies, with a 45% stake in Verizon). If its phones started to carry Pocket Life as a default application, it could easily gain considerable market share and off fierce completion with other location based firms.

Pocket Life competes with a number of location based and geo-aware social networks like Whrrl, Limbo, LOOPT, the most widely available in the US through recent deals with carriers. Pocket Life is coming to the location based party, but will have significant backing from the largest mobile carrier will help gain traction.  Eventually, social networking giants Facebook and MySpace will need to step up their efforts in the race to take social networks mobile.

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